By taking in so many reefs the lateen had lowered her rate of sailing, and she now followed in their wake, keeping a quarter of a mile to windward.

Talboys lost all patience.  “Who is it, I wonder, that has the insolence to dog us so?” and he looked keenly at Miss Fountain.

She did not think herself bound to reply, and gazed with a superior air of indifference on the sky and the water.

“I will soon know,” said Talboys.

“What does it matter?” inquired Lucy.  “Probably somebody who is wasting his time as we are.”

“The road we are on is as free to him as to us,” suggested the old boatman, with a fine sense of natural justice.  He added, “But if you will take my advice, sir, you will shorten sail, and put her about for home.  It is blowing half a gale of wind, and the sea will be getting up, and that won’t be agreeable for the young lady.”

“Gale of wind?  Nonsense,” said Talboys; “it is a fine breeze.”

“Oh, thank you, sir,” said Lucy to the old man; “I love the sea, but I should not like to be out in a storm.”

The old boatman grinned. “’Storm is a word that an old salt reserves for one of those hurricanes that blow a field of turnips flat, and teeth down your throat.  You can turn round and lean your back against it like a post; and a carrion-crow making for the next parish gets fanned into another county.  That is a storm.”

The old boatman went forward grinning, and he and his boy lowered the mainsail.  Then Talboys at the helm brought the boat’s head round to the wind.  She came down to her bearings directly, which is as much as to say that to Lucy she seemed to be upsetting.

Lucy gave a little scream.  The sail, too, made a report like the crack of a pistol.

“Oh, what is that?” cried Lucy.

“Wind, mum,” replied the boatman, composedly.

“What is that purple line on the water, sir, out there, a long way beyond the other boat?

“Wind, mum.”

“It seems to move.  It is coming this way.”

“Ay, mum, that is a thing that always makes to leeward,” said the old fellow, grinning.  “I’ll take in a couple of reefs before it comes to us.”

Meantime, the moment the lugger lowered her mainsail, the schooner, divining, as it appeared, her intention, did the same, and luffed immediately, and was on the new tack first of the two.

“Ay, my lass,” said the old boatman, “you are smartly handled, no doubt, but your square stern and your try-hanglar sail they will take you to leeward of us pretty soon, do what you can.”

The event seemed to justify this assertion; the little lugger was on her best point of sailing, and in about ten minutes the distance between the two boats was slightly but sensibly diminished.  The lateen, no doubt, observed this, for she began to play the game of short tacks, and hoisted her mainsail, and carried on till she seemed to sail on her beam-ends, to make up, as far as possible, by speed and smartness for what she lost by rig in beating to windward.