Mozambique; but we're too full already!"--"Indeed, sir?" said I; but
the schooner's mainboom was jibbing over, and with two or three more
hails, wishing them a good voyage, and so on, away we slipped past
their weather-bow. The Warringford got under weigh at her leisure,
and in an hour or two her topsails were down to leeward of us. On
I cracked with square and studding-sails to the quartering breeze,
till the schooner's light hull jumped to it, and aloft she was all
hung out of a side, like a dairyman's daughter carrying milk; with
the pace she went at I could almost say to an hour when we should
overhaul the chase.
Still, after two or three days of the trade-wind, well out in the
Indian Ocean, and not a spot to be seen, we had got so far up the
Line as to make me sure we had overrun her. Accordingly the schooner
was hauled sharp on a wind to cruise slowly down across what must
be the Indiaman's track, judging as we could to a nicety, with a
knowledge of the weather we had had. For my part I was so certain
of sighting her soon, that I ordered the after-cabins to be set to
rights, seeing a notion had taken hold of me of actually offering
them to Sir Charles Hyde for the voyage to Calcutta--Fancy the
thought! 'Twas too good to be likely; but Violet herself actually
being in that little after-cabin and sleeping in it--the lively
schooner heading away alone for India, and they and Westwood the
sole passengers aboard--why, the idea of it was fit to drive me
crazy with impatience.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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