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Updated: June 2, 2025
Yet the little craft was making splendid weather of it, riding the mountainous seas as light and dry as a gull, looking well up into the wind, and fore-reaching at the rate of fully three knots in the hour.
It soon became apparent that we were gaining upon the brig weathering and fore-reaching upon her at the same time; and as it was now broad daylight, I sent the men to quarters, hoisted our colours, and fired a shotted gun to windward as an invitation to her to heave-to; but of this she took no notice whatever.
Now if the countrymen of Monnsheer Ler Quaw had been aboard of her, they would have just struck her ashore on some of them small islands; but we run along the land until we found her dead to leeward off the mountains of Pico, and damme if I know to this day how we got there whether we jumped over the island or hauled round it; but there we was, and there we lay, under easy sail, fore-reaching first upon one tack and then upon tother, so as to poke her nose out now and then and take a look to windard till the gale blowed its pipe out.
Even now, after forty years of driving, she was still the same old Rattler, fore-reaching in the same marvellous manner that compelled sailors to see in order to believe and that punctuated many an angry discussion with words and blows on the beaches of all the ports from Valparaiso to Manila Bay.
The bearings of the chase were promptly taken by Mr Southcott, the master; and a single hour sufficed to show that we were not only fore-reaching, but also weathering upon her.
I'd lay ten guineas that Donovan's guns won't go off, if he tries them. Ah, I thought so a fizz, and a stink trust an Irishman." For this gallant lieutenant, slanting toward the bows of the flying bilander, which he had no hope of fore-reaching, trained his long swivel-gun upon her, and let go or rather tried to let go at her.
Conned by Willoughby, who was acting master, the lively little Wasp swept round into the wind, fore-reaching magnificently in stays, and then paying smartly off on the starboard tack; and as she did so our three starboard pop-guns barked out, one after the other, and I saw the splinters fly white as the shot struck, close together, about half-way between her starboard hawse-pipe and her cathead, just at the precise moment when she was dead end-on to us.
The helm was put down, the head sheets started, and away into the wind shot the Molly Swash, fore-reaching famously in stays, and, of course, gaining so much on her true course. In a minute she was round, and filled on the other tack. Spike was now so near the land, that he could perceive the tide was beginning to aid him, and that his weatherly set was getting to be considerable.
That done, I set the stranger by compass, and for the first hour or so I thought we were holding our own; but by sunset I could see a great deal too plainly for my own comfort that the brig was both weathering and fore-reaching upon us.
Already, before his first skates are bought, before he has seen the coin that buys them, he is dashing and wheeling with his fellows, a leader of the flying train. That early fore-reaching is a picture of our entire activity. "Care is taken," said Goethe, "that the trees do not grow into the sky"; but man is that tree which must outgrow the sky and lift its top into finer air and sunshine.
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