“I say, Elmore, it must be she. That’s her fore-topsail, I’ll declare!” exclaimed Johnny Nott. Elmore was not quite so certain.
After a little time, they were joined by True Blue.
“Paul Pringle, sirs, sent me up to have a look at the stranger,” he remarked.
“I am very glad you have come, Freeborn,” said Sir Henry. “Your eyes are the best in the ship. What do you make her out to be?”
True Blue looked long and earnestly without speaking. At last he answered, in an unusually serious tone:
“She is not our frigate, sir—that I’m certain of; and I’m more than afraid—I’m very nearly certain—that she is French. By the cut of her sails and her general look, she puts me in mind of one of the squadron which chased us off Guernsey.”
True Blue’s confidence made the midshipmen look at the stranger in a different light, and they finally both confessed that they were afraid he was right. Captain Jones agreeing with them, all sail was now crowded on the brig to escape.
In spite of all the sail the brig could carry, the frigate was fast coming up with her.
“I wish that we could fight,” said Johnny Nott to Elmore. “Don’t you think that if we were to get two of the guns aft, we might knock away some of her spars?”
“I fear not,” said his brother midshipman, pointing to the popguns which adorned the packet’s deck. “These things would not carry half as far as the frigate’s guns; and, probably, as soon as we began to fire she would let fly a broadside and sink us.”