a sufficient time had elapsed, the Holy Michael tacked, and came out of the bay, crossing the wake of the Terpsichore just beyond gunshot.  Of course, this manoeuvre was seen from the frigate; and the padrone of the felucca tore his hair, threw himself on the quarter-deck, and played many other desperate antics, in the indulgence of his despair, or to excite sympathy:  but all in vain; the lieutenant was obstinate, refusing to alter tack or sheet to chase a miserable felucca, with so glorious an object in full view before him as the celebrated lugger of Raoul Yvard.  As a matter of course, Ithuel passed out to sea unmolested; and it may as well be said here that in due time he reached Marseilles in safety, where the felucca was sold, and the Granite-seaman disappeared for a season.  There will be occasion to speak of him only once again in this legend.

The trial of speed must soon have satisfied Pintard that he had little to apprehend from his pursuers, even with the breeze there was.  But circumstances favored the lugger.  The wind hauled materially to the northward, and before the sun set it enabled the French to run off wing-and-wing, still edging from the land.  It now began to blow so heavily as to compel the ships to reduce their light canvas.  Some time before the night set in, both frigates and the sloop were under maintopgallant-sails only, with topmast and lower studding-sails on each side.  Le Feu-Follet made no change.  Her jigger had been taken in, as soon as she kept dead away, and then she dashed ahead, under her two enormous lugs, confident in their powers of endurance.  The night was not very dark; but it promised to carry her beyond the vision of her pursuers even before eight bells, did the present difference in sailing continue.

A stern chase is proverbially a long chase.  For one fast vessel to outsail another a single mile in an hour, is a great superiority; and even in such circumstances, many hours must elapse ere one loses sight of the other by day.  The three English ships held way together surprisingly, the Proserpine leading a little; while le Feu-Follet might possibly have found herself, at the end of a six hours’ chase, some four miles in advance of her, three of which she had gained since keeping off, wing-and-wing.  The lightness of the little craft essentially aided her.  The canvas had less weight to drag after it; and Pintard observed that the hull seemed to skim the waves, as soon as the sharp stem had divided them, and the water took the bearings of the vessel.  Hour after hour did he sit on the bowsprit, watching her progress; a crest of foam scarce appearing ahead, before it was glittering under the lugger’s bottom.  Occasionally a pursuing sea cast the stern upward, as if about to throw it in advance of the bows; but le Feu-Follet was too much accustomed to this treatment to be disturbed, and she ever rose on the billow, like a bubble, and then the glancing arrow scarce surpassed the speed with which she hastened forward, as if to recover lost time.