he thought, show us a clean pair of heels. His practice was not
a bit better than ours; indeed, it would only have been by chance that a
shot could have hit its mark. However, we both of us kept blazing away
at each other with hearty good-will. In the meantime the wind and sea,
already high, were getting up very much. At any other time I should
have hove the cutter to; but now, follow I must; and I hoped, from our
greater power, we should be able to hold out the longest, and that at
last the smuggler must give in. We were now nearing Portland Race, and
never in my life had I observed the sea running higher on it than it now
did. `The fellows will never attempt to cross it,' observed Hanks:
`they'll be swamped if they do; and if they haul up to round it, we
shall catch them to a certainty.' `Cross it they will try, at all
events,' I replied; `they can never carry canvas on a wind, in a breeze
and with a sea like this. See, they are standing into the very thickest
of the breakers.' Sure enough, there was the cutter approaching the
most dangerous part of the Race. The spring-tide was making down, and
the wind, meeting it, threw the foaming breakers higher up than usual.
Still it was possible, if everything was battened down, that the cutter
might shove through them. We all held our breath. If she got through,
we also must follow. We had everything secured, and were better
prepared than she was. On she went--her white sails appearing against
the dark sky--her whole hull enveloped in foam. For some seconds she
pushed on bravely. I never took my eye off her. Suddenly the white
canvas seemed to bend low down--the breakers danced on as before. I
rubbed my eyes, but without avail: the sail had disappeared. There was
a cry of horror on board the cutter, but no shout of triumph, though our
long-sought-for foe was no more. He and everybody on board must have
been swallowed up in those foaming billows. We had barely time to
shorten sail and to haul off, to avoid sharing the same fate; for I
scarcely think, on that day, that even we could have run through the
race. Some days after this I was on shore on Portland Bill, and the
lighthouse-keeper told me that he had witnessed the catastrophe. He
told me, also, that several planks and spars had shortly after come on
shore, and with these the body of a man. When, however, he went down to
the beach to look for the body, he could nowhere find it; so he
concluded that i