eeded. The
wind was a cap-full; a good, fresh, westerly breeze, which seemed to
have started out of the oven-like heat of a week of intensely hot
weather that had preceded it, and to have collected the force of two or
three zephyrs into one. It was not a gale at all, nor did it induce
either party to think of reefing; no trifle would have done that, under
the circumstances; but it caused the Proserpine to furl her fore and
mizzentopgallant-sails, and put Raoul in better humor with the loss of
his jigger. When fairly round the headland, and at a moment when he
fancied the frigate would be compelled to tack, the latter had seized an
opportunity to get in his foresail, to unbend it, and to bend and set a
new one; an operation that took just four minutes by the watch. He would
have tried the same experiment with the other lug, but the mast was
scarce worth the risk, and he thought the holes might act as reefs, and
thus diminish the strain. In these four hours, owing to the disadvantage
under which le Feu-Follet labored, there was not a difference of half a
knot in the distance run by the two vessels, though each passed over
more than thirty miles of water. During this time they had been drawing
rapidly nearer to the coast of Corsica, the mountains of which, ragged
and crowned with nearly eternal snows, had been glittering in the
afternoon's sun before them, though they lay many a long league inland.
But the formation of the coast itself had now become plain, and Raoul,
an hour before the sun disappeared, noted his landmarks, by which to
make for the river he intended to enter. The eastern coast of Corsica is
as deficient in bays and harbors as its western is affluent with them;
and this Golo, for which the lugger was shaping her course, would never
have been thought of as a place of shelter under ordinary circumstances.
But Raoul had once anchored in its mouth, and he deemed it the very spot
in which to elude his enemy. It had shoals off its embouchure; and
these, he rightly enough fancied, would induce Captain Cuffe to be wary.

As the evening approached the wind began to decrease in force, and then
the people of the lugger lost all their apprehensions. The spars had all
stood, and Raoul no longer hesitated about trusting his wounded mainmast
with a new yard and sail. Both were got up, and the repairs were
immediately commenced. The superiority of the lugger in sailing was now
so great as to put it out of all question that