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"There's more ways of killing a cat than choking of her with cream. Let's square dead away afore it and set stunsails alow and aloft, both sides. I'll lay my life we run far enough away from the Mermaid afore sunset to dodge her in the dark." "No good," dissented Farmer. "The Mermaid could beat us a couple of knots off the wind in this breeze."
On she came her stunsails set her white sails glittering in the sun skimming like a sea-bird over the waters. She proved to be the Maltese schooner 'Felix, bound for Bremen.
"That shows they have information," said Marah grimly, "otherwise they'd not be looking for us here. Some one had been talking to his wife." He hailed the masthead again. "Have the frigates seen us yet?" For answer, the man took a hurried glance to windward, turned visibly white to the lips, and slid down a rope to the deck. "Bearing down fast, under stunsails," he reported.
I expected as much; down comes her canvas; she is going to try to dodge us and work out to windward in the wind's eye! Never mind the gun just now; in with the stunsails, for your lives, or she will be too quick for us!" What I feared and expected had come to pass.
This was not answered at all; on the contrary, the Frenchman hauled down his lanterns and wore short round, crowding sail at the same moment; whereupon the "Amethyst" also bore up again and Clewline must have had his men aloft all the time, ready for the emergency as she squared away in chase, we saw her stunsails fluttering out to their boom-ends on both sides.
'I've giv' 'em the slip; they thought I were too old for to go to sea, but I'll show 'em thar's plenty of life into me yet; git out all the starboard stunsails and see to it that she's kep' a-movin' night and day, for in sixteen days I expects to walk the pierhead in Liverpool. Well, sure enough, a-movin' she were kep', and I never seen harder carryin's on than I seen that passage; but we never lost a stitch of canvas, 'cause the old man not only knowed how to carry it, but he knowed how to take it off of her when it be to come off, and in a gale of wind he'd 'liven up wonderful, whereas in light weather he'd show his age.
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