e
Spaniards--unaccountable improvement in speed had become so marked that
it could not fail to attract attention; and presently signs became
observable that it was occasioning considerable uneasiness. The
galley's sweeps--forty in number--were suddenly rigged out, and she
assumed the appearance of a gigantic centipede hurrying over the surface
of the sea, her long oars rising and falling swiftly, with a gun-like
flash of sunlight off their wet blades, as they churned the water into
snow-white foam on each side of her.

But a very few minutes sufficed to prove the correctness of my judgment
as to their uselessness under the present circumstances, a very distinct
confusion of movement among the shining blades revealing--what I had
foreseen--that her canvas was driving her too fast through the water for
her oarsmen to keep pace with her. The confusion rapidly became more
pronounced, until every individual oar-blade was rising and falling
independently of all the others, while frequent pauses of movement,
accompanied by a great splashing of water, revealed that the unhappy
oarsmen were busily engaged in the unseamanlike operation of "catching
crabs". As a matter of fact, her sweeps were proving to be a hindrance
rather than a help to her, and we began to overhaul her so fast that we
were soon within point-blank range of her. Tom Hardy had assumed charge
of our Long Tom, and he had gradually worked himself up into such an
uncontrollable condition of fidgety impatience, running his eye along
the sights and then glancing round at me, that it seemed cruel to keep
him thus any longer on the tenter-hooks of suspense, and I, rather
reluctantly, nodded permission to him to fire. The next instant the gun
spoke out, the shock of its discharge jarring the schooner to her keel,
and the shot flew high over the mast-heads of the galley and a little
wide of her.

"I expected as much, Tom," remarked I reprovingly. "You are far too
much excited. Take it coolly, man; take it coolly. That galley must be
effectually disabled, or she will give us the slip to windward and bring
two or three more like herself after us, which I have no desire at all
to see. And I have no desire to take her, for she would be worse than
useless to us, she would be a really dangerous possession. Ah! I
expected as much; down comes her canvas; she is going to try to dodge us
and work out to windward in the wind's eye! Never mind the gun just
now; in with