-line. But between the parallels of 12 deg.
and 22 deg. N. we met with no less than eight ships, the nearest within a
league. We watched them as cats watch mice; making a point to bear away
if they were going our road, or, if they were coming towards us, to
shift our helm--but never very markedly--so as to let them pass us at
the widest possible distance. Some of them showed a colour, but we never
answered their signals. That they were all harmless traders I will not
affirm; but none of them offered to chase us. Yet could I have been sure
of a ship, I should have been glad to speak. My longitude was little
more than guesswork; my latitude not very certain; and my compass was
out. However, I supported my own and the spirits of my little company by
telling them of the early navigators; how Columbus, Candish, Drake,
Schouten and other heroic marine worthies of distant times had navigated
the globe, discovered new worlds, penetrated into the most secret
solitudes of the deep without any notion of longitude and with no better
instruments to take the sun's height than the forestaff and astrolabe.
We were better off than they, and I had not the least doubt, I told
them, of bringing the old schooner to a safe berth off Deal or
Gravesend.

But it happened that we were chased when on the polar verge of the
North-East Trade-wind. It was blowing brisk, the sea breaking in snow
upon the weather bow, the sky overcast with clouds, and the schooner
washing through it under a single-reefed mainsail and whole topsail. It
was noon: I was taking an observation, when Pitt at the tiller sang out
"Sail ho!" and looking, I spied the swelling cloud-like canvas of a
vessel on a line with our starboard cathead. I told Pitt to let the
schooner fall off three points, and with slackened sheets the old _Boca
del Dragon_ hummed through it brilliantly, flinging the foam as far aft
as the gangway. The strange sail rose rapidly, and the lifting of her
hull discovered her to be a line-of-battle ship. We held on as we were,
hoping to escape her notice; but whether she did not like our
appearance, or that there was something in the figure we cut that
excited her curiosity, she, on a sudden, put her helm up and steered a
true course for us.

At the first sight of her I had called Wilkinson and Cromwell on deck,
and I now cried out, "Lads, d'ye see, she's after us. If she catches us
our dream of dollars is over. Lively now, boys, and give her all she can
st