Other sails threatened to follow, however, and the frigate was beginning to reel and pitch unpleasantly, although no very heavy sea had yet risen. The sky overhead was all one whiteness, but low down, northeasterly, it was blackening. The wind that came was bitterly cold and cutting, as well as resistlessly strong. On board the _Noank_ all had been made ready for its arrival, and the schooner showed at once the excellence of her modelling. She leaned over, under her closely reefed mainsail, with a mere apron of a jib, and sped away southerly at a rate which her square-rigged pursuer was not at all likely to rival. The captain of the _Clyde_ watched her, as he clung tightly to his lashings at the foot of his mizzenmast, using his telescope as best he could, and making remarks as calmly as if he had been contemplating a horse-race. "I'll say one thing for the Yankees," he said. "We can take lessons from them in light ship building. That's a good one. I wish I had the sailors that are handling her. They turn out some o' the best seamen afloat. Worth twenty apiece of some that were sent to me." He was himself a fine specimen of the race of vikings who have made England the queen of the seas. Nowhere have they ever been more highly appreciated than among their cousins of the New World, and their many achievements are a part of our own ancestral inheritance. For the immediate present, at least, the _Noank_ was safe, so far as the British navy might be concerned. "Guert!" said Up-na-tan, when their watch below brought them together. "Look ole brack man! Coco no like cole wind. Like 'em warm. Up-na-tan no care! Ugh! Want _Noank_ run south. No freeze hard." Poor Coco had indeed been shivering pitifully when he came down from the deck. Not all the experiences he had had during many northern winters had prepared his Ashantee constitution to enjoy a norther. In fact, moreover, there was not an old whale catcher on board who did not now and then congratulate himself that the schooner was steering toward the tropics, and would soon leave behind her that fierce, destructive river of dry, penetrating polar air. CHAPTER VIII. CONTRABAND GOODS. It was greatly to the advantage of the swift _Noank_ that her larger and even swifter enemy was having a battle of its own. The burly commander of the _Clyde_ was compelled to surrender, for the time, to the imperious demands of the polar gale. If it would have been at all safe to have thrown open any of his ports, nothing worth while could have been done with his guns. All that was left for him to do, therefore, was to follow on as best he could in the wake of his American prize. This could be done fairly well, for a while, although he was not gaining upon her. Then, however, another of her natural allies interfered, for darkness came over the sea, and his best hope for catching the _Noank_ went out like an extinguished lantern.