Here the topman closed his soliloquy, in order to agitate the tobacco again, it being impossible to conduct the process of chewing and talking at one and the same time.

“What of the stranger?” demanded the Rover, a little impatiently.

“It’s no church, that’s certain, your Honour,” said Fid, very decidedly.

“Has he signals flying?”

“He may be speaking with his flags, but it needs a better scholar than Richard Fid to know what he would say.  To my eye, there are three new cloths in his main-top-gallant-royal, but no bunting abroad.”

“The man is happy in having so good a sail.  Mr Wilder, do you too see the darker cloths in question?”

“There is certainly something which might be taken for canvas newer than the rest.  I believe I first mistook the same, as the sun fell brightest on the sail, for the signals I named.”

“Then we are not seen, and may lie quiet for a while, though we enjoy the advantage of measuring the stranger, foot by foot—­even to the new cloths in his royal!”

The Rover spoke in a tone that was strangely divided between sarcasm and thought.  He then made an impatient gesture to the seamen to quit the poop.  When they were alone, he turned to his silent and respectful officers, continuing, in a manner that was grave, while it was conciliatory,——­

“Gentlemen,” he said, “our idle time is past, and fortune has at length brought activity into our track.  Whether the ship in sight be of just seven hundred and fifty tons, is more than I can pretend to pronounce, but something there is which any seaman may know.  But the squareness of her upper-yards, the symmetry with which they are trimmed, and the press of canvass she bears on the wind, I pronounce her to be a vessel of war.  Do any differ from my opinion?  Mr. Wilder, speak.”

“I feel the truth of all your reasons, and think with you.”

A shade of gloomy distrust, which had gathered over the brow of the Rover during the foregoing scene, lighted a little as he listened to the direct and frank avowal of his lieutenant.

“You believe she bears a pennant?  I like this manliness of reply.  Then comes another question.  Shall we fight her?”

To this interrogatory it was not so easy to give a decisive answer.  Each officer consulted the opinions of his comrades, in their eyes, until their leader saw fit to make his application still more personal.

“Now, General, this is a question peculiarly fitted for your wisdom,” he resumed:  “Shall we give battle to a pennant? or shall we spread our wings, and fly?”

“My bullies are not drilled to the retreat.  Give them any other work to do, and I will answer for their steadiness.”

“But shall we venture, without a reason?”

“The Spaniard often sends his bullion home under cover of a cruiser’s guns,” observed one of the inferiors, who rarely found pleasure in any risk that did not infer its correspondent benefit.  “We may feel the stranger; if he carries more than his guns, he will betray it by his reluctance to speak, but if poor, we shall find him fierce as a half-fed tiger.”