“Each ship must keep her station until the day has fairly dawned.  Should it turn out as I trust it may, that we’ve got le Few-Folly in-shore of us, all we’ll have to do will be to close in upon her and drive her up higher and higher into the Bay.  She will naturally run into shallow water; when we must anchor off, man the boats, send them north and south of her, and let them board her under cover of our fire.  If we find the lugger embayed, we’ll have her as sure as fate.”

“Very prettily conceived, Captain Cuffe; and in a way to be handsomely executed.  But if we should happen to find the heathen outside of us?”

“Then make sail in chase to seaward, each ship acting for the best.  Come, gentlemen, I do not wish to be inhospitable, but the Proserpine must be off.  She has a long road before her; and the winds of this season of the year can barely be counted on for an hour at a time.”

Cuffe being in such a hurry, his guests departed without further ceremony.  As for Sir Frederick, the first thing he did was to order dinner an hour earlier than he had intended, and then to invite his surgeon and marine-officer, two capital pairs of knives and forks, to come and share it with him, after which he sat down to play somewhat villanously on a flute.  Two hours later he gave the necessary orders to his first lieutenant; after which he troubled himself very little about the frigate he commanded.  Lyon, on the other hand, sat down to a very frugal meal alone as soon as he found himself again in his sloop; first ordering certain old sails to be got on deck and to be mended for the eighth or ninth time.

With the Proserpine it was different Her capstan-bars flew round, and one anchor was actually catted by the time her captain appeared on deck.  The other soon followed, the three topsails fell, were sheeted home and hoisted, and sail was set after sail, until the ship went steadily past the low promontory of Ana Capri a cloud of canvas.  Her head was to the westward, inclining a little north; and had there been any one to the southward to watch her movements, as there was not, so far as the eye could see, it would have been supposed that she was standing over toward the coast of Sardinia, most probably with an intention of passing by the Straits of Bonifacio, between that island and Corsica.  The wind being nearly east, and it blowing a good breeze, the progress of the ship was such as promised to fulfil all the expectations of her commander.

As the sun set and darkness diffused itself over the Mediterranean, the lighter steering-sails were taken in and the Proserpine brought the wind abeam, standing south.  One of the last things visible from the decks, besides the mountains of the islands and of the main, the curling smoke of Vesuvius, the blue void above and the bluer sea below, was the speck of the Terpsichore, as that ship followed, as near as might be, in her wake; Sir Frederick and his friends