ters
aft, had been assigned to the port watch, went below and turned in.

CHAPTER XXXII

Jeremy, stumbling on deck at eight bells, pulled his seaman's greatcoat
up about his ears, for the breeze came cold. He worked his way forward
along the high weather rail and took up his lookout station on the
starboard bow.

Overhead the midnight sky burned bright with stars that seemed to
flicker like candle-flames in the wind. A half-grown moon rode down the
west and threw a faint radiance across the heaving seas. It was blowing
harder now. The wind boomed loud in the taut stays and the rising waves
broke smashingly over the bow at times, forcing the foremast hands to
cling like monkeys to the rail and rigging.

Captain Job, with Tom to help him, stood grimly at the thrashing tiller
and drove the sloop southwestward at a terrific gait. The sails had been
single-reefed again during the mate's watch, but with the wind still
freshening the staunch little craft was carrying an enormous amount of
canvas. Job Howland was a sailor of the breed that was to reach its
climax a hundred years later in the captains of the great Yankee
clippers--men who broke sailing records and captured the world's trade
because they dared to walk their tall ships, full-canvassed, past the
heavy foreign merchantmen that rolled under triple reefs in half a gale
of wind.

One by one the hours of the watch went by. Jeremy, drenched and
shivering, but thrilling to the excitement of the chase, stuck to his
post at the rail beside the long bow gun. His eyes were fixed constantly
on the sea ahead and abeam, while his thoughts, racing on, followed the
pirate schooner close.

How was Bob to be gotten off alive, he wondered, for he had come to
believe that his chum was aboard the fleeing craft. If it came to a
running fight, their cannonade might sink her, in which case the boy
would be drowned along with his captors. And there were other things
that could happen. Jeremy groaned aloud as he thought of the fate that
Pharaoh Daggs had once so nearly meted out to him. He felt again the
bite of the hemp at his wrists, and saw that pitiless gleam in the
strange light eyes of the pirate. Would Daggs try to settle his long
score against the boys by some unheard-of brutality?

A sudden hail cut in upon his thoughts. "Sail ho!" the lookout on the
other side had cried.

"Where away?" came Job's deep shout.

"Three points on the port bow," answered the seaman,