," he commanded, and bellowing orders as
he went, he heaved himself down the companion to see them executed. Men
sprang to the ratlines to obey him, and went swarming aloft to let
out the reefs of the topsails; others ran astern to do the like by the
mizzen and soon they had her leaping and plunging through the green
water with every sheet unfurled, racing straight out to sea.

From the poop Sir Oliver watched the Spaniard. He saw her veer a point
or so to starboard, heading straight to intercept them, and he observed
that although this manceuvre brought her fully a point nearer to the
wind than the Swallow, yet, equipped as she was with half as much canvas
again as Captain Leigh's piratical craft, she was gaining steadily upon
them none the less.

The skipper came back to the poop, and stood there moodily watching that
other ship's approach, cursing himself for having sailed into such a
trap, and cursing his mate more fervently still.

Sir Oliver meanwhile took stock of so much of the Swallow's armament as
was visible and wondered what like were those on the main-deck below.
He dropped a question on that score to the captain, dispassionately, as
though he were no more than an indifferently interested spectator, and
with never a thought to his position aboard.

"Should I be racing her afore the Wind if I as properly equipped?"
growled Leigh. "Am I the man to run before a Spaniard? As it is I do no
more than lure her well away from land."

Sir Oliver understood, and was silent thereafter. He observed a bo'sun
and his mates staggering in the waist under loads of cutlasses and small
arms which they stacked in a rack about the mainmast. Then the gunner,
a swarthy, massive fellow, stark to the waist with a faded scarf
tied turban-wise about his head, leapt up the companion to the brass
carronade on the larboard quarter, followed by a couple of his men.

Master Leigh called up the bo'sun, bade him take the wheel, and
dispatched the mate forward to the forecastle, where another gun was
being prepared for action.

Thereafter followed a spell of racing, the Spaniard ever lessening the
distance between them, and the land dropping astern until it was no more
than a hazy line above the shimmering sea. Suddenly from the Spaniard
appeared a little cloud of white smoke, and the boom of a gun followed,
and after it came a splash a cable's length ahead of the Swallow's bows.

Linstock in hand the brawny gunner on the poop stood