Round she came in a long smooth curve and steadied on the larboard tack, the same tack as the stranger, who was heading out to sea. The William also wore, since their courses would be much the same until the southern cape was weathered, but she was a dull sailer, and the Java, letting fall her topgallants and crossing her royal yards, left her far behind.
The Java had plenty of right seamen to sail her, that was clear: the royal yards fairly raced aloft.
Jack stepped below for his telescope, and when the rigging was tolerably clear of hands he went up to the crosstrees to view the distant ship. He paused in the maintop, for although according to the purser's scales he had lost four stone he seemed to be heaving a most uncommon weight: obviously his strength had not yet come back, in spite of these days of good eating. However, from the maintop he could see nothing, because of the foretopsail, so after a while he climbed again: the crosstrees at last, and he found that he was in a muck-sweat. 'What a flat I should look, was I to drop down among them like an act of God,' he said, glancing at the remote, crowded quarterdeck, so narrow from this height, flecked with the red coats of the Marines, the white shirts of hurrying foremast hands, blue-coated officers, the parson's black, all sharp in the brilliant sun. There was not much chance of his dropping, however; these airy regions had been his so long that his hands moved as surely as an ape's: without thinking of it, he took up the comfortable position he had learnt as a mastheaded midshipman, and unslung his glass. The Java was lying over with the brisk north-eastern breeze, making something better than nine knots; and as he pulled the telescope to its full length he wondered how long Lambert would keep her under royals. She was somewhat by the head, like all French ships he had ever sailed in, and for his part he would have preferred lower and topmast studdingsails: but that was Lambert's business. He knew how to sail his own ship: and fight her, too.
Ducking to see under the taut arch of the foretopgallant, he fixed the stranger, focused, and stared long and hard. Yes. She was a frigate, of that there was no doubt. She bore on the Java's starboard bow, sailing into the offing, going from her on the same tack, and he could not count her ports, but a minute examination showed him that she carried these ports high - a strong presumption of her being a heavy, stout-built ship. And although she too was under royals she did not lean from the strengthening breeze: another mark of a heavy ship. She was probably sailing about as fast as she could go; yet judging from her broad, turbulent wake, that was not very fast. Java would have the legs of her in a long chase. On the other hand, she had not set her lower weather studdingsails, nor anything in the way of bonnets or sky-scrapers: the Java was not in fact in pursuit of a fleeing ship, but of one that meant to draw her away from the land, away from the William, a possible consort, a possible man-of-war - to draw her far out into the offing, where there was all the sea-room in the world. Jack nodded: it was a sensible move. The man over there handled his ship well.
But so did Lambert. The Java's fore and main studdingsails appeared, aloft and alow; and on his high perch Jack felt the ship respond with a beautiful eager living thrust: she was a fine sea-boat, and not only that, but a very much finer ship altogether than the poor old shattered Guerri?, all paint and putty over her shaky timbers, over-gunned, under-manned... It appeared to him that they were gaining on the chase, and that in perhaps three or four hours they would be within gunshot: and then, if she proved to be an American - and he was intimately convinced she was an American - they would put it to the test. He found that his heart was beating so hard that he could scarcely keep the long glass steady. That was no state for going into action, although he was only a mere passenger: coolness was all. The question was, were they in fact going into action? Was the Java gaining, and if so, by how much? He clapped the glass to, and heaviness forgotten he shot down on deck like a boy to join Chads on the forecastle. The first lieutenant and Babbington were busy with their sextants, measuring the angle subtended by the chase's masthead, leaning right over on the sloping deck: spray from the fine bow-wave swept over them each time the Java pitched, but they had much the same results. The Java was gaining, but .only by a little under a mile in one hour. At this rate, and if the chase spread more canvas, they could not bring her to action much before nightfall. And then again, was she an American at all?
'We must presume she is,' said Chads, 'even if it means losing a spar or two.' He looked anxiously up at the whipping studdingsail-booms.
'Just so,' said Jack. 'And suppose what we hope proves to be the case, may I suggest you give us a pair of guns? We are used to working together.'
'If you would take over the forecastle battery, sir, I should be infinitely obliged, with numbers six and seven for your own. I had to entrust those two to the Marine recruits. Seven kicks a little, but we renewed the breechings last week, and the bolts are sound.'
'Six and seven: very good. I take it that Captain Lambert will manoeuvre to cross her wake and hang upon her starboard quarter,' said Jack. 'So we must get our hand in with the larboard gun first.'
'Why no, sir,' said Chads. 'The Captain was speaking of his plan of action not five minutes ago - the General asked him how we set about these things at sea, lines of approach and so on. The Captain quoted Lord Nelson's 'Never mind manoeuvres, go straight at 'em', declaring that since we had the weathergage, that was exactly what he meant to do - to go straight at 'em, batter 'em yardarm to yardarm for a while, and then board in the smoke.'
Jack was silenced. He could not contradict Lord Nelson, whom he adored, nor could he utter the least criticism of the Java's captain, who had carried a French corvette with a broadside half as heavy again as his own, in just that determined manner. He himself, commanding a ship that moved faster through the water than the chase, would certainly have manoeuvred, playing at long bowls with the enemy, probing him, hitting him on the quarter, endeavouring to rake him, and taking advantage of the leeward attack, with the rising breeze laying the enemy's ports low to the water, perhaps even smothering his fire. On the other hand, in a close engagement the leeward ship often could not see her opponent through the enormous clouds of smoke. Yet clearly this was no time for expressing his views on the subject, above all since the word was being passed for Mr Chads. They walked back to the quarterdeck, and a moment later the private signal broke out at the Java's masthead. No reply. The Spanish and Portuguese signals followed. Still no reply, and conviction grew.
Conviction grew still stronger, doubting voices were silenced, when the stranger took in her studdingsails, hauled her wind and came about, standing north and west on the starboard tack, apparently to cross the Java's bows. The precision of her turn was impressive; so was the long row of gun-ports it revealed: without any question she was a forty-four-gun frigate, tall and stiff.
Captain Lambert put his ship about to keep the weather-gage, and steered a course parallel to the American's. They were so close now that he could force an action in the afternoon, even if the big frigate wished to decline it; but for the moment he chose to bide his time, and the ships sailed side by side, with a great stretch of sea between them.
Jack gathered his Leopards, and they looked to their guns, number six to starboard and seven the other side, just under the overhang of the forecastle: each crew fought a pair of guns except in those few ships with a superabundance of hands, and in the unlikely event of their being engaged on both sides at once the crew ran from one to the other, firing them alternately. The Leopard quickly settled who should be first and second captains Bonden and Babbington - who should be boarders, fireman, sponger and so on; checked the breeching, drew the charges, having little faith in any loading but their own, recharged, ran the guns in and out half a dozen times, and drew breath. Those were the familiar eighteen-pounders, five hundredweight a man, and they offered no problems, though the Leopards did not much care for the way Java's jollies had arranged the swabs and rammers,
