horizon, his parting beams lighting up gorgeously a heavy bank of clouds which hung low down in the western quarter, when the lookout man aloft hailed, “A sail on the weather bow!”

Everybody was instantly on the alert.

“What do you make her out to be?” hailed Mr Sennitt, the first lieutenant; while the skipper turned to me and said,—

“Mr Chester, be good enough to slip down into my cabin, and bring up my telescope, if you please.”

As I made a dive down the companion, I heard the lookout hail again: “She is a large lugger, sir; I can make her out quite plainly; she is just in the wake of the sun.”

“All hands make sail,” was the next order, given as quick as lightning.

I got the glass, and hurrying on deck with it, placed it in the skipper’s hands. The men were by this time lying out on the yards, shaking a couple of reefs out of the topsails, and loosing the courses. Captain Brisac slung the telescope over his shoulder, and, springing into the rigging, made his way aloft to the crosstrees, where the lookout still sat, with one hand grasping the topgallant shrouds, and the other shading his eyes. The skipper braced himself firmly against the topmost head, raised the telescope to his eye, and took a good long look at the stranger, closed the glass sharply, and descended to the deck again with all the agility of a monkey—or a midshipman.

“She is a lugger, sure enough; and a large one too,” he remarked, as he rejoined the first lieutenant. “There can be no doubt that she is French; and I have a strong suspicion that she is a privateer on the lookout for some of our homeward-bound vessels. I do not think they have made us out yet; when I saw her she was jogging easily along under her fore and mizzen lugs and a small jib. If she does not see us within the next five minutes, the chances are that she will not make us out at all until the moon rises, which will not be for quite another hour; by which time I hope we shall have drawn pretty close up to her.”

The lookout was hailed from time to time, to inquire whether the lugger had made any more sail or not; and each time the cheering reply was, “Not yet, sir.” At length the reply was, “It is too dark to see her now, sir; but she had not when I lost sight of her.”

The brig was now tearing along under single-reefed topsails, courses, fore-topmast staysail, jib, and spanker, her lee side 

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