the master's mate, persisted in
his assertion that she was the _Shark_, we still held on as we were
steering, feeling persuaded that, if she were indeed that vessel, she
would be anxious to speak to us; while, if she should prove to be a
stranger, no great harm would be done beyond the loss of a few hours on
our part.

The night fell overcast and very dark, and we lost sight of the stranger
altogether. Moreover the wind breezed up so strongly that we were
obliged to hand our royal and topgallant-sail and haul down our gaff-
topsail, main-topmast staysail, and flying-jib; the result of the
freshening breeze being that a very nasty sea soon got up and we passed
a most uncomfortable night, the schooner rolling heavily and yawing
wildly as the seas took her on her weather quarter. We saw no more of
the stranger that night, although some of us fancied that we
occasionally caught a glimpse of something looming very faint and
indefinite in the darkness away to windward.

Toward the end of the middle watch the weather rapidly improved, the
wind dropped, and the sea went down with it, although the sky continued
very overcast and the night intensely dark. By four bells in the
morning watch the wind had died away almost to a calm, and with the
first pallor of the coming dawn the clouds broke away, and there, about
a mile on our weather quarter--that is to say, dead to windward of us--
lay the stranger of the preceding night, black and clean-cut as a paper
silhouette against the cold whiteness of the eastern sky, rolling
heavily, and with a number of hands aloft rigging out studding-sail
booms. The brig, which was most certainly not the _Shark_, was heading
directly for us, and I did not like the look of her at all, for she was
as big as the sloop, if not a trifle bigger, showed nine guns of a side,
and was obviously bent upon getting a nearer view of us. We lost no
time in getting our studding-sails aloft on the starboard side, bracing
the yards a trifle forward, and shaping a course that would give us a
chance ultimately to claw out to windward of our suspicious-looking
neighbour; but she would have none of it, for while we were still busy a
ruddy flash leapt from her bow port, a cloud of smoke, blue in the early
morning light, obscured the craft for a few seconds, and a round shot
came skipping toward us across the black water, throwing up little jets
of spray as it came, and finally sinking less than twenty yards away.