only from want of firmness that
any trouble ever breaks out when they're on board an English ship. They
need a strict hand over them, that's all."

"All right, Tompkins. Only don't bully them too much, you know!" said
the captain good-humouredly, for he was sufficiently acquainted with the
first mate's pleasant way of ordering the men about to be aware that he
did not err on the side of leniency in exercising his authority, as he
complained that his subordinate officer Tom did.

And thus it happened that when Tom and Charley went below and joined
Captain Harding in his slumbers, the deck was left in sole possession of
Mr Tompkins and the eight Greek sailors, with the suspicious-looking
felucca creeping up rapidly astern, and getting nearer and nearer to the
_Muscadine_ each hour.

A stern-chase is proverbially a long one. And so, although the
light-winged craft that was following the ship sailed three feet to her
two; yet she had such a long start, and the breeze was so fair and dead
aft--which was all in favour of a square-rigged vessel and against a
fore-and-after, that sails best with the wind abeam--that the felucca
was still some five miles off when day broke and the chief mate first
discovered her.

He was not alone in his discovery either, for he noticed that a part of
the watch were looking over the bulwarks at the approaching vessel, and
from their gesticulations and rapid speech in their own language he
thought something was up.

Calling one of the Greek sailors, named in the ship's articles
"Pollydorry," as the captain had put him down, whom he thought he could
better make understand that version of "Lingua Franca" which he
pretended to know, the mate interrogated him as to what he knew of the
felucca, and what was her intention in trying to overhaul them. The
man, however, only shrugged his shoulders, and jabbered something which
he could make nothing of; and as the group then ceased speaking
together, or paying any attention to the stranger, Mr Tompkins put down
their excitable demeanour to their being only foreigners, and their
natural way of going on, so unlike the stolid British seafaring man, who
hardly notices anything except it specially concerns him, and even then
keeps what he thinks to himself.

As it was getting near the time, however, for him to be relieved of his
watch and go off duty--although it still wanted half an hour to four
bells, when it was Tom Aldridge's turn to come on deck