I looked aloft, the schooner was almost on her broadside, the sea pouring over and over us in great curling volumes of blinding spray, flashing up high into the rigging, and drenching the surging, tearing canvas. This lasted but for a moment. There was a lull, the schooner righted in the water, plunged heavily at one or two seas, and then, although carrying a fearful press of sail, shot gaily away to windward. We looked astern. The Spaniard had been utterly discomfited by our manœuvre. After diverging from her course just enough, as she thought, to save us from being run down, she had been obliged to keep before the wind, being afraid, with all her sail, to try the desperate experiment of luffing up, and was now a good mile to leeward, her crew busily employed in getting in all her light canvas, evidently with the intent of following up the chase. ‘Now, boys!’ called out the captain—‘we have not shaken off the Don yet. He has had a taste of our quality, but he will be after us again. So while he is amusing himself to leeward yonder, let us get in a reef or so, the schooner will make better way through the water than when she is dragged down by too great a show of canvas.’ So presently the Will-o’-the-Wisp’ was under suitable sail, working hard to windward. Captain Jem was right in saying that the Spaniard meant not to give up his prey after one baffled swoop, and in a brief space he was close hauled upon the same tack with ourselves, careening down to the wind, until we sometimes expected to see him turn over bodily. It was lucky for us, that, heeling over so much, he could not bring his guns to bear upon the schooner. Once or twice he fired a cannon, but the ball must have passed far above us. Our own pieces were too small for us to return the compliment, across a mile of sea, with any chance of hard hitting; besides, it was our cue to trust rather to our legs than our teeth, and to mind our canvas rather than our guns. All that long and anxious day did the Spaniard stick to our skirts. Had the breeze been lighter, we would have left him hand over hand, but the strong wind, and great tumbling seas, often bore us bodily to leeward, while the Spaniard burst through and through them with mighty plunges. Such a wind and sea, I repeat, could not but be of great advantage to the bigger and heavier ship. Thus it came to pass that when the sun touched the western waves, the Spaniard still held his position about a mile to leeward of the schooner. We had run more than one hundred miles since we hauled our wind, and still for all we could see, we had neither lost nor gained an inch. The night came on, but the wind still howled unabatedly over the far-spreading ridges of angry water. There was no moon, and great patches of dusky clouds went scudding by between the ocean and the stars.