“Perhaps, sir, they’s a cruising arter us,” answered Bob.  “This is about the time they ought to be expectin’ on us; and who knows but Madam Woolston and Friend Marthy may not have taken it into their heads to come out a bit to see arter their lawful husbands?”

The governor smiled at this conceit, but continued his observations in silence.

“She behaves very strangely, Betts,” Mark, at length, said.  “Just take a look at her.  She yaws like a galliot in a gale, and takes the whole road like a drunken man.  There can be no one at the helm.”

“And how lubberly, sir, her canvas is set!  Just look at that main-taw-sail, sir; one of the sheets isn’t home by a fathom, while the yard is braced in, till it’s almost aback!”

The governor walked the deck for five minutes in intense thought, though occasionally he stopped to look at the brig, now within a league of them.  Then he suddenly called out to Bob, to “see all clear for action, and to get everything ready to go to quarters.”

This order set every one in motion.  The women and children were hurried below, and the men, who had been constantly exercised, now, for five months, took their stations with the regularity of old seamen.  The guns were cast loose—­ten eighteen-pound carronades and two nines, the new armament—­cartridges were got ready, shot placed at hand, and all the usual dispositions for combat were made.  While this was doing, the two vessels were fast drawing nearer to each other, and were soon within gun-shot.  But, no one on board the Rancocus knew what to make of the evolutions of the Mermaid.  Most of her ordinary square-sails were set, though not one of them all was sheeted home, or well hoisted.  An attempt had been made to lay the yards square, but one yard-arm was braced in too far, another not far enough, and nothing like order appeared to have prevailed at the sail-trimming.  But, the of the brig was the most remarkable.  Her general course would seem to be dead before the wind; but she yawed incessantly, and often so broadly, as to catch some of her light sails aback.  Most vessels take a good deal of room in running down before the wind, and in a swell; but the Mermaid took a great deal more than was Common, and could scarce be said to look any way in particular.  All this the governor observed, as the vessels approached nearer and nearer, as well as the movements of those of the crew who showed themselves in the rigging.

“Clear away a bow-gun,” cried Mark, to Betts—­“something dreadful must have happened; that brig is in possession of the savages, who do not know how to handle her!”

This announcement produced a stir on board the Rancocus, as may well be imagined.  If the savages had the brig, they probably had the group also; and what had become of the colonists?  The next quarter of an hour was one of the deepest expectation with all in the ship, and of intense agony with Mark.  Betts was greatly disturbed also; nor would it have been safe for one of Waally’s men to have been within reach of his arm, just then.  Could it be possible that Ooroony had yielded to temptation and played them false?  The governor could hardly believe it; and, as for Betts, he protested loudly it could not be so.