r
many days afterwards--they devoted themselves with great earnestness and
gravity to the matter, but ineffectually; and at length they gave it up
as a bad job, and declared the cypher to be untranslatable.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE STRANGE FATE OF THE "NORTHERN QUEEN."

The welcome breeze that wafted us out of the neighbourhood of the
ill-starred _City of Calcutta_ held good, and, gradually freshening and
working round more from the southward, eventually resolved itself into
the south-east trade, under the beneficent influence of which, with our
larboard tacks on board and our yards braced flat up against the
starboard rigging, we merrily wended our way to the southward.

One morning, when we were about in the latitude of the islands of Martin
Vaz and Trinidad, we discovered, at daybreak, a large ship broad on our
weather-bow, the topsails of which were just clear of the horizon. The
trades were at this time blowing fresh, and the barque was thrashing
along under her main-topgallantsail, with the flying-jib stowed. No
sooner, however, did Roberts come on deck and espy the stranger--which
was steering the same way as ourselves--than he must needs give orders
to loose and set the fore-topgallantsail and flying-jib; and while I was
in the saloon at breakfast, I heard him give orders to set the two
royals. Under this additional canvas, which caused the little hooker to
bury her lee side to her covering-boards, and to plunge to her
hawse-pipes into the long ridges of swell that came rolling up from the
southward and eastward, while she sent an acre of milk-white foam
roaring and hissing away from under her lee bow, we rapidly overhauled
the strange sail until we had brought her square abeam. Then, having
allowed us to reach this position, her people gallantly responded to our
obvious challenge, and made sail until they showed precisely the same
canvas to the breeze that we did. The stranger, ship-rigged, was at
this time about eight miles away from us, broad on our weather-beam, her
hull just showing above the horizon when she rose upon the crest of a
sea; and, after taking a good look at her through our glasses, we came
to the conclusion that she must be a vessel of about twelve hundred
tons. That she was a remarkably smart craft under her canvas soon
became evident, for though we were going eleven and a half knots by the
log, we found it impossible to gain an inch upon her after she had got
her additional canvas