ree frigates."

"That is rather too much for us, certainly, without Bluewater. His five
ships, now, and this westerly position, would make a cheering prospect
for us. We might stick by Mr. de Vervillin until it moderated, and then
pay our respects to him. What do you say to _that_, Greenly?"

"That it is of no great moment, Sir Gervaise, so long as the other
division is _not_ with us. But yonder are signals flying on board the
Active, the Warspite, and the Blenheim."

"Ay, they've something to tell us of the chap astern and to windward.
Come, Bunting, give us the news."

"'Stranger in the north-west shows the Druid's number;'" the
signal-officer read mechanically from the book.

"The deuce he does! Then Bluewater cannot be far off. Let Dick alone for
keeping in his proper place; he has an instinct for a line of battle,
and I never knew him fail to be in the very spot I could wish to have
him, looking as much at home, as if his ships had all been built there!
The Druid's number! The Caesar and the rest of them are in a line ahead,
further north, heading up well to windward even of our own wake. This
puts the Comte fairly under our lee."

But Greenly was far from being of a temperament as sanguine as that of
the vice-admiral's. He did not like the circumstance of the Druid's
being alone visible, and she, too, under what in so heavy a gale, might
be deemed a press of canvass. There was no apparent reason for the
division's carrying sail so hard, while the frigate would he obliged to
do it, did she wish to overtake vessels like the Plantagenet and her
consorts. He suggested, therefore, the probability that the ship was
alone, and that her object might be to speak them.

"There is something in what you say, Greenly," answered Sir Gervaise,
after a minute's reflection; "and we must look into it. If Denham
doesn't give us any thing new from the Count to change our plans, it may
be well to learn what the Druid is after."

Denham was the commander of the Chloe, which ship, a neat
six-and-thirty, was pitching into the heavy seas that now came rolling
in heavily from the broad Atlantic, the water streaming from her
hawse-holes, as she rose from each plunge, like the spouts of a whale.
This vessel, it has been stated, was fully a league ahead and to leeward
of the Plantagenet, and consequently so much nearer to the French, who
were approaching from that precise quarter of the ocean, in a long
single line, like that of the