“This comes in a bad time, for the steamer should be here before nightfall.”

“That’s true; as she doesn’t seem inclined to run in too close, perhaps she knows it.”

“What was the signal agreed upon?” asked the first speaker of his companion, who was silently regarding the schooner.

“A red flag at the foretopmast head, and there it goes.  Yes, it is here sure enough.”

“How like a witch she looks.”

“They say she will outsail anything between here and Gibraltar, in any wind.”

“What does that mean? she’s going about.”

“Sure enough, and up goes her foresail, they work with a will and are in a hurry.”

“She don’t like the looks of something on the coast,” said the other.

The fact was, while the schooner lay under the easy sail we have described, just off the port of Anapa, the little Russian government steamer that plies between Odessa and the ports along the Circassian coast held by the emperor’s troops, hove in sight, having just come down the Sea of Azoff through the Straits of Yorkcale.  Her dark line of smoke was discovered by those on board the schooner, before she had doubled the headland of Tatman, and it was very plain, that, let the schooner’s purpose be what it might, she desired to avoid all unnecessary observation, and especially that of the steamer.

A single movement of the helm while the mainsail sheet was eased away, and the schooner brought the gentle night breeze that was still setting from the north and east off the Georgian shore, right aft, and quietly hoisting her foresail, the two were set wing and wing, and a sea bird could not have skimmed with a more easy and graceful motion over the deep waters that glanced beneath her hull, than she did now.  If the steamer had desired she might have overhauled the schooner, but it would have taken all night to do it with that leading wind in her favor; and so, after looking towards the clipper craft with her bows for a moment, the steamer again held on her course.

“Too swift of wing for that smoke pipe of yours,” said one of the Circassians who had been watching the evolutions of the two crafts from the shore.

“The steamer has put her helm down and gives it up for it bad job,” said another, as her black bow came once more to look towards the port of Anapa.

“She will be off before night sets in, and we shall have the schooner back again.”

This was in fact the policy of those on board the schooner; for no sooner did she find herself unpursued than she hauled her wind, jibed her foresail to starboard and looked down, towards the coast of Asia Minor, until the moon crept up from behind the mountains of the Caucasus as though it had come from a bath in the Caspian Sea beyond, when the schooner was closer hauled on the other trick, and bore up again for the harbor of Anapa.