In this view I stood alone, however, and I must say that when we put to sea without let or hindrance, and were steaming next morning due south before a rattling breeze and with a splendid swell under us, I dismissed the subject as readily as the others and considered our port already made. That opinion lasted for ten days. On the eleventh day, at noon, we sighted a British cruiser on our port quarter. Poor old Joey Castle! He didn't say a word about the Stars and Stripes then. His topic concerned the nether regions. You shivered in your boots when he talked to the engineers. I was on the bridge when the nigger Sam cried up his news of the other ship; and while I was spying her through my glass Captain Castle himself came out of the chart-room and asked me what was there. "Looks like an ugly one, sir," said I; "a cruiser, I should say, of the second class." He took the glass from my hand--I can see him now, fat and florid, and as plainly anxious at heart as a nervous man could be. I thought then of all his boasts the night we left Lorenzo, and I was really a bit sorry for him. "Do you think she means mischief, Mr. Lorimer?" he asked, with the glass still to his eye. I said that he was the best judge of that. "These dirty Britishers have their finger in every pie," he went on, presently. "Well, we'll make 'em look foolish. What the deuce are they doing in the stokehold? Just let me have a word with Nicolson, will you?" His "word" was something to hear. A barge-master who had dropped his dinner overboard might have come up to Joey Castle at his best; but I doubt it. He had the ship doing sixteen knots before one bell in the afternoon watch. She was a Belfast-built mail-boat, with boilers and engines not twelve months old, and a better for the purpose we could not have chartered. By three bells it was patent that the cruiser gained nothing on us. Her smoke burned upon a clear horizon, but her stumpy funnel was no longer to be seen. The captain seemed as pleased as a schoolboy who has won a race--he ordered champagne for our mess and he talked as big as he had done when we sailed from Lorenzo. "Here's to a good pair of heels and hoofs for the Britisher," was his toast. "I'd like to see him stop me, by thunder. There'll be good money for this at Bremerhaven, and more to come afterwards. Fill your glass, Lorimer, and drink to a sharp eye on the next watch. Let him come aboard just for five minutes, and I'll teach him the French language as they speak it out 'Frisco way. It's a wonderful tongue there, Lorimer, a wonderful tongue!"