We all turned in the direction to which the old fellow pointed us, and sure enough, about five or six degrees above the horizon, might be seen a small dark insignificant looking cloud, hanging like a speck upon the azure surface of the sky. Had we not known the quarter-master’s superior experience, the younger portion of our group might have discredited his prophecy. As it was, we were almost incredulous. Yet as we gazed on the little cloud, we noticed that it slowly but steadily increased in size. Our attention, however, was at this moment recalled from the signs to leeward by the renewed demonstrations of an attack on the part of the ninety-four.
The wind, during our short colloquy, I have said, had blown fiercer than ever, and then nearly died away. This partial calm, however, had been of short duration. In a few minutes the breeze was seen ruffling the sea again, from a quarter of the horizon, however, several points to the leeward of its old position. After blowing freshly for a few minutes this gust too ceased. Meantime the enemy had gained little, if anything, upon us, and no doubt fancying he perceived the signs of unsettled weather in the sky, and therefore wishing to bring the chase to a speedy termination, he luffed up once more, and opened a fire on us with his bow guns. It now become a struggle of the most exciting character. Our mainsail had by this time been repaired, and the time lost to the foe in luffing nearly counterbalancing his superior sailing, we were enabled to keep just within long cannon shot of the Englishman, and, by maintaining this distance, to protract our surrender until a chance ball should happen to disable us, or night should set in to favor our escape.
“He gains nothing on us now, I think,” said the skipper, “but his guns are well served. That was truly sent,” he suddenly added, as a ball whistled by within a few feet of his head, and then plunged into the sea some fathoms off.
“And there comes the breeze again,” said the lieutenant, “how the Englishman walks up toward us!”
It was even as he said. The breeze which, during the last five minutes, had been chopping about the horizon, now blowing in fitful gusts, and now dying away into an almost perfect calm, came out, as the lieutenant spoke, from its old quarter, and heeling the tall ninety-four over until his coppers glanced in the sunlight, sent him like an arrow from the string across the deep. We could see the breeze ruffling the sea ahead of the enemy, and keeping provokingly but a few cables’ length in his advance for many minutes before it reached ourselves, and when at length it bellied out our canvass, and we began to forge along, the man-of-war had lessened by one-third the distance that had intervened betwixt us. As if re-inspired by his advantage, the Englishman began to fire on us with rapid and murderous velocity. Ball after ball came whizzing after us, some tearing up the bulwark, some madly splintering the hull, and more than one cutting its terrific passage along our decks. In vain we made the most desperate exertions to increase our speed. The strength of the breeze was a disadvantage against which our comparatively light canvass could not contend. Every moment, we saw, lessened the distance between us and the foe. It seemed madness to contend further. Already the ninety-four was in dreadful proximity. The schooner was becoming terribly cut up in her hull, and it seemed a miracle that her spars had hitherto escaped. If we should be crippled, and we knew not but the next shot might do it, how could we expect any mercy from our foe? Rebels already in the eye of our pursuers we had nothing to hope for if captured. Every one felt this. No one therefore dreamed of a surrender. As the wounded men were carried below, their departing looks were directed frowningly on the enemy,—and the last words of the dying were to conjure their messmates never to give up.