"if you should split every cloth
in the main-course, by carrying on the ship you will never alter the
bearings of that craft an inch, till the sun rises! Then, indeed, such as
have eyes, that are good enough, might perhaps see her sailing about
among the clouds; though it has never been my fortune be it bad or be it
good, to fall in with one of these cruisers after the day has fairly
dawned."

"And the distance?" said Wilder; "you have not yet spoken of her
distance."

"That is much as people choose to measure. She may be here, nigh enough to
toss a biscuit into our tops; or she may be there, where she seems to be,
hull down in the horizon."

"But, if where she seems to be?"

"Why, she _seems_ to be a vessel of about six hundred tons; and, judging
from appearances only, a man might be tempted to say she was a couple of
leagues, more or less, under our lee."

"I put her at the same! Six miles to windward is not a little advantage,
in a hard chase. By heavens, Earing, I'll drive the 'Caroline' out of
water but I'll leave him!"

"That might be done, if the ship had wings like a curlew, or a sea-gull;
but, as it is, I think we are more likely to drive her under."

"She bears her canvas well, so far. You know not what the boat can do,
when urged."

"I have seen her sailed in all weathers, Captain Wilder, but"----

His mouth was suddenly closed. A vast black wave reared itself between the
ship and the eastern horizon, and came rolling onward, seeming to threaten
to ingulf all before it. Even Wilder watched the shock with breathless
anxiety, conscious, for the moment that he had exceeded the bounds of
sound discretion in urging his ship so powerfully against such a mass of
water. The sea broke a few fathoms from the bows of the "Caroline," and
sent its surge in a flood of foam upon her decks. For half a minute the
forward part of the vessel disappeared, as though, unable to mount the
swell, it were striving to go through it, and then she heavily emerged,
gemmed with a million of the scintillating insects of the ocean. The ship
had stopped, trembling in every joint, throughout her massive and powerful
frame, like some affrighted courser; and, when she resumed her course, it
was with a moderation that appeared to warn those who governed her
movements of their indiscretion.

Earing faced his Commander in silence, perfectly conscious that nothing he
could utter contained an argument like this. The seamen no longer
he