shouted a midshipman from a cathead--for everybody
who dared had crowded forward to get an early look at the chase.

There she was, sure enough, wing-and-wing, as before, the dulness of
the lugger's lookouts has never been explained, as a matter of course;
but it was supposed, when all the circumstances came to be known, that
most of her people were asleep, to recover from the recent extraordinary
fatigue, and a night in which all hands had been, kept on deck in
readiness to make sail; the vessel having but some thirty souls in her.
At length the frigate was seen, the weather lighting, and it was not an
instant too soon. The two vessels, at that critical instant, were about
half a mile apart, le Feu-Follet bearing directly off the Proserpine's
weather-bow. In the twinkling of an eye, the former jibed; then she was
seen coming to the wind, losing sufficient ground in doing so to bring
her just in a range with the two weather chase-guns. Cuffe instantly
gave the order to open a fire.

"What the d--l has got into her?" exclaimed the captain; "she topples
like a mock mandarin; she used to be as stiff as a church! What can it
mean, sir?"

The master did not know, but we may say that the lugger was flying
light, too much so for the canvas she carried, for, in such heavy
weather, there was not time to shorten sail. She lurched heavily under
the sea that was now getting up, and, a squall striking her, her lee
guns were completely buried. Just at this moment the Proserpine belched
forth her flame and smoke. The shot could not be followed, and no one
knew where they struck. Four had been fired, when a squall succeeded
that shut in the chase, and of course the firing was suspended. So
severe was this momentary effort of the African gales, hot, drowsy, and
deadening as they are, that the Proserpine started her mizzentop-sail
sheets, and clewed up her main-course, to save the spar. But the tack
was instantly boarded again, and the topsail set. A gleam of sunshine
succeeded, but the lugger had disappeared!

The sun did not remain visible, and that faintly, more than a minute;
still, the eye could range several miles, for thrice that period. After
this the horizon became more limited, but no squall occurred for
quarter of an hour. When the lugger was missed, the Proserpine was
heading up within half a point of the spot at which she was supposed to
be. In a short time she drove past this point, perhaps a hundred fathoms
to leeward