re
the wind, heading about south-east, and bringing the stranger about a
point and a half abaft our port beam.

Sailing before the wind was a very different matter from plugging to
windward with the sheet flattened well in, and although our shift of
helm had the effect of making it seem that the wind had suddenly died
away almost to nothing, there was no longer that heart-breaking
smack-smack of the small seas against our weather bow which had seemed
to retard our way in such an exasperating fashion. On the contrary,
with the sheet eased well off and the lug boomed out with the boathook
so that the yard swung square across the length of the boat, we went
sliding smoothly away to leeward with a long, easy, buoyant motion, a
pleasant, musical gurgling of water along our bottom planking, and a
swift gliding past us of tiny air bubbles and occasional morsels of weed
that told us we were now travelling at the rate of quite four knots.

For the first half-hour the stranger did not appreciably alter her
bearing relative to the boat, which seemed to indicate that we were
practically holding our own with her, and our hopes soared high,
especially as within that brief period we had raised her royals and the
heads of her topgallantsails above the horizon. But when this latter
circumstance enabled us to see that she had her starboard topgallant
studdingsails set, my enthusiasm flagged again, for I argued that she
must be a slow-coach indeed if, with the breeze then blowing and
studdingsails set, she could not do any better than four knots. I held
my peace, however, for there was no use in damping the hopes of the
others, while there was always the possibility that if any of her hands
happened to be employed aloft, the eye of one or another of them might
chance upon our sail, which, small though it was, ought to be perfectly
visible at a distance of five or six miles, even in that somewhat hazy
atmosphere. But by the end of the first hour after we had begun our
chase it became apparent that she had the heels of us, for although we
were still steering exactly the same course as at first, she had drawn
up square abeam of us. And there it was imperatively necessary that we
should keep her if we did not wish her to slip past us, even although
the keeping of her there should entail upon us the necessity to edge
gradually away, thus bringing our own course ever more nearly parallel
to hers, instead of causing the two steadily to con