He saw her veer a point or so to starboard, heading straight to intercept them, and he observed that although this manceuvre brought her fully a point nearer to the wind than the Swallow, yet, equipped as she was with half as much canvas again as Captain Leigh's piratical craft, she was gaining steadily upon them none the less.
The skipper came back to the poop, and stood there moodily watching that other ship's approach, cursing himself for having sailed into such a trap, and cursing his mate more fervently still.
Sir Oliver meanwhile took stock of so much of the Swallow's armament as was visible and wondered what like were those on the main-deck below.
He dropped a question on that score to the captain, dispassionately, as though he were no more than an indifferently interested spectator, and with never a thought to his position aboard.
"Should I be racing her afore the Wind if I as properly equipped ?" growled Leigh.

"Am I the man to run before a Spaniard?
As it is I do no more than lure her well away from land." Sir Oliver understood, and was silent thereafter.

He observed a bo'sun and his mates staggering in the waist under loads of cutlasses and small arms which they stacked in a rack about the mainmast.

Then the gunner, a swarthy, massive fellow, stark to the waist with a faded scarf tied turban-wise about his head, leapt up the companion to the brass carronade on the larboard quarter, followed by a couple of his men.
Master Leigh called up the bo'sun, bade him take the wheel, and dispatched the mate forward to the forecastle, where another gun was being prepared for action.
Thereafter followed a spell of racing, the Spaniard ever lessening the distance between them, and the land dropping astern until it was no more than a hazy line above the shimmering sea.

Suddenly from the Spaniard appeared a little cloud of white smoke, and the boom of a gun followed, and after it came a splash a cable's length ahead of the Swallow's bows.
Linstock in hand the brawny gunner on the poop stood ready to answer them when the word should be given.