Captain Weaver was carrying out the instructions he had received at Old Harbour Town. He was chasing the _Minorca_. The recovery of Lucy had led to no change in those instructions. Though Captain Acton in his gratitude for the restoration of his child was willing to relinquish the pursuit and to leave the _Minorca_ and the handsome piratical scoundrel who had sailed away with her and Lucy to their fate, he had not revealed his thoughts to Captain Weaver, nor to the Admiral, and the _Aurora_ at this hour of daybreak on a day in June 1805, was steadily stemming in chase of the barque which she was to capture, Captain Weaver did not exactly know how. For the _Aurora_ was unarmed, whilst the _Minorca_ mounted four pieces of artillery, and was in command of a naturally desperate fighting and fearless spirit, one whose neck would certainly be broken by the hangman if he was taken: unless indeed his crew turned upon him, and backed their yards and stopped the ship, that her owner might come by his own, despite Mr Lawrence's levelled pistol or any threats he might make use of in reference to the powder magazine. "But," Captain Weaver had thought to himself on several occasions, "time enough to know what's a-going to happen when we heave the _Minorca_ into view or draw abreast of her, for who's to tell but that we are bound to miss her, in which case we shall receive her at Rio, providing her skipper hasn't got scent of us and shifted his hellum for another port, and then there can be no blazing away of carronades on one side and a trimming of sail to keep clear of shot on the other." Just as the sun rose the Admiral came on deck, and as the old gentleman stepped over the coaming of the sunk door of the deck-house and mounted the two or three steps that carried him on deck, the man on the topgallant yard, with his telescope shooting straight from his eye into the south-west quarter of the sea, bawled: "On deck there! Two sail, a point and a half on the starboard bow." Scarcely had the words been received by the ears on deck, when he shouted: "Two more sail, just astarn of the two first." "What's this going to be?" exclaimed the Admiral to Captain Weaver. Another call from the mast-head, and yet another and another and another in brief intervals of scarce half a minute's duration each; and at last fourteen sail were reported in sight on the starboard bow, sailing large, heading north-east or thereabouts so that the course of the _Aurora_ would bring her into the thick of them. At this moment Captain Acton came on deck. He saw the cloud of sail in an instant, and the Admiral having taken the ship's glass from Captain Weaver's hands, Acton rushed into the deck-house to get his own fine telescope. "A small convoy, sir, I think," said Captain Weaver.