In less than an hour, or when we were about four leagues from Sandy Hook Light, the Englishman wore short round, and made sail to cut us off.  By this time, he was just forward of our weather beam, a position that did not enable him to carry studding-sails on both sides; for, had he kept off enough for this, he would have fallen into our wake; while, by edging away to close with us, his after-sails becalmed the forward, and this at the moment when every thing of ours pulled like a team of well-broken cart-horses.  Notwithstanding all this, we had a nervous afternoon’s and night’s work of it.  These old fifties are great travellers off the wind; and more than once I fancied the Leander was going to lay across my bows, as she did athwart those of the Frenchman, at the Nile.  The Dawn, however, was not idle, and, as the wind stood all that day, throughout the night, and was fresher, though more to the southward, than it had hitherto been, next morning, I had the satisfaction of seeing Montauk a little on my lee-bow, at sunrise, while my pursuer was still out of gun-shot on my weather beam.

Marble and I now held a consultation on the subject of the best mode of proceeding.  I was half disposed to let the Leander come up, and send a boat on board us.  What had we to fear?  We were bound to Hamburg, with a cargo, one half of which came from the English, while the other half came from French islands.—­But what of that?  Marble, however, would not listen to such a project.  He affirmed that he was a good pilot in all the sounds, and that it would be better to risk everything, rather than let that fifty close with us.

“Keep the ship away, for Montauk, sir,” exclaimed the mate—­“keep her away for Montauk, and let that chap follow us if he dare!  There’s a reef or two, inside, that I’ll engage to lead him on, should he choose to try the game, and that will cure him of his taste for chasing a Yankee.”

“Will you engage, Moses, to carry the ship over the shoals, if I will do as you desire, and go inside?”

“I’ll carry her into any port, east of Block Island, Cap tain Wallingford.  Though New York born, as it now turns out, I’m ‘down east’ edicated, and have got a ‘coasting pilot’ of my own in my head.”

This settled the matter, and I came to the resolution to stand on.

Chapter XII.

  “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,