She wore, and crowded sail on the opposite tack, in order
to try her speed with the cruiser; nor was it until the result
sufficiently showed the danger of permitting the other to get any nigher,
that she finally put her helm aweather, and ran off, like a sea-fowl
resting on its wing, with the wind over her taffrail.
The two vessels now presented the spectacle of a stern chase. The
brigantine also opened the folds of all her sails, and there arose a
pyramid of canvas, over the nearly imperceptible hull, that resembled a
fantastic cloud driving above the sea, with a velocity that seemed to
rival the passage of the vapor that floated in the upper air. As equal
skill directed the movements of the two vessels, and the same breeze
pressed upon their sails, it was long before there was any perceptible
difference in their progress. Hour passed after hour, and were it not for
the sheets of white foam that were dashed from the bows of the Coquette,
and the manner in which she even out stripped the caps of the combing
waves, her commander might have fancied his vessel ever in the same spot.
While the ocean presented, on every side, the same monotonous and rolling
picture, there lay the chase, seemingly neither a foot nearer, nor a foot
farther, than when the trial of speed began. A dark line would rise on the
crest of a wave, and then, sinking again, leave, nothing visible, but the
yielding and waving cloud of canvas, that danced along the sea.
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