Any one might be certain that the Englishman's glasses were levelled on us the whole time. Some address was used, therefore, in managing to get our yards in without showing the people at the braces. This was done by keeping off first, and then by leading the ropes as far forward as possible, and causing the men to haul on them, seated on deck. In this manner we got our yards nearly square, or as much in as our new course required, when we sent hands aloft, forward, to get out the lee booms. But we reckoned without our host. John Bull was not to be caught in that way. The hands were hardly in the lee fore rigging, before I saw the fifty falling off to our course, her yards squared, and signs aboard her that she had larboard studding sails as well as ourselves. The change of course had one good effect, however: it brought our pursuer so far on our quarter, that, standing at the capstan, I saw him through the mizen rigging. This took the Dawn completely from under the Leander's broadside, leaving us exposed to merely four or five of her forward guns, should she see fit to use them. Whether the English were reluctant to resort to such very decided means of annoyance, so completely within the American waters, as we were clearly getting to be, or whether they had so much confidence in their speed, as to feel no necessity for firing, I never knew; but they did not have any further recourse to shot. As might have been foreseen, the fifty had her extra canvass spread some time before we could open ours, and I fancied she showed the advantage thus obtained in her rate of sailing. She certainly closed with us, though we closed much faster with the land: still, there was imminent danger of her overhauling us before we could round the point, unless some decided step were promptly taken to avoid it. "On the whole, Mr. Marble," I said, after my mates and myself had taken a long and thoughtful look at the actual state of things--"On the whole, Mr. Marble, it may be well to take in our light sails, haul our wind, and let the man-of-war come up with us. We are honest folk, and there is little risk in his seeing all we have to show him." "Never think of it!" cried the mate. "After this long pull, the fellow will be as savage as a bear with a sore head. He'd not leave a hand on board us, that can take his trick at the wheel; and it's ten chances to one that he would send the ship to Halifax, under some pretence or other, that the sugars are not sweet enough, or that the coffee was grown in a French island, and tastes French. No--no--Captain Wallingford--here's the wind at sou'-sou'-west, and we're heading nothe-east, and-by-nothe-half-nothe already, with that fellow abaft the mizen riggin'; as soon as we get a p'int more to the nor'ard, we'll have him fairly in our wake."