When the first watch of the night was come, sail, was shortened on the ship, and from that moment till the day dawned again, her captain seemed buried in sleep.  With the appearance of the sun, however, he arose, and commanded the canvas to be spread, once more, and every exertion made to drive the vessel forward to her object.

The Coquette reached the Race early in the day, and, shooting through the passage on an ebb-tide, she was off Montauk at noon.  No sooner had the ship drawn past the cape, and reached a point where she felt the breeze and the waves of the Atlantic, than men were sent aloft, and twenty eyes were curiously employed in examining the offing.  Ludlow remembered the promise of the Skimmer to meet him at that spot, and, notwithstanding the motives which the latter might be supposed to have for avoiding the interview, so great was the influence of the free-trader’s manner and character, that the young captain entertained secret expectations the promise would be kept.

“The offing is clear!” said the young captain, in a tone of disappointment, when he lowered his glass; “and yet that rover does not seem a man to hide his head in fear——­”

“Fear—­that is to say, fear of a Frenchman—­and a decent respect for Her Majesty’s cruisers, are very different sorts of things,” returned the master.  “I never got a bandanna, or a bottle of your Cogniac ashore, in my life, that I did not think every man that I passed in the street, could see the spots in the one, or scent the flavor of the other; but then I never supposed this shyness amounted to more than a certain suspicion in my own mind, that other people know when a man is running on an illegal course, I suppose that one of your rectors, who is snugly anchored for life in a good warm living, would call this conscience; but, for my own part, Captain Ludlow, though no great logician in matters of this sort, I have always believed that it was natural concern of mind lest the articles should be seized.  If this ‘Skimmer of the Seas’ comes out to give us another chase in rough water, he is by no means as good a judge of the difference between a large and a small vessel as I had thought him—­and I confess, Sir, I should have more hopes of taking him, were the woman under his bowsprit fairly burnt.”

“The offing is clear!”

“That it is, with a show of the wind holding here at south-half-south.  This bit of water that we have passed, between yon island and the main, is lined with bays; and while we are here looking out for them on the high seas, the cunning varlets may be trading in any one of the fifty good basins that lie between the cape and the place where we lost him.  For aught we know, he may have run westward again in the night-watches, and be at this moment laughing in his sleeve at the manner in which he dodged a cruiser.”

“There is too much truth in what you say, Trysail; for if the Skimmer be now disposed to avoid us, he has certainly the means in his power.”