“She wishes to escape us altogether, or is not quite ready for action,” observed the Captain to Mr Brine.
“She seems to be putting her best foot foremost, at all events,” answered the first lieutenant, taking a look at the stranger through his glass, for she could now be seen clearly from the deck. “She looks like a frigate of much about our size; and I have little doubt, by the cut of her sails, she is French.”
“I have great hopes that she is, and more, that she is one of the very frigates we have been on the lookout for,” said the Captain. “What do you think, master?” he added, turning to that officer, Mr Handlead, who stood near.
“A Johnny Crapaud, sir,” he answered quickly. “There’s no doubt about it; and to my mind the villain is making all sail to be off, because he doesn’t like the look of us.”
“I trust that we shall overtake her, and take her, too, master,” said Captain Garland. “I think that we are already gaining on her. The frigate slips well through the water.”
The crew on the forecastle were carrying on a conversation much in the same style. “Bless her heart, she is walking along at a good rate,” observed Abel Bush as he looked over the bows. “The old girl’s got as pretty a pair of heels of her own as you’d wish to see.”
“The faster she goes, the better,” answered Peter Ogle. “I never does feel comfortable like when one of those Monsieurs is in sight, till I gets up alongside him and overhauls him one way or the other. You mind how they used to give us the slip in the West Ingies. They’ll be trying on the same game now, depend on’t.”
“But when they do begin, they don’t fight badly, you’ll allow,” observed Paul Pringle.
“Maybe; but while they can lift their heels, they’ll run,” stoutly maintained Abel.
In this instance the stranger seemed determined to contradict his assertion, for at that very moment she was seen to haul up her foresail, while the topgallant-sails were lowered on the caps, where they hung swelling out and fluttering in the breeze; at the same time the flag of republican France was run up at the peak, and a shot of defiance was fired from one of her after-guns.