“It’s that skylarking son of a gun, Jem Sparkle’s monkey, sir. You, Jem, you’ll never rest till that brute is made shark bait of.” But Jackoo vanished up the stay again, chuckling and grinning in the ghostly radiance, as if he had been the “Spirit of the Lamp.” The light was still there, but a cloud of mist, like a burst of vapour from a steam boiler, came down upon the gale, and flew past, when it disappeared. I followed the white mass as it sailed down the wind; it did not, as it appeared to me, vanish in the darkness, but seemed to remain in sight to leeward, as if checked by a sudden flaw; yet none of our sails were taken aback. A thought flashed on me. I peered still more intensely into the night. I was now certain. “A sail, broad on the lee bow.” The ship was in a buz in a moment. The Captain answered from the quarterdeck--“Thank you, Mr Cringle. How shall we steer?” “Keep her away a couple of points, sir, steady.” “Steady,” sung the man at the helm; and the slow melancholy cadence, although a familiar sound to me, now moaned through the rushing of the wind, and smote upon my heart as if it had been the wailing of a spirit. I turned to the boatswain, who was now standing beside me--“Is that you or Davy Jones steering, Mr Nipper? if you had not been here bodily at my elbow, I could have sworn that was your voice.” When the gunner made the same remark it startled the poor fellow he tried to take it as a joke, but could not. “There may be a laced hammock with a shot in it, for some of us ere morning.” At this moment, to my dismay, the object we were chasing shortened, gradually fell abeam of us, and finally disappeared. “The Flying Dutchman.” “I can’t see her at all now.” “She will be a fore-and-aft-rigged vessel that has tacked, sir,” said the gunner. And sure enough, after a few seconds, I saw the white object lengthen, and draw out again abaft our beam. “The chase has tacked sir,” I sung out; “put the helm down, or she will, go to windward of us.” We tacked also, and time it was we did so, for the rising moon now showed us a large schooner under a crowd of sail. We edged down on her, when finding her manoeuvre detected, she brailed up her flat sails, and bore up before the wind. This was our best point of sailing, and we cracked on, the captain rubbing his hands--“It’s my turn to be the big un this time.” Although blowing a strong north-easter, it was now clear moonlight and we hammered away from bow guns, but whenever a shot told amongst the rigging, the injury was repaired as if by magic. It was evident we had repeatedly hulled her, from the glimmering white streaks along her counter and, across her stern, occasioned by the splintering of the timber, but it seemed to produce no effect.