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Updated: June 9, 2025
His crew sullenly tailed on to the halyards, and the strange, outlandish sail, lateen in rig and dyed a warm brown, rose in the air. We were sailing on the wind, and when Yellow Handkerchief flattened down the sheet the junk forged ahead and the tow-line went slack. Fast as the Reindeer could sail, the junk outsailed her; and to avoid running her down I hauled a little closer on the wind.
However, we got the top-gallant-sails down, with most of the stay-sails, and the mizen-topsail aback; but finding we still outsailed him, I had no other method left but that of sheering across his hawse, first on one bow, then on the other, raking him as we crossed, always having in view the retarding his way, by obliging him either to receive us athwart his bowsprit, in which case we should have turned his head off shore, or to sheer as we did.
The master of the Montauk had a proper relish for his lawful gains as well as another, but he was vain-glorious on the subject of his countrymen, principally because he found that the packets outsailed all other merchant-ships, and fiercely proud of any quality that others were disposed to deny them.
It was here my lord was walking when I arrived; indeed, it had become his chief place of frequentation, and his mind was now filled with farming. I burst in upon him breathless, and gave him my news: which was indeed no news at all, several ships having outsailed the NONESUCH in the interval.
In one of the rooms above the pillars he met another captain of his who had arrived the day before at New York itself. This captain, a New England man, Eliphalet Simmons, had brought his schooner from the Mediterranean, and he told in a manner as brief and dry as his own log how he had outsailed one Barbary corsair by day, and by changing his course had tricked another in the night.
William ordered a sailor to the mast-head to report on what he could see. "I see nothing but the water and the sky," came the lookout's cry from above. "We have outsailed them; we must lay to," said the duke. Breakfast was served, with warm spiced wine, to keep the crew in good heart. After it was over the sailor was again sent aloft. "I can see four ships, low down in the offing," he proclaimed.
A moment after, our decks were invaded by men, brown and ragged, leaping down from the bulwarks one after the other. Of course, there had been no resistance on our part. We were outsailed, and at the first ferocious hail the halyards had been let go by the run, and all our crew had bolted aloft.
As darkness settled down on the ocean, we could just see the vessel ahead. We kept on in her wake. As we much outsailed her, we quickly stole up after her, till we could make out the dark figures of her crew, as they stood on her deck, wondering, probably, what we could be. Not a shot was fired no words were exchanged between the two vessels.
The first did not like to retreat, after Neb had so clearly demonstrated it was no great matter to walk on the boom; and the latter, soured by the manner in which we had outsailed him, and fancying Andrew had deserted to get on board a faster vessel, resented the whole by sheering away from us to the distance of a hundred yards.
My own pinnace arrived in sight of Funchal two mornings later, and a little after sunrise. We had outsailed the Englishman, as I promised, and lay off-and-on for more than two hours before he came up with us.
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