All this time the little Wave was carrying to it gallantly, her jib-boom bending like whalebone, and her long slender topmasts whipping about like a couple of fishing-rods, as she thrashed at it, sending the spray flashing over her mastheads at every pitch; but notwithstanding her weatherly qualities, the heavy cross sea, as she drove into it, headed her off bodily, and she could not prevent the Gleam from creeping up on her weather quarter, where she peppered away from her long 24-pounder, throwing the shot over and over us. To tack, therefore, would have been to run into the lion’s mouth, and to bear up was equally hopeless, as the corvette, going free, would have chased her under water; the only chance remaining was to stand on, and trust to the breeze taking off, and try to weather the ship, now about three miles distant on our lee bow, braced sharp up on the opposite tack, and evidently quite aware of our game. As the corvette and the Wave neared each other, he threw a shot at us from the boat gun on his topgallant forecastle, as if to ascertain beyond all doubt the extent of our insanity, and whether we were serious in our attempt to weather him and escape. Obed held right on his course, like grim Death. Another bullet whistled over our mastheads, and, with the aid of the glass, I could see by the twinkling of feet, and here and there a busy peering face through the ports, that the crew were at quarters fore and aft, while fourteen marines or so were all ready rigged on the poop, and the nettings were bristling through the whole length of the ship, with fifty or sixty small-arm men. All this I took care to communicate to Obediah. “I say, my good friend, I see little to laugh at in all this. If you do go to windward of him at all, which I greatly doubt, you will have to cross his fore-foot within pistol-shot at the farthest, and then you will have to rasp along his whole broadside of great and small, and they are right well prepared and ready for you, that I can tell you; the skipper of that ship has had some dedication, I guess, in the war on your coast, for he seems up to your tricks, and I don’t doubt but he will tip you the stem, if need be, with as little compunction as I would kill a cockroach, devil confound the whole breed! There,--I see his marines and small-arm men handling their firelocks, as thick as sparrows under the lee of a hedge in a snow-storm, and the people are training the bull-dogs fore and aft. Why, this is downright, stark staring lunacy, Obed; we shall be smashed like an eggshell, and all hands of us whipped off to Davy, from your cursed foolhardiness.” I had made several pauses in my address, expecting an answer, but Obed was mute as a stone. At length I took the glass from my eye, and turned round to look at him, startled by his silence.