remarkably acute. Indeed, I perceive a sail a great way off - there, directly beyond the prow. But perhaps you have noticed it.'
'Mr Grimmond was good enough to point it out in the morning watch. She is your merchantman, though rather a queer one; and I am happy to tell you we are gaining on her at last. She went away very quick, to begin with.'
'So that is why you are sailing so fast, with such a quantity of sails.'
'Many a stitch saves time,' said Jack. 'But I doubt we hold on to our royals much longer.'
'The speed is quite exhilarating,' said Stephen. 'Do not you find the speed lift your heart, Mr Grimmond? See how the grey billow rises - we part it - white foam flies down our side! The brave boat, she would cut a slender oat straw with the excellence of her going. I could watch it for ever, although breakfast is going cold in the cabin. I say, although my coffee grows chill, Captain Aubrey.'
'I am with you this minute,' cried Jack: and so he was, for the space of a dish of burgoo and half a dozen fried eggs with a due proportion of bacon, toast and marmalade, Gothenburg and Carlscrona having done them so proud. But he carried his last cup of coffee on deck.
He had chased for a fortune before now, but he had not chased with so great an urgency in his heart: from a merely personal point of view, he had undertaken to do a very difficult thing and he must bring it off; but very much more than that, he fully understood the importance of the task in hand, the capital importance of Grimsholm. Nothing would prevent Stephen from making the attempt: nor should it. Jack had the greatest confidence in his powers; yet Stephen's danger must be far less if he were set down on the island before the French officers arrived, perhaps to reverse the whole situation. The Frenchmen had reached Hollenstein on Tuesday, and if they took passage in such a flier as the Minnie they might be in Grimsholm very, very soon indeed. It was in fact by no means impossible that they were aboard her this minute: her course would agree perfectly with such a voyage.
His officers, or most of them, were competent; but they had nothing like his experience in driving a ship, in getting the last ounce of thrust out of the breeze. And as the morning wore on this proved a tricky breeze into the bargain, sometimes coming in gusts strong enough to endanger her topgallants if not the upper masts themselves. A tricky opponent, too; the Minnie, put to her shifts, tried every change of helm to probe the Ariel's best point of sailing, every combination of sails; Jack responded to all of these, and to every variation in the wind - studdingsails flashed out aboard the sloop, studdingsails aloft and alow on either side as occasion served, bonnets, drabblers; and just before they parted so they were taken in. There was an atmosphere of pleasurable tension and excitement in the Ariel; the hands jumped to their work; they plied the hoses in the tops, wetting the sails for a slightly greater thrust with a jet that reached the yard, and they whipped buckets up to the crosstrees to soak the topgallants with a splendid zeal; and as often as not they were ready at the sheets or halliards with an intelligent anticipation before the order was given. The gain was slight, sometimes no more than a cable's length in an hour, but it was certain. The chase had been hull-up since the middle of the forenoon watch.
By the time of the noon-day observation the Minnie had proved to her own satisfaction that she lost least by putting directly before the wind: and so she sailed, under a noble pyramid of canvas, starting her water over the side and tossing her guns after it, fourteen splashes that lightened her by as many tons.
'Shall you come to dinner?' asked Stephen, two hours later. 'The steward is in a great taking, and declares the sucking-pig will be spoilt.'
'No,' said Jack. 'Do you see his save-alls? The damned thing about chasing in the Baltic Is that they nearly always have better gear - best Riga sailcloth, and such hemp for their cordage - and they can crack on when we dare not. That Dane needs watching. I shall take a bite on deck. A damned good seaman.'
'Will he succeed in running clear, do you suppose?'
'I hope not, I am sure. At the present rate of sailing, and if nothing carries away, we should be up with her a little after sunset; but this is a cross-grained breeze, and the more it slackens the less we gain. The Minnie is going very well, and I believe she would be happiest in very light airs; she swims high, as you see, and I am pretty sure she has been new-coppered: all the officers agree that she has never shown suph a turn of speed. She would be the very thing for the Admiral. He is in great need of avisoes.'
'You are confident of taking her, I find.'
'Oh, I should never say anything as unlucky as that. I should never count the bear's skin before it is hatched: oh no. I only mean that were she taken she might be bought into the service. There is a fair chance, a very fair chance; but above all I hope to come up with her before night sets in: this is the dark of the moon, and there will be precious little starshine.'
The long, long afternoon, and still they ran. In spite of their increased numbers the Ariel's crew were growing jaded with the incessant shifting of the upper sails and the pumping: but it was just as bad or even worse aboard the chase, reflected Jack; and in any case he had now settled upon the best trim - naked mizen, both mainsheets aft, foretopmast scandalized, forecourse in the brails, all the fore studdingsails setting beautifully and the bowsprit fully clothed - and now the hands should have a rest. What he really feared was the rising glass and the falling of the wind, which would certainly favour the lighter Minnie; not that in his deepest, least-avowed conviction he had any doubt of overhauling her sooner or later, even after a gust had blown the main-royal out of its bolt-rope. But sooner was so infinitely important, he reflected, looking angrily at the Minnie's unyielding canvas as his own flimsy, worn-out Admiralty number eight raced aloft to replace the streaming sail.
The true cold fear, the doubt of total failure, did not come to him until much later, when the setting sun began to swallow the breeze and the Minnie drew perceptibly ahead. She had been within very long gunshot this last hour and he had cleared away the bow-chasers long since; but at no time had he been willing to maul a ship that he would have to use, and now there was a likelihood that gunfire would stun the remaining wind. Yet it might be the right solution; for if the Minnie gained like this, and if the breeze kept light and tnue, she might waft into Grimsholm before him - the island was directly in her path, and by now it was no great way off: a night's sail, perhaps.
Having ordered the perilous expedient of a skysail on the main - perilous, because the Ariel's royal-mast had been sprung when the sail blew out - he turned the question over in his mind. The little quarterdeck was crowded, all the officers and young gentlemen having been there with scarcely a break since the beginning of the chase, but if they spoke at all it was in low voices: now they were all silent, waiting for what would happen when the skysail was sheeted home. The only sound that reached Jack in his holy area of deck by the starboard rail was the conversation between Dr Maturin and Jagiello: the significance of the skysail escaped them entirely, and they talked away with the freedom of perfect ignorance.
'Pray, Mr Jagiello,' said Stephen, 'what is the coast we see? Would it be part of Courland, or perhaps of Pomerania, or am I much astray?'
'I am totally in the sea,' said Jagiello cheerfully. 'It might be anywhere. All this part of the Baltic coast is much
