The final flash of water was astern of the boat this time; but Greaves’ second dose, leveled with amazing precision, considering the range, coming on top of the wind, the fresh, dark blue shadow of which would now be visible to the fellows astern, satisfied them. With mightily relieved hearts we beheld them pull the boat’s head round for the schooner, and, some minutes before they were got within the shadow of her side, the breeze was rounding our canvas, and the brig was wrinkling the water as she gathered way to the impulse aloft. “Those gentry have not yet arrived at the Englishman’s notion of boarding,” said Greaves. “Your brass gun always speaks loudly. There was a note in the voice of this chap that deceived them. Their own schooner, probably, carried nothing so heavy.” He slapped the breech of the brass piece, sent a contemptuous look at the schooner, and fell to pacing the deck. The breeze slightly freshened and we drove along--considerably off our course, indeed, but that could not be helped: for the blue shadow of the wind was over the schooner; she was heeling to the small, hot gush of the draught; she had picked up her boat and was in pursuit of us. We waited awhile, and then, finding that she held her own--nay, that she was very slowly closing us, indeed--we put our helm up and squared away dead before it, leaving her to follow us as best she might with nothing more that would draw than a square topsail and topgallant sail and a big squaresail. By sunset we had run her into an orange-colored star on the edge of the dark blue sea in the north; yet the cuss was still in chase, and, when the dusk came, we braced up on the larboard tack, with the hope of losing her, and steered southeast. It was dark at eight o’clock, and a strange sort of darkness it was. All the wind was gone, and the sea gleamed like black oil smoking. The atmosphere had that smoky look; spiral folds of gloom seemed to stand up on the ocean, stretching tendrils of vapor athwart the stars and hiding most of them. ’Twas a mere atmospheric effect; yet all this blending of dyes, this thickening and thinning of the dusk, this heavy and stagnant intermingling of shadow around the sea produced the very effect of vapor. Sight was blinded at the distance of a pistol-shot, and the ocean lay as though suffocated under the burden of the hush of the night.