Something of the exhilaration of a real chase came into one with the glad roaring aloft and the saw-like spitting at the cutwater, and the sullen crash of the arching billow repulsed by the cleaving bow; and it was the instinct in me, I suppose, due to my early training and recollection of the long pursuit of more than one polacre and nimble-heeled schooner flush to the hatches with a living ebony cargo that made me send a look sheer over the bows in search of some shining quarry there. There were three or four coasters in a huddle on the weather beam, their outlines sharp, but their substance of a dingy black against the yellowish glare of light over the water that way as though the East were finding reflection in it; and to leeward, a mile off, a full-rigged sailing ship on a bowline bound up Channel, and plunging her round bows with clumsy viciousness into the green hollows with a frequent lift of white water to above the cathead, where it blew in a storm of crystals into the head canvas. ‘Good morning, captain.’ ‘Good morning, sir,’ answered Finn, knuckling his forehead in the old-fashioned style. ‘Nice little breeze of wind, sir.’ ‘Ay, one could pray for nothing better,’ said I, crossing over to him. ‘You’ve got a fine craft here certainly, captain; no stint of beam, and bulwarks stout and tall enough to serve the purpose of a pirate. And how finely she rounds forward to the eyes! Hillo! getting ready with your gun so soon?’ ‘No, sir, only a cleaning of him,’ he answered with a grin. They had removed the tarpaulin, and there stood the long piece, with a couple of seamen hard at work furbishing it up. ‘D’ye think,’ said I, making a step or two towards the rail to bring us out of earshot of the fellow who was standing at the wheel, ‘that Sir Wilfrid really means to let fly at the “Shark” should we overhaul her, if she refuses to heave to?’ ‘I don’t doubt it, sir.’ ‘But how about your crew? Will they be willing, think you, to fire into a vessel that’s a yacht like their own ship, that hails from the same port, and whose people may number amongst them acquaintances--old shipmates of your own men?’ ‘They’ll obey orders, sir,’ said he quietly, with an air of caution in his long face. ‘Suppose it should come to our having to board the “Shark,” captain, and she shows fight--are you going to get your men to hazard their lives in the face of the pacific articles they, I presume, have signed?’