ce as
if she were standing still. This time, however, he had no cockle-shell
of a pinnace after him, but a smart paddle-steamer, and one, too, that
could go along well also before the wind, carrying square sails as did
the _Dolphin_ on her foremast and a huge spanker aft. A stern-chase, of
course, is a long chase all the world over, as everybody knows, and ours
was no exception. Still, all the time we gradually overhauled the dhow;
and just about sunset we got within range of a long seven-inch gun,
which we carried forwards. This, Mr Shrapnel, our gunner, trained
right across the slaver's bows, and at the word of command, `Fire!' let
drive with a bang that shook the steamer right down to her kelson and
seemed to stop her way for the moment, sending her back, as it were,
with the recoil.

"The gun was well aimed, the shot pitching up the water some fifty yards
in front of her, but it didn't seem to make any difference to the dhow a
bit, her captain keeping right on with every stitch of his canvas set,
the wide lateen sails bellying out to their full, as we could see, and
the queer-looking craft burying herself in the foam that she churned up
as she dived down into the waves every moment with a plunge, as if she
were going headlong down to the bottom, taking in huge seas over her
cat-heads; for it was blowing more than half a gale at the time, and
even we in our bigger craft found it hard work carrying on as we did
with both wind and steam. And I tell you we were going too! Our
engines were revolving full speed ahead, and our canvas must have helped
us full another five knots, with the wind dead astern as it was, and we
running before it, while, to aid us, there was the usual inshore
current--that runs down the coast of the Mozambique from Cape Delgado to
right opposite Madagascar, where it turns off more in an easterly
direction--carrying us along like a mill-race, some rate of three knots
more. It made the _Dolphin_ quiver and tremble through every timber as
she seemed literally to fly through the water, but it didn't make us
approach the dhow any closer, although we held our own. As the wind got
up more and more, for it was the tail-end of the north-east monsoon, as
I told you, and those blessed monsoons always die out with a brush when
they've got to the end of their tether, the slaver appeared to rise
bodily out of the water and skim along the surface from the top of one
rolling wave on to another--just as yo