e clouds up from the south-east and with them a puff
into our canvas.

"We may be glad to take in a reef on her before daybreak, Captain," said
the seaman.

"Time, enough till then," said Ludar. "Take all you can now."

We had not long to wait before the _Misericorde_ had way on once more.
Then Ludar called his crew to him and said:

"To-night, be yonder stranger who she may, we run a race. Maiden, you
have the keenest eyes; keep the watch forward. Humphrey, do you and the
poet see to the guns and have all ready in case we need to show our
teeth. Pilot, budge not one point out of the wind; but let her run. We
may slip past in the dark, and then we are light-heeled enough to keep
ahead. Old nurse, I warrant you have loaded a piece before now--we may
need you to do it again. Meanwhile, to bed with you."

Then the race began. The wind behind us freshened fast, so that in an
hour's time our timbers were creaking under stress of canvas. Before
that, the stranger ship, though still a league and a half to larboard,
had caught the breeze and was going too, canvas crowded, with her nose a
point out of the wind into our course. For a long while it seemed as if
we were never to come nearer, so anxious was she to give us no more
advantage than she could help. But towards sundown we may have been a
league asunder running neck and neck.

"She's an English cruiser, Captain," cried the helmsman, "and takes us
for a Spaniard--that's flat."

"Then run as if we were so," said Ludar. "Budge not an inch from your
course even if we scrape her bows as we pass."

So we held on straight down the wind, while the Englishman, closing in
at every mile, held on too; and no one was to say which of us gained an
inch on the other.

The sun tumbled into the sea and the brief twilight grew deeper, while
behind us the wind gathered itself into a squall. Just before daylight
failed, we could perceive the cruiser, not two miles away, leaning
forward on her course, with the Queen's flag on her poop, and a row of
portholes gaping our way. Then we lost her in the dusk.

The poet, who stood near me at the gun, said:

"Night is as a cave of which none seeth the end from the beginning; and
a man hooded feeleth what he before saw. My Hollander, I bargained not
for this when I took passage here. I wish it were to-morrow. Why do we
not, under cover of night, change our course?"

"Because, since that is what our pursuers will expect of