e moment we began to touch our braces,
tacks and sheets, that the Leander would do the same, and that she would
effect her objects in half the time in which we could effect ours.
Nevertheless, the thing was to be done, and we set about the preparations
with care and assiduity. It was a small matter to round in our weather
braces, until the yards were nearly square, but the rigging out of her
studding-sail booms, and the setting of the sails, was a job to occupy the
Dawn's people several minutes. Marble suggested that by edging gradually
away, we should bring the Leander so far on our quarter as to cause the
after-sails to conceal what we were about forward, and that we might steal
a march on our pursuers by adopting this precaution. I thought the
suggestion a good one, and the necessary orders were given to carry
it out.

Any one might be certain that the Englishman's glasses were levelled on us
the whole time. Some address was used, therefore, in managing to get our
yards in without showing the people at the braces. This was done by
keeping off first, and then by leading the ropes as far forward as
possible, and causing the men to haul on them, seated on deck. In this
manner we got our yards nearly square, or as much in as our new course
required, when we sent hands aloft, forward, to get out the lee booms. But
we reckoned without our host. John Bull was not to be caught in that way.
The hands were hardly in the lee fore rigging, before I saw the fifty
falling off to our course, her yards squared, and signs aboard her that
she had larboard studding sails as well as ourselves. The change of course
had one good effect, however: it brought our pursuer so far on our
quarter, that, standing at the capstan, I saw him through the mizen
rigging. This took the Dawn completely from under the Leander's broadside,
leaving us exposed to merely four or five of her forward guns, should she
see fit to use them. Whether the English were reluctant to resort to such
very decided means of annoyance, so completely within the American waters,
as we were clearly getting to be, or whether they had so much confidence
in their speed, as to feel no necessity for firing, I never knew; but they
did not have any further recourse to shot.

As might have been foreseen, the fifty had her extra canvass spread some
time before we could open ours, and I fancied she showed the advantage
thus obtained in her rate of sailing. She certainly closed with us, t