undetected, and so give the Frenchman the slip. We accordingly tacked;
and as soon as we were fairly round, and the sheets, etcetera, coiled
down, I had another look for her. Presently the small dark patch swam
into view, as I carefully swept the horizon at the point where I knew
her to be, and, to my disappointment, it showed much shorter than
before. She also had tacked.

"Umph!" I muttered, "their night-glasses are as good as my own,
apparently."

I began to see a French prison looming in the distance; for, from the
rapidity with which she had tacked, and the manner in which,
notwithstanding our superior weatherliness, she was overhauling us, I
knew that our pursuer must be an exceedingly smart ship, and her skipper
was acting like a man who had all his wits about him.

All our lights were of course most carefully masked--a tarpaulin being
thrown over the cabin skylight, and a seaman's jacket over the binnacle,
the helmsman steering by a star.

We stood on thus for about a couple of hours after tacking, and I was
seriously debating in my mind the possibility of giving the Frenchman
the slip by lowering away all our canvas and then running to leeward
under bare poles, my eyes resting abstractedly upon a brilliant planet
broad upon our weather bow, which was just on the point of dipping below
the horizon, when suddenly the said planet vanished. I took no notice
of this until it as suddenly reappeared in the space of a few seconds.

"Another sail, by all that's complicating!" I ejaculated.

"Another sail! Where away, sir?" exclaimed Hardy, who was standing
between me and the helmsman.

"Just to the southward of that bright planet on the horizon, broad on
our larboard bow," said I, as I levelled my glass. "Ah! there she is.
Another frigate, by the look of her--hull up, too."

"Phew!" whistled Hardy; "that's rather awk'ard; she may pick us out any
minute. But perhaps she's English, sir. You don't often see two French
ships so close together as this here. Can you see her pretty plain,
sir?"

"Not very," I replied. "But I fancy there's an English look about her."

"Let _me_ take a squint at her, sir."

I handed him over the glass, and he took a good long look at her.
Suddenly he handed the glass back to me.

"She's English, sir! I'll take my oath of it!" he exclaimed. "She's
the `Amethyst,' that's what she is. I knows her by the way her fore-
topmast and topgallant-mast is looking over her bows.