He had divested himself of his huge cloak, as well as of his low slouched hat, and, with a speed which nothing but the most absolute desperation could have enabled him to exert, he rushed onward, beating down before him every obstacle, and bounding over the meadows at a rate that, if he could have continued it for any length of time, would have set pursuit at defiance. “Bravo!” shouted the admiral, “a stern chase is a long chase, and I wish them joy of it—d——e, Jack, did you ever see anybody get along like that?” “Ay, ay, sir.” “You never did, you scoundrel.” “Yes, I did.” “When and where?” “When you ran away off the sound.” The admiral turned nearly blue with anger, but Jack looked perfectly imperturbable, as he added,— “You know you ran away after the French frigates who wouldn’t stay to fight you.” “Ah! that indeed. There he goes, putting on every stitch of canvass, I’ll be bound.” “And there they come,” said Jack, as he pointed to the corner of the wood, and some of the more active of the vampyre’s pursuers showed themselves. It would appear as if the vampyre had been started from some hiding-place in the interior of the wood, and had then thought it expedient altogether to leave that retreat, and make his way to some more secure one across the open country, where there would be more obstacles to his discovery than perseverance could overcome. Probably, then, among the brushwood and trees, for a few moments he had been again lost sight of, until those who were closest upon his track had emerged from among the dense foliage, and saw him scouring across the country at such headlong speed. These were but few, and in their extreme anxiety themselves to capture Varney, whose precipate and terrified flight brought a firm conviction to their minds of his being a vampyre, they did not stop to get much of a reinforcement, but plunged on like greyhounds in his track. “Jack,” said the admiral, “this won’t do. Look at that great lubberly fellow with the queer smock-frock.” “Never saw such a figure-head in my life,” said Jack. “Stop him.” “Ay, ay, sir.” The man was coming on at a prodigious rate, and Jack, with all the deliberation in the world, advanced to meet him; and when they got sufficiently close together, that in a few moments they must encounter each other, Jack made himself into as small a bundle as possible, and presented his shoulder to the advancing countryman in such a way, that he flew off it at a tangent, as if he had run against a brick wall, and after rolling head over heels for some distance, safely deposited himself in a ditch, where he disappeared completely for a few moments from all human observation. “Don’t say I hit you,” said Jack. “Curse yer, what did yer run against me for? Sarves you right. Lubbers as don’t know how to steer, in course runs agin things.” “Bravo,” said the admiral; “there’s another of them.”