usy that we haven't been keeping a lookout.

"What do you make her to be, Joe?" he said to the second mate.

"I should say she was a French frigate, sir."

The captain ascended the shrouds with his glass, remained there two
or three minutes watching the ship, and then returned to the deck.

"She is a frigate, certainly, Mr. Probert, and by the cut of her
sails I should say a Frenchman. We are in an awkward fix. She has
got the weather gage of us. Do you think, if we put up helm and ran
due north, we should come out ahead of her?"

The mate shook his head.

"Not if the wind freshens, sir, as I think it will. I should say we
had best haul our wind, and make for one of the Spanish ports. We
might get into Santander."

"Yes, that would be our best chance.

"All hands 'bout ship!"

The vessel's head was brought up into the wind, and payed off on
the other tack, heading south--the frigate being, now, on her
weather quarter. This course took the brig within a mile and a half
of the lugger, which fired a few harmless shots at her. When she
had passed beyond the range of her guns, she shaped her course
southeast by east for Santander, the frigate being now dead astern.
The men were then piped to dinner.

"Is she likely to catch us, sir?" Bob asked, as they sat down to
table.

"I hope not, lad. I don't think she will, unless the wind freshens
a good deal. If it did, she would come up hand over hand.

"I take it she is twelve miles off, now. It is four bells, and she
has only got five hours' daylight, at most. However fast she is,
she ought not to gain a knot and a half an hour, in this breeze
and, if we are five or six miles ahead when it gets dark, we can
change our course. There is no moon."

They were not long below.

"The lugger is under sail again, sir," the second mate, who was on
duty, said as they gained the deck.

"They haven't been long getting up a jury mast," Captain Lockett
said. "That is the best of a lug rig. Still, they have a smart crew
on board."

He directed his glass towards the lugger, which was some five miles
away.

"It is a good-sized spar," he said, "nearly as lofty as the
foremast. She is carrying her mainsail with two reefs in it and,
with the wind on her quarter, is travelling pretty nearly as fast
as she did before. Still, she can't catch us, and she knows it.

"Do you see, Mr. Probert, she is bearing rather more to the north.
She reckons, I fancy, that after it gets dark we m