The wind behind us freshened fast, so that in an hour's time our timbers were creaking under stress of canvas.

Before that, the stranger ship, though still a league and a half to larboard, had caught the breeze and was going too, canvas crowded, with her nose a point out of the wind into our course.

For a long while it seemed as if we were never to come nearer, so anxious was she to give us no more advantage than she could help.

But towards sundown we may have been a league asunder running neck and neck.
"She's an English cruiser, Captain," cried the helmsman, "and takes us for a Spaniard--that's flat." "Then run as if we were so," said Ludar.

"Budge not an inch from your course even if we scrape her bows as we pass." So we held on straight down the wind, while the Englishman, closing in at every mile, held on too; and no one was to say which of us gained an inch on the other.
The sun tumbled into the sea and the brief twilight grew deeper, while behind us the wind gathered itself into a squall.