"Sure enough," I replied; "I hope he will let us go without overhauling us. I am not at all amorous of the society of those gentry--quite enough of it in the bay yonder, Toby." The moment she saw us, she made sail towards us, but hove about so soon as she saw the signal, which she answered with a similar flag, and then stood in for the land again. In a minute, the mist once more boiled over her, and she disappeared. It crept slowly on towards where we lay, for it was again nearly calm, although the threatening appearances in the sky and on the water continued to deepen, and was just reaching us, when we heard a cannon-shot from the thickest of it. "Heyday--what does that indicate, Lennox?" "Some signal to the other villains in the cove, sir"--and then, in a low tone as he turned away--"but to me it sounds like a knell." Another gun--another--_and another_--"Some fun going on there at all events," said I. The breeze now freshened, and the fog-bank blew off and vanished; when lo! our spectral friend the Waterwraith re-appeared, but on the other tack this time, about two miles to the westward of us, with a large schooner, that had hitherto been also concealed by the fog, sticking in his skirts, and blazing away at him. In ten minutes they both tacked again. They had now the regular sea-breeze strong from the eastward, and were close-hauled, under all the sail they could carry, on the starboard tack. "Confound it," said Lennox, who was now beside me, "we seem to have dropped into a nest of them--it will be another privateer." "Then why is she firing at the small one?" said I. "Oh, some make-believe manoeuvre," said he. But I had taken a long look, and was by no means of this opinion. The smallest vessel, the schooner we had first seen, would evidently go far to windward of us, but the larger was right in our track; so avoiding her, if we stood on as we were doing, was out of the question. "However, better take our chance with this chap out here, than run back into the lion's mouth," said I. So we kept on our course, having now got the breeze also, and steering large, so as to go a-head of the biggest of the two, unless he stood away to intercept us. We were beginning to get over our fears, and to think he was going to take no notice of us after all, and had brought him end on, when a flash spurted from his bows, and a swirl of white smoke rolled down to leeward. "He has fired at us," said I, as the shot hopped along the water close to us. "Then hoist away our colours," said Lennox; "let us know the worst of it at once."