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On the afternoon of May 15th, about the usual hour, Rodney "made a great deal of sail upon the wind." The French, inferring that he was trying to get off, which he meant them to do, approached somewhat closer than on the previous days. The result, had the wind held, would have been a trial of speed and weatherliness.
Yet I had heard of vessels thus modelled for the sake of securing speed, and fitted with a very deep keel to ensure weatherliness, where light draught of water was not a consideration; and it remained to be seen whether the brigantine was a craft of this class.
It was not her speed only although that seemed phenomenal, for she swept past every other craft that was going our way as though they had been at anchor; her weatherliness astounded us quite as much as did her speed, for she looked up a good three points higher than did our square-rigged neighbours, while her oil-smooth wake trailed away astern as straight as a ruled line, with no apparent inclination to trend a hairbreadth towards her weather quarter.
And if the worst came to the worst and he were overtaken in the calm belt, the two ships would at least make a fair start of it again from the line, when he was not without hopes that the extraordinary weatherliness of his own ship would enable him to keep the advantage already won.
Fortunately the schooner's extraordinary weatherliness stood us in good stead, and enabled us to claw off, but for which we should probably have left her bones, if not our own, there.
And, indeed, Leslie had ample cause to be both satisfied and delighted; for this completed skeleton displayed the form of a remarkably handsome boat, possessed of exceptionally fine flowing lines, with a keen entrance and a perfectly clean delivery, yet with a splendidly powerful mid-section, and a depth of hull that promised great weatherliness with an ample sufficiency of freeboard.
Our arrangements being now complete, I had leisure to consider the relative positions of the two junks as regarded ourselves, and it needed but a single glance to assure me that the enemy's vessels, unwieldy and awkward as their model seemed to be, had the advantage of us in the matter of weatherliness; for they looked up a good point and a half higher than the Mercury, and although they made more leeway than ourselves, that point and a half fully compensated for it, the consequence being that the junk astern was gradually working out upon our weather quarter, while the junk on our lee bow was also hawsing up to windward.
The result was more than satisfactory it was a delightful surprise; for not only in her sea-going powers but also in the qualities of speed and weatherliness did the Petrel far exceed the most sanguine anticipations of everybody, including her designer.
For the moment, therefore, he contented himself with testing the respective speed and weatherliness of the two ships.
The skipper was most anxious to thoroughly test the sailing powers of the "Astarte," this being the first time that an opportunity had occurred for so doing; and we accordingly carried on all next day, taxing the toughness of our spars to their utmost limit, and so satisfactory was the result that all hands, fore and aft, felt sanguine that we should meet with very few craft able to beat us either in the matter of speed or weatherliness.
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