Chapter 12

"The wind blows fair, the vessel feels
The pressure of the rising breeze,
And, swiftest of a thousand keels
She leaps to the careering seas--"

Willis.

Half an hour later, things drew near a crisis. We had been obliged to luff
a little, in order to clear a reef that even Marble admitted lay off
Montauk, while the Leander had kept quite as much away, with a view to
close. This brought the fifty so near us, directly on our weather beam, as
to induce her commander to try the virtue of gunpowder. Her bow-gun was
fired, and its shot, only a twelve-pounder, richochèd until it fairly
passed our fore-foot, distant a hundred yards, making its last leap from
the water precisely in a line with the stem of the Dawn. This was
unequivocal evidence that the game could not last much longer, unless the
space between the two vessels should be sensibly widened. Fortunately, we
now opened Montauk fort, and the option was offered us of doubling that
point, and entering the sound, or of standing oh towards Block Island, and
putting the result on our heels. After a short consultation with Marble, I
decided on the first.

One of the material advantages possessed by a man-of-war in a chase with a
merchant vessel, is in the greater velocity with which her crew can make
or take in sail. I knew that the moment we began to touch our braces,
tacks and sheets, that the Leander would do the same, and that she would
effect her objects in half the time in which we could effect ours.
Nevertheless, the thing was to be done, and we set about the preparations
with care and assiduity. It was a small matter to round in our weather
braces, until the yards were nearly square, but the rigging out of her
studding-sail booms, and the setting of the sails, was a job to occupy the
Dawn's people several minutes. Marble suggested that by edging gradually
away, we should bring the Leander so far on our quarter as to cause the
after-sails to conceal what we were about forward, and that we might steal
a march on our pursuers by adopting this precaution. I thought the
suggestion a good one, and the necessary orders were given to carry
it out.

Any one might be certain that the Englishman's glasses were levelled on us
the whole time. Some address was used, therefore, in managing to get our
yards in without showing the people at the braces. This was done by
keeping off first, and then by leading the ropes as far forward as
possible, and causing the men to haul on them, seated on deck. In this
manner we got our yards nearly square, or as much in as our new course
required, when we sent hands aloft, forward, to get out the lee booms. But
we reckoned without our host. John Bull was not to be caught in that way.
The hands