almost to absolute certainty, that there is
another vessel directly ahead, and close aboard of you for aught that
you can tell to the contrary. And, indeed, we soon had evidence of
this; for, feeling uneasy upon the matter, I had started to go forward
with the intention of warning the look-out men that I had reason to
believe there was a ship close ahead of us, and that they must therefore
keep an extra bright look-out, when, as I arrived abreast the fore-
rigging, my eyes still straining into the darkness ahead, the schooner
was hove up on the breast of a heavy, following sea, and as she topped
it with the ghostly sea-fire of its fiercely-hissing crest brimming
almost to the rail, a black shape seemed to suddenly solidify out of the
gloom ahead, apparently within biscuit-toss of our jib-boom end, with an
unmistakable wake of boiling foam on each side of it, and the two look-
out men yelled, as with one voice, and in the high-pitched accents of
sudden alarm.

"Hard-a-port! hard a-port! There's a ship right under our bows, sir!"

The helm was promptly put over, the schooner sheered out of the wake of
the black mass ahead--apparently a craft of considerable size,--and we
ranged up on her starboard quarter. It will convey some idea of the
closeness of the shave we made of it when I say that, even above the
howling of the gale, the fierce hiss of the rapidly rising sea, and the
roar of our bow-wave, we caught the sound of an unintelligible hail from
the stranger, which almost immediately displayed a lantern over her
taffrail for a few seconds, as a warning to us, her people being
doubtless under the impression that our encounter had been accidental,
and that we had only that moment seen her for the first time.

Having now established beyond all question the fact of the stranger's
proximity to us, I ordered our mainsail to be hauled down, balance-
reefed, and reset, by which means we presently found that the stranger
was gradually drawing ahead of us again; and the danger of collision
being thus averted, I began to ask myself whether it was advisable to
continue the chase any longer. The fact is, I had followed this craft
instinctively, for I knew that there were so few vessels flying British
colours in that precise part of the world that the presumption was
strongly in favour of this one being either a Spaniard or a Dutchman,
and in either case an enemy. But assuming her to be one or the other,
she was just as likely