I levelled the glass again and uttered an exclamation as I got the lenses to bear upon her. ‘By thunder, Finn! yes, they look to have the scent of us now. See! there goes her gaff topsail?’ Wilfrid caught my words. ‘What are they doing?’ he roared, bursting out in a mad way from his rapt iron-like silence; ‘making sail, d’ye say?’ and he came running up to us with an odd thrusting forward of his head as though straining to determine what was scarce more than a blur to his short sight. He snatched the glass from my hand. ‘Yes,’ he shouted, ‘and there goes her squaresail. By every saint, Finn, there’s an end of my doubts;’ and he closed the glass with a ringing of the tubes as he telescoped them that would have made you think that the thing was in pieces in his hands. ‘Shall I signal her to heave to, your honour?’ exclaimed Finn, speaking with a doubtful eye as if measuring the distance. ‘Ay, at once,’ cried Wilfrid, ‘but’--he cast a look at the gaff end--‘she’ll not see your colours there,’ pointing vehemently. ‘I’ll run ’em up at the fore, Sir Wilfrid; they’ll blow out plain there with the t’gallant halliards let go.’ ‘Do as you will, only you must make her know my meaning,’ cried my cousin, and he went with an impetuous stride right aft and resumed his former sentinel posture. Miss Jennings came timidly up to me. ‘She is the “Shark,” then?’ she said in a low voice. ‘All who know her are agreed, Finn says, saving here and there a doubt about the colour of her boats,’ I answered. She had a sailor’s eye for sea effects, and instantly noticed that the schooner ahead had broadened her show of canvas. ‘Do they suspect who we are?’ she exclaimed, talking as though she were musing. ‘No doubt the “Bride” is recognised, and they will run away if they can.’ She looked at Wilfrid. ‘I do not like to speak to him,’ she exclaimed. ‘He’s killing Hope-Kennedy over and over again,’ said I: ‘his wife is before him too, and he is haranguing her. Bless us, what a wonderful thing human imagination is!’ Up went the signal flags forward in a string of balls, a man tugged, the bunting broke and streamed out in its variety of lustrous colours, every flag stiff as a sheet of horn handpainted, with the light of the sky past it showing through. I caught myself breathing short and hard whilst waiting for what was to follow this summons to the running craft. We had been crushing through it after her with the speed of a steamer, and, supposing her indeed to be the ‘Shark,’ had literally verified Wilfrid’s boast that the ‘Bride’ could sail two feet to her one. But now that she had broadened her wings there was a threat of considerable tediousness in the chase. ‘Do you suppose they have made out what yacht we are?’ I asked Finn.