so that we could see her
deck from the stem to her taffrail at every lurch she made. The only
difference in her appearance was a short fore-mast with cross-trees, and
a top-mast for square sails. Almost as soon as our top-sail sheets were
hauled home, her own yards went up and the sail was spread, while with
the bonnet off her fore-sail, the whole jib and a close-reefed
main-sail, she went flying to the southward with the gale a point abaft
the beam.

[Illustration: THE STERN CHASE.]

"Thus we went on, the sea getting more regular every hour, so that we
could send up the top-gallant masts, get the yards across, shake a reef
or two out, and put the 'Scourge' in order. The schooner needed no
encouragement from us, but cracked on more sail until her long main-mast
reeled and bent over, as she came up on the breaking ridge of a wave,
like a whip-stalk. By noon the clouds had gone, and left us a clear sky,
with the gale going down into a full top-gallant breeze, sending the
corvette along good eleven knots. We got an observation for latitude,
and five hours later we determined the longitude and our position to be
a few leagues to leeward of the Sarrana Keys, with that bird of a
schooner before us heading for the Musquito coast.

"If _we_ had caught a cataract of water as it rolled over our bows in
the morning, the schooner was taking _her_ bath in the afternoon, for
occasionally, for five minutes at a time, there was nothing seen of her
deck, and only the masts and broad white canvas above, like jury-sticks
out of a raft. But when she did slide up with her low, long hull
shooting clean out of water, till nearly half her keel, with the copper
sheathing flashing in the sun, was visible, she looked like a dolphin
making a spring after a shoal of flying-fish. And then on her narrow
deck we could see a few fellows lashed about the fore-mast, and a couple
more abaft steering her like a thread through a needle.

"We began to gain upon her now, and whenever she kept a little away
before the wind the gap between us closed more rapidly; for the ship
could evidently outcarry the schooner, and, had the breeze freshened and
the sea kept up, we could have run her under if her masts didn't go out
of her, as we hoped and expected every minute they would. Gradually,
however, she watched her chance and hauled up till she brought the wind
barely abeam, and steered true for the Musketeers--a bad cluster of low
keys nearly surrounded by as