The look-outs on board the Scorpion were too alert, sharpened as their sights had been by the promised reward, to let the schooner pass unobserved, and in a few moments the brig was seen to ware ship, and shake a reef out of her topsails, and setting whole courses, the brig ploughing through the waves, now burying her bows in the huge billows, as if she were going to dive to the bottom of the ocean, and then rising on their summits until the bright copper was visible the whole length of her keel, seemed to spurn their support altogether, laboring and rolling heavily through the water, she breasted her way, and in consequence of the greater amount of canvas she was enabled to carry, gained on the Maraposa. Willis watched her for some time, hoping to see her courses, that were distended to their utmost, carried away; but the duck, strong, heavy, and new, did its part manfully, and finding his hope was groundless, he endeavored to make more sail upon the schooner. “Shake the reefs out of the fore-sail.” “Hoist away the halyards.” Commands that were executed as soon as uttered. But hardly had the halyards been belayed ere, with a report like a cannon, the sail split, and flying from the bolt-ropes, sailed to leeward like a wreath of smoke. A new fore-sail was soon bent. The trifling delay gave the Scorpion another advantage, but the sea was so rough that neither vessel could make rapid headway, and it was not until an hour before sunset that the brig was within gun-shot of the schooner. She at once opened upon her with the weather-bow gun, and the ball striking the slaver just forward the main-mast, crashed through her deck, and caused heart-rending and appalling shrieks and yells to ascend from the poor devils it wounded in her hold. Shot followed shot with rapidity from the Scorpion’s bow-guns; and occasionally yawing, she would let fly with her weather-broadside, losing distance, however, every time she put her wheel up. Willis refrained from firing, fearful of diminishing the distance by broaching-too, and kept silently on his course until night, when he could no longer distinguish the brig, and could only make out her position by the flashes of her guns, he suddenly put up his helm, eased off his sheets, and standing off directly before the wind for a few moments, lowered away every thing, leaving nothing to be seen but the schooner’s two tall masts, which were not visible one hundred yards in the dusky light.