ng-sails on each
side. Le Feu-Follet made no change. Her jigger had been taken in, as
soon as she kept dead away, and then she dashed ahead, under her two
enormous lugs, confident in their powers of endurance. The night was not
very dark; but it promised to carry her beyond the vision of her
pursuers even before eight bells, did the present difference in
sailing continue.

A stern chase is proverbially a long chase. For one fast vessel to
outsail another a single mile in an hour, is a great superiority; and
even in such circumstances, many hours must elapse ere one loses sight
of the other by day. The three English ships held way together
surprisingly, the Proserpine leading a little; while le Feu-Follet might
possibly have found herself, at the end of a six hours' chase, some four
miles in advance of her, three of which she had gained since keeping
off, wing-and-wing. The lightness of the little craft essentially aided
her. The canvas had less weight to drag after it; and Pintard observed
that the hull seemed to skim the waves, as soon as the sharp stem had
divided them, and the water took the bearings of the vessel. Hour after
hour did he sit on the bowsprit, watching her progress; a crest of foam
scarce appearing ahead, before it was glittering under the lugger's
bottom. Occasionally a pursuing sea cast the stern upward, as if about
to throw it in advance of the bows; but le Feu-Follet was too much
accustomed to this treatment to be disturbed, and she ever rose on the
billow, like a bubble, and then the glancing arrow scarce surpassed the
speed with which she hastened forward, as if to recover lost time.

Cuffe did not quit the deck until the bell struck two, in the middle
watch. This made it one o'clock. Yelverton and the master kept the
watches between them, but the captain was always near with his advice
and orders.

"That craft seems faster when she gets her sails wing-and-wing than she
is even close-hauled, it seems to me, Yelverton," observed Cuffe, after
taking a long look at the chase with a night-glass; "I begin to be
afraid we shall lose her. Neither of the other ships does anything to
help us. Here we are all three, dead in her wake, following each other
like so many old maids going to church of a Sunday morning."

"It _would_ have been better, Captain Cuffe, had the Ringdove kept more
to the westward, and the frigate further east. Fast as the lugger is
with her wings spread, she's faster with them jam