The weather also was getting thicker, and all three of the racers were shortly under a prudent necessity for reducing their excessive spreads of canvas. The first mate of the Goshawk had even been compelled to expostulate with his overexcited skipper.
“Some of it’s got to come down, sir,” he asserted. “If we was to lose a spar, we’re gone, sure as guns!”
“In with it, then,” said the captain. “I wish both of ’em ’d knock out a stick or two. It’d be a good thing for us.”
At all events, a lame horse is not likely to win a race, and the Goshawk was doing as well as were either of the others.
Under such circumstances, it was not long before the Falcon and the Portsmouth were within speaking-trumpet distance of each other, both of them losing half a mile to the Goshawk while they were getting together. Rapid and loud-voiced indeed were the explanations which passed between the two commanders. At the end of them, the wrath of the Englishman was turned entirely against the culprit bark, which had trifled with his flag.
“We must take her, sir!” he shouted. “She’s a loose fish o’ some kind.”
It was while this conversation was going on that Señor Zuroaga, after long and careful observations, reported to Captain Kemp concerning the far-away stranger to the westward.
“She is a Frenchman, beyond a doubt. Are all the nations making a naval rendezvous in the Gulf of Mexico?”
“Nothing extraordinary,” said the captain. “But they’re all more’n usually on the watch, on account o’ the war, if it’s coming.”
It was precisely so. War surely brings disturbance and losses to others besides those who are directly engaged in it, and all the nations having commercial relations with Mexico were expecting their cruisers in the gulf to act as a kind of sea police. Moreover, a larger force than usual would probably be on hand and wide awake.