ptain the reason of the change of course.

"If you look astern you will see it," he said.

Shading my eyes with my hand, I gazed into the darkness, and there I at
length discovered what the more practised eyes of the captain had long
seen--the shadowy form of the stranger coming up under all sail towards
us.

"You see now why we have kept away," observed the captain. "Before the
wind is our fastest point of sailing, and I wish that we had kept on it
from the first. That fellow out there must have hauled his wind soon
after we lost sight of him."

"Do you think she will come up with us?" I asked.

"There is a great likelihood that she will," answered the captain; "but
a stern chase is a long chase, as every one knows. Perhaps we may fall
in with a man-of-war cruiser, when the tables will be turned; if not, as
I said before, we must fight her."

"With all my heart," I answered; and Harry echoed my words.

The stranger had by this time approached much nearer to us than before,
or we should have been unable to see her. We could thus no longer hope
for an opportunity of escaping by altering our course. "It is my duty
to stand on as long as I can, to give ourselves every chance of meeting
with another craft, which may take a part in the game," observed the
captain. "At all events, it will be daylight before we get within range
of her guns, and you young gentlemen may as well turn in in the meantime
and finish your night's rest."

Neither I nor Harry had any inclination, however, to do this. The dream
I had had still haunted my imagination, and I felt pretty sure that were
I to go to sleep it would come back as vividly as before. Stepping into
the waist, I found Mr Tubbs, the boatswain.

"Well, Tom, what do you think about the matter?" I asked. "Shall we
have a brush with yonder craft which seems so anxious to make our
acquaintance?"

"No doubt about it, Mr Westerton, and more than a brush too, I suspect.
That ship out there is a big fellow, and will prove a tough customer.
We shall have to show the stuff we are made of, and fight hard to beat
him off. I don't say but that we shall do it, but it will cost us
dearly; for his people, we may be sure, know how to handle their guns;
and from the height of his canvas I should say that he was twice our
size, and probably carries double as many guns as we do, and musters
three or four times more men."

"Then I'm afraid that we shall have but a poor chance of b