All this, I say, appeared to pass by me like a vision, or a dream—and it only lasted for a few brief moments—for the piragua, which was steered in a fashion which made me look upon Peralta as a sailor rather than a merchant, flew through the panic-struck squadron, who could no more catch her, than they could the shadow of her tall sails upon the water. Once, and once only, a heavy hook or grapnel, attached to a stout line, was flung by a lusty arm, and lighted in the piragua’s fore-rigging, but even before the rope had tightened, Disco leaped to the spot, his knife flashed, the severed hemp fell back into the sea, and the useless iron tumbled down into the bottom of the canoe. The next moment we were fairly at sea, with the whole of the squadron, save one or two loiterers, behind us. Just then the frigate, who was a couple of miles or so in the offing, fired a heavy cannon, and showed a number of lights, by which we saw swarms of men, rushing from the high carved bulwarks into the rigging, as if they designed to make sail in all haste. ‘Ho! ho! ho!’ laughed Peralta. ‘Here comes the elephant chasing the weasel, and the elephant thinks that the best way to begin the race is to roar a little.’ And, indeed, any attempt of the big ship to follow us would have been just about as hopeless a chase as that to which Peralta had likened it. So, after firing a few more guns, whether with shot in them or not we neither knew nor cared, she stood cautiously in for the bar of the river, sending her boats before her, as we conjectured, to learn the cause of all the uproar. Meantime we had struck a light, keeping the lantern, however, well masked, and then setting the head of the boat about nor-nor-west, that being as near the wind as we could lie, and at the same time make good way through the water, we trimmed the sails neatly, and cried, ‘Northward Ho! for Jamaica.’