to show her powers.  With her sheets flattened in until her canvas stood like boards, her head looked fully a point to windward of that of the ship, and, what was of equal importance, she even went to windward of the point she looked at, while the Proserpine, if anything, fell off a little, though but a very little, from her own course.  Under all these differences the lugger went through the water six feet to the frigate’s five, beating her in speed almost as much as she did in her weatherly qualities.

The vessel to windward was not the first lugger, by fifty, that Captain Cuffe had assisted in chasing, and he knew the hopelessness of following such a craft under circumstances so directly adapted to its qualities.  Then he was far from certain that he was pursuing an enemy at all, whatever distrust the signals may have excited, since she had clearly come out of a friendly port.  Bastia, too, lay within a few hours’ run, and there was the whole of the east coast of Corsica, abounding with small bays and havens, in which a vessel of that size might take refuge if pressed.  After convincing himself, therefore, by half an hour’s further trial in open sailing under the full force of the breeze, of the fruitlessness of his effort, that experienced officer ordered the Proserpine’s helm put up, the yards squared, and he stood to the northward, apparently shaping his course for Leghorn or the Gulf of Genoa.  When the frigate made this change in her course, the lugger, which had tacked some time previously, was just becoming shut in by the western end of Elba, and she was soon lost to view entirely, with every prospect of her weathering the island altogether, without being obliged to go about again.

It was no more than natural that such a chase should occasion some animation in a place as retired and ordinarily as dull as Porto Ferrajo.  Several of the young idlers of the garrison obtained horses and galloped up among the hills to watch the result; the mountains being pretty well intersected by bridle-paths, though totally without regular roads.  They who remained in the town, as a matter of course, were not disposed to let so favorable a subject for discourse die away immediately, for want of a disposition to gossip on it.  Little else was talked of that day than the menaced attack of the republican frigate, and the escape of the lugger.  Some, indeed, still doubted, for every question has its two sides, and there was just enough of dissent to render the discussions lively and the arguments ingenious.  Among the disputants, Vito Viti acted a prominent part.  Having committed himself so openly by his “vivas” and his public remarks in the port, he felt it due to his own character to justify all he had said, and Raoul Yvard could not have desired a warmer advocate than he had in the podesta.  The worthy magistrate exaggerated the vice-governatore’s knowledge of English, by way of leaving no deficiency in the necessary proofs of the lugger’s national character.