did so there was a simultaneous hail from the lookout
aloft and five or six of the hands on deck of "Sail ho!"

"Sail ho! sure enough," exclaimed the skipper and Mr Sennitt, as both
caught sight of the stranger at the same moment. "A frigate! French,
too, as I'm a living sinner," continued the first luff, taking a squint
through his glass at the craft. "Ah! he is as sharp-sighted as we are,"
he went on, with the telescope still at his eye. "Up goes his helm, and
there go the lads aloft to make sail, he's coming down to say `how d'ye
do' to us, sir. And there goes the tricolour up to his peak."

"Hard up with the helm, my man," said Captain Brisac very quietly to the
helmsman. "Turn the hands up, and pack on her, Mr Sennitt; discretion
is the better part of valour with us just now, and our only chance is to
show Johnny Crapaud a clean pair of heels." Our lads flew aloft like
lightning, and away we went staggering to leeward, with stunsails alow
and aloft on the port side, steering a course which would take us pretty
directly up Channel. So smart were the "Scourge" in making sail that
they were all down on deck again, and every inch of our canvas dragging
at us like a cart-horse, before the Frenchman had got his stunsail-booms
fairly rigged out.

As soon as we had got the canvas fairly set, ropes all coiled down, and
the decks generally cleared up, I slipped down into the berth for my
telescope, with which I returned to the deck, and proceeded to make a
deliberate inspection of our unwelcome neighbour.

She was about a mile and a half distant from us, bearing a couple of
points on our weather quarter, and I thought I had never seen a more
beautiful sight than she presented, as she came foaming after us, with
the sun lighting up her snowy canvas and flashing brightly from her
burnished copper as she rose on the crest of the swell, showing her
cutwater half-way down to the keel. Her sails were evidently new--so
new, indeed, that they had scarcely had time to stretch to their proper
dimensions--and her paint looked fresh and clean; these circumstances
impressing the acute Mr Sennitt with the conviction that the craft was
fresh out of the dockyard from an extensive overhaul, or that she was a
new vessel. The beautiful and graceful model of her hull, and the smart
appearance of her spars and rigging, induced him to incline very
strongly to the latter supposition.

It soon became evident that this beautiful craft