ered her bearing from us by so much as a quarter
point since we had last hauled our wind. And if we in the _Francesca_
were gaining upon her, the _Dona Inez_ was doing so in a still more
marked degree, that craft being, at the time last-mentioned, quite eight
miles ahead of us, and about two points on our weather bow. The
question now arose in my mind whether she would endeavour to dodge us
during the night? She would find it exceedingly difficult to do so, for
there was now a good moon in the sky, affording sufficient light to
enable a man with keen eyes to keep a craft at her distance from us in
sight without very much trouble; but, on the other hand, there was a
very heavy mass of cloud banking up to windward and fast overspreading
the sky. This would obscure the moon later, and perhaps for a time cut
off enough of her light to give the stranger a chance, should he wish to
avail himself of it. I therefore sent one of the keenest-sighted men I
had with me up on the topsail-yard as soon as it began to grow dusk,
with instructions to keep his eye on the stranger and immediately report
to me should he happen to lose sight of her. For we knew, both from
hearsay and experience, that the slavers were as wily as foxes, and were
in the habit of adopting all sorts of queer expedients to evade pursuit.
Not content, therefore, with sending a hand aloft to watch the
stranger, I maintained an almost continuous watch upon her myself from
the deck with the aid of the _Francesca's_ excellent telescope, which
was both a day and a night glass.

Meanwhile the cloud bank continued steadily to overspread the heavens,
and at length obscured the moon, shutting off so much of her light that
it immediately became difficult in the extreme to discern the chase any
longer, even with the assistance of the telescope; and I was not in the
least surprised when, a minute or two later, the look-out aloft hailed
to say that he had lost sight of her. But I had not; I could still see
her through the glass, although with momentarily increasing difficulty
as the pall of cloud crept onward across the sky, ever cutting off more
and still more of the moon's light; and at length the moment arrived
when I also was compelled to admit to myself that I could no longer see
her. I removed the telescope from my eye for a minute or two to give my
strained and smarting eyeballs a rest, and closed my eyelids in order to
completely exclude from them even such dim