gth, "will you take a look at yonder vessel, and say
if you have ever seen her before? It seems to me that I ought to know
her."

He handed the glass as he spoke to the lieutenant, who took a long look
through it.

"I can scarcely believe it possible; yet, Tracy, she appears to me
remarkably like the _Ouzel Galley_," observed Mr Foley.

"That is what I think she is, sir; but how she comes to be chasing
another English vessel is mere than I can make out."

While the lieutenant was speaking a flash was seen, and a shot flew from
the vessel they were looking at towards the one ahead. Another and
another followed from her bow-chasers, but the range was a long one, and
they fell harmlessly into the water, under the counter of the ship at
which they were fired.

"They were well aimed, and had they been fired from longer guns and with
better powder, they would have hit their mark," observed Lieutenant
Foley.

"It won't be long before the chase has some of those round shot aboard
her," observed the master. "The sternmost vessel is gaining on her
fast, and unless she can manage to knock away some of the spars of the
other, she must be overtaken in a few hours at most."

Gerald had again got hold of the telescope. "I cannot make it out," he
exclaimed again and again. "I have just caught sight of her flag. It
is black, with the death's head and cross-bones. There is no mistaking
her character; she is a pirate, but still I never saw a craft so like
the _Ouzel Galley_. She has the same new cloth in her fore-topsail
which she had when she last sailed from Port Royal, and a patch in the
starboard clew of her main-topgallantsail. Can anything have happened
to Owen Massey? He has not turned pirate; of that I am very certain."

"I am afraid, then, Tracy, if that vessel is really the _Ouzel Galley_,
she must have been captured by pirates," observed Lieutenant Foley.

"I am dreadfully afraid that such must have been the case, sir,"
answered Gerald, almost ready to burst into tears. "All I hope is that,
though she is wonderfully like the _Ouzel Galley_, she is not her, after
all. If she is, poor Owen, his officers and crew must have been
murdered. Dear, dear! what will become of Norah when she hears of it?"

The two ships were now passing almost directly in front of the island;
indeed, the chase had already got some way to the southward, the pirate
ship--for that a pirate she was there could be no doubt--continually