In the meantime the progress of the cutter was steady and rapid.  She held her way mid-channel, now inclining to the gusts, and now rising again, like the philosopher that bends to the calamities of life to resume his erect attitude as they pass away, but always piling the water beneath her bows in foam.  Although she was under so very short canvas, her velocity was great, and there could not have elapsed ten minutes between the time when her sails were first seen glancing past the trees and bushes in the distance and the moment when she was abreast of the blockhouse.  Cap and Pathfinder leaned forward, as the cutter came beneath their eyrie, eager to get a better view of her deck, when, to the delight of both, Jasper Eau-douce sprang upon his feet and gave three hearty cheers.  Regardless of all risk, Cap leaped upon the rampart of logs and returned the greeting, cheer for cheer.  Happily, the policy of the enemy saved the latter; for they still lay quiet, not a rifle being discharged.  On the other hand, Pathfinder kept in view the useful, utterly disregarding the mere dramatic part of warfare.  The moment he beheld his friend Jasper, he called out to him with stentorian lungs, —­

“Stand by us, lad, and the day’s our own!  Give ’em a grist in yonder bushes, and you’ll put ’em up like partridges.”

Part of this reached Jasper’s ears, but most was borne off to leeward on the wings of the wind.  By the time this was said, the Scud had driven past, and in the next moment she was hid from view by the grove in which the blockhouse was partially concealed.

Two anxious minutes succeeded; but, at the expiration of that brief space, the sails were again gleaming through the trees, Jasper having wore, jibed, and hauled up under the lee of the island on the other tack.  The wind was free enough, as has been already explained, to admit of this manoeuvre; and the cutter, catching the current under her lee bow, was breasted up to her course in a way that showed she would come out to windward of the island again without any difficulty.  This whole evolution was made with the greatest facility, not a sheet being touched, the sails trimming themselves, the rudder alone controlling the admirable machine.  The object appeared to be a reconnoissance.  When, however, the Scud had made the circuit of the entire island, and had again got her weatherly position in the channel by which she had first approached, her helm was put down, and she tacked.  The noise of the mainsail flapping when it filled, loose-reefed as it was, sounded like the report of a gun, and Cap trembled lest the seams should open.

“His Majesty gives good canvas, it must be owned,” muttered the old seaman; “and it must be owned, too, that boy handles his boat as if he were thoroughly bred!  D—–­ me, Master Pathfinder, if I believe, after all that has been reported in the matter, that this Mister Oh-deuce got his trade on this bit of fresh water.”