Being reduced to our old number of four, I saw no use in working ourselves to death, by filling the top-sail, with the certainty the sloop-of-war would make us round-to again.  The Dawn, therefore, remained stationary, wailing the issue with philosophical patience.

“There is no use, Moses, in endeavouring to escape,” I remarked; “we are not strong-handed enough to get sail on the ship before the fellow will be up with us.”

“Ay, and there goes his bunting, and a gun,” answered the mate.  “The white English ensign, a sign the chap is under some admiral, or vice, or rear of the white, while, if I mistake not, the two frigates show blue flags—­if so, ’tis a sign they’re not consorts.”

The glass confirmed this, and we were left to suppose that all three Englishmen did not belong to the same squadron.  At this moment, the state of the game was as follows:—­The Dawn was lying-to, with her fore-course up, main-sail furled, main-top-sail aback, and top-gallant yards on the caps, jib and spanker both set.  The Polisson was flying away on the crests of the seas, close-hauled, evidently disposed to make a lee behind the two frigates to windward, which we took for, and which it is probable she knew to be, French.  The ships to leeward were passing; each other within hail; the one to the eastward tacking immediately after, and coming up in her consort’s wake; both vessels carrying everything that would draw.  The ships to the southward, or the supposed Frenchmen, might then have been two leagues from us, while those to leeward were three.  As for the corvette, her course seemed to lie directly between our masts.  On she came, with everything beautifully trimmed, the water spouting from her hawse-holes, as she rose from a plunge, and foaming under her bows, as if made of a cloud.  Her distance from us was less than a mile.

It was now that the corvette made signals to the ships to windward.  They were answered, but in a way to show the parties did not understand each other.  She then tried her hand with the vessels to leeward, and, notwithstanding the distance, she succeeded better.  I could see these two frigates, or rather the one that led, sending questions and answers to the corvette, although my best glass would hardly enable me to distinguish their ensigns.  I presume that the corvette asked the names of the English vessels, communicated her own, and let the fact be known that the ships to windward were enemies.

A few minutes later, our affairs, as they were connected with the sloop-of-war, came to a crisis.  This ship now came on, close under our lee, losing a little of her way in passing, an expedient probably thought of to give her a little more time to put her questions, and to receive the desired answers.  I observed also, that she let go all her bow-lines, which seemed much to deaden her way, of which there still remained sufficient, notwithstanding, to carry her well clear of us.  The following dialogue then passed, the Englishman asking the questions, of course, that being a privilege expressly appropriated to the public vessel on occasions of this sort: