The Gauntlet—­a flattish-bottomed ship—­footed it well before the wind, but not to compare with the xebec, which indeed was little more than a long open boat.  After an hour’s chase she had plainly reduced our lead by a mile or more.  Then for close upon an hour we seemed to have the better of the wind, and more than held our own; whereat the most of us openly rejoiced.  For reasons which he kept to himself Captain Pomery did not share in our elation.

For sole armament (besides our muskets) the ketch carried, close after of her fore-hatchway, a little obsolete 3-pounder gun, long since superannuated out of the Falmouth packet service.  In the dim past, when he had bid for her at a public auction, Captain Pomery may have designed to use the gun as a chaser, or perhaps, even then, for decoration only.  She served now—­and had served for many a peaceful passage—­but as a peg for spare coils of rope, and her rickety carriage as a supplement, now and then, for the bitts, which were somewhat out of repair.  My father casting about, as the chase progressed, to put us on better terms of defence, suggested unlashing this gun and running her aft for a stern-chaser.

Captain Pomery shook his head.  “Where’s the ammunition?  We don’t carry a single round shot aboard, nor haven’t for years.  Besides which, she’d burst to a certainty.”

“There’s time enough to make up a few tins of canister,” argued my father.  “Or stay—­” He smote his leg.

“Didn’t I tell you old Worthyvale would turn out the usefullest man on board?”

“What’s the matter with Worthyvale?”

“While we’ve been talking, Worthyvale has been doing.  What has he been doing?” Why, breaking up the ballast, and, if I’m not mistaken, into stones of the very size to load this gun.”

“Give Badcock and me some share of credit,” pleaded Mr. Fett.  “Speaking less as an expert than from an imagination quickened by terror of all missiles, I suggest that a hundredweight or so of empty bottles, nicely broken up, would lend a d—­d disagreeable diversity to the charge—­”

“Not a bad idea at all,” agreed my father.

“And a certain sting to our defiance; since I understand these ruffians drink nothing stronger than water,” Mr. Fett concluded.

We spent the next half-hour in dragging the gun aft, and fetching up from the hold a dozen basket-loads of stone.  It required a personal appeal from my father before old Worthyvale would part with so much of his treasure.

During twenty minutes of this time, the xebec, having picked up with the stronger breeze, had been shortening her distance (as Captain Pomery put it) hand-over-fist.  But no sooner had we loaded the little gun and trained her ready for use, than my father, pausing to mop his brow, cried out that the Moor was losing her breeze again.  She perceptibly slackened way, and before long the water astern of her ceased to be ruffled.  An oily calm spreading across the sea from shoreward overhauled her by degrees, overtook, and held her, with sails idle and sheets tautening and sagging as she rolled on the heave of the swell.