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"I really cannot pretend to say," replied Philip, smiling. "Why, there's not one of them in sight. Yes! by Heavens, there is! Look on our lee-beam. I see one now. Well, she must be a capital sailer, at all events: look there, a point abaft the beam. Mercy on me! how stiff she must be to carry such a press of canvass!" Philip had already seen her.
At daylight, the gale having rather increased than shown any symptoms of abating, the captain was giving directions for the foresail to be taken off, when the seaman who was stationed to look out on the lee-gangway, cried out, "A sail on the lee-beam!"
The gale increased the night grew pitchy dark the roaring breakers were on his lee-beam the drifting vessel strikes, rebounds, and strikes again the cry of horror rings through the flapping cordage, and despair is in the eyes of the demon-crew. Helpless they lie amid the wrath of the storm, and the darkened face of Heaven, for the first time, strikes terror on their guilty hearts.
"Why, there they is, Sir Jarvy," answered Galleygo, drawing the curtain from before the state-room window, and allowing the vice-admiral to see the rear of the French line for himself, by turning half round; "and just where we wants 'em. Their leading ship a little abaft our lee-beam, distant one league. That's what I calls satisfactory, now." "Ay, that is a good position, Master Galleygo.
One huge Spaniard was on her weather, another on her lee-beam, while the other was coming up fast astern on her weather quarter. Still Lord Claymore did not despair. He stepped down among the crew and spoke to them. "My lads, never say die while there's life. Let every man and boy of you do your best, and we'll yet give the Dons the slip. Be smart, as if your lives depended on it.
"We are bound to Hamburg," said the mate, "which lies, hereaway, on our lee-beam, and no man has a right to complain of our steering our course. The mist has shut the frigate in again, and, it being very certain he will overhaul us on a bow-line, I advise you, Miles, to lay the yards perfectly square, edge away two points more, and set the weather stun'-sails.
"A sail on the lee-beam, sir!" reported the officer of the watch to the captain, as he held on by a rope with one hand, and touched his hat with the other. "Here, youngster, tell the sentry at the cabin door to give you my deck glass," said Captain M to Merrick, who was one of the midshipmen of the morning watch.
All things were proceeding very satisfactorily in the afternoon, by which time they had got the land to bear well on the lee-beam, and it looked as if they could weather it; when, suddenly, there came on a thick snowstorm, mingled with showers of hail, and the same kind of mist which had risen almost at a precisely similar hour on the previous day again enveloped them in its folds, shutting out all view of the water at even a short distance from the vessel's side.
Ay, here they all come upon us at once! here is another fellow, that pulls like the jolly-boat, coming up on our lee-beam, within hail let us see if he is asleep boat ahoy!" "Flag," answered a third voice from a small, light-rowing boat, which had approached very near the cutter, in a direct line from the cliffs, without being observed.
"Let it fly as it is, unanswered," he replied composedly. "Look where we're dropping him to; in another quarter of an hour we shall have him fairly on our lee-beam, and that too out of gun-shot, unless, as is most likely the case, he's got a long gun; but if he has, we're a small mark to fire at, and we'll soon slip out of range even of that."
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