of her size sailing the trades, she was soon carrying on her deck her
full allowance of loose water. Amidships, when she lay quietly to
anchor, a long-armed man could lean over her rail and all but touch his
fingers in the sea. Now, with the wind beam, over her lee rail amidships
the heavy seas mounted. On the high quarter-deck we had only to hang
onto the weather-rail, but the men stationed amidships had to watch
sharp to keep from being swept overboard.

She was long and lean. It was her depth, and not her beam, which had
held the _Bess_ from capsizing in many a blow. Ten years Captain Blaise
had had her, and in those ten years, whether in sport or need, he had
not spared her. She was long and lean, and as loose forward as an old
market basket.

Loose and lean and low, she was wiggling like a black snake through the
white-topped seas. We had men in our foretop looking for the guard-ship,
and because they knew almost exactly where to look for her, we saw her
in time and swung the _Bess_ inside her, yet closer to the breakers. Her
big bulk piled toward us, her great sails reached up in clouds--shadows
of clouds. Past our bow, past our waist, past our quarter. We could pick
the painted ports and the protruding black muzzles of her port battery
as she passed, a huge shapeless shadow racing one way, and we going the
other way like some long, sinuous, black devil of a creature streaking
through a white-bedded darkness.

We were by before they were alive to it. A voice, another voice, a
hundred voices, and then we saw her green sidelight swing in a great
arc; but long before then we were away on the other tack, and so when
her broadside belched (and there was metal sufficient to blow us out of
water), we were half a mile away and leaping like a black hound to the