Chapter 20 - Page 2

glide through the sea; her spanker-boom, not having at all
entangled itself, offering no hindrance. Israel, clinging midway along
the boom, soon found himself divided from the Ariel by a space
impossible to be leaped. Meantime, suspecting foul play, Paul set every
sail; but the stranger, having already the advantage, contrived to make
good her escape, though perseveringly chased by the cheated conqueror.

In the confusion, no eye had observed our hero's spring. But, as the
vessels separated more, an officer of the strange ship spying a man on
the boom, and taking him for one of his own men, demanded what he did
there.

"Clearing the signal halyards, sir," replied Israel, fumbling with the
cord which happened to be dangling near by.

"Well, bear a hand and come in, or you will have a bow-chaser at you
soon," referring to the bow guns of the Ariel.

"Aye, aye, sir," said Israel, and in a moment he sprang to the deck, and
soon found himself mixed in among some two hundred English sailors of a
large letter of marque. At once he perceived that the story of half the
crew being killed was a mere hoax, played off for the sake of making an
escape. Orders were continually being given to pull on this and that
rope, as the ship crowded all sail in flight. To these orders Israel,
with the rest, promptly responded, pulling at the rigging stoutly as the
best of them; though Heaven knows his heart sunk deeper and deeper at
every pull which thus helped once again to widen the gulf between him
and home.

In intervals he considered with himself what to do. Favored by the
obscurity of the night and the number of the crew, and wearing much the
same dress as theirs, it was very easy to pass himself off for one of
them till morning. But daylight would be sure to expose him, unless some
cunning, plan could be hit upon. If discovered for what he was, nothing
short of a prison awaited him upon the ship's arrival in port.

It was a desperate case, only as desperate a remedy could serve. One
thing was sure, he could not hide. Some audacious parade of himself
promised the only hope. Marking that the sailors, not being of the
regular navy, wore no uniform, and perceiving that his jacket was the
only garment on him which bore any distinguishing badge, our adventurer
took it off, and privily dropped it overboard, remaining now in his dark
blue woollen shirt and blue cloth waistcoat.

What the more inspirited Israel to the added step now contemplated, was
the circumstance that the ship was not a Frenchman's or other foreigner,
but her crew, though enemies, spoke the same language that he did.

So very quietly, at last, he goes aloft into the maintop, and sitting
down on an old