ut, if so, they signally failed, for
immediately that the barque's outline faded into an indistinct blur in
the growing darkness, we went to work and shook out a reef all round,
never doubting but that they were at that moment doing precisely the
same thing. And our supposition was most probably correct--Ryan,
indeed, who had sent for his night-glass and brought it to bear upon
her, declared that he could detect an increase in the area of her
shadowy canvas--for even after we had made sail we could not perceive
that we were in any wise decreasing the distance between the two
vessels.

As the swift, tropical night shut down upon us every eye in the ship
became strained to its utmost power in the effort to keep sight of the
chase, for now that there could no longer be any doubt in the minds of
her people that we were after them, we felt convinced that should an
opportunity present itself for them to elude us in the darkness they
would assuredly embrace it; and, being new to the coast and to the
service, as most of us were, we had yet to learn by vexatious experience
the fertility of resource which had been developed in the
slave-trafficking fraternity by the unflagging pursuit to which they
were subjected by the slave-squadron, and of which they never missed a
chance to avail themselves. We had heard many an amusing story of the
extraordinarily clever devices that these gentry had resorted to--very
often successfully--in their endeavours to elude pursuit, and while we
had laughed heartily at the recital of them, or commented admiringly
upon their ingenuity, as the case might be, we had no fancy for further
illustrating in our own persons their superiority in the art of
mystification. And we were rendered all the more anxious by the fact
that with nightfall the sky became overspread with a thin canopy of
cloud that, while not sufficiently dense to wholly obscure the stars, so
dimmed their lustre that it became difficult to distinguish, even
through our night-glasses, the forms of the waves at a greater distance
than half-a-mile; while as for the chase, we were at length reluctantly
compelled to admit to each other that we had lost sight of her
altogether, or at least that we could not be absolutely certain whether
we could still see her or not; sometimes we were confident that we
could, at other times we utterly failed to make her out.

It was while we were in this painful condition of uncertainty that
Ryan--who like