"The danger that is over is no longer a danger at all, sir," answered Griffin, laughing. "Don't you think, Captain Cuffe, we might ease her about half a point? that would be just her play; and the lugger keeps off a little, I rather suspect, to ease her mainmast. I'm certain I saw chips fly from it when we dosed her with those two-and-twenty pills."
"Perhaps you're right, Griffin. Ease her with the helm a little, Mr. Yelverton. If Master Yvard stands on his present course an hour longer, Biguglia would be too far to windward for him; and as for Bastia, that has been out of the question from the first. There is a river called Golo, into which he might run; and that, I rather think, is his aim. Four hours, however, will let us into his secret."
And four intensely interesting hours were those which succeeded. The wind was a cap-full; a good, fresh, westerly breeze, which seemed to have started out of the oven-like heat of a week of intensely hot weather that had preceded it, and to have collected the force of two or three zephyrs into one. It was not a gale at all, nor did it induce either party to think of reefing; no trifle would have done that, under the circumstances; but it caused the Proserpine to furl her fore and mizzentopgallant-sails, and put Raoul in better humor with the loss of his jigger. When fairly round the headland, and at a moment when he fancied the frigate would be compelled to tack, the latter had seized an opportunity to get in his foresail, to unbend it, and to bend and set a new one; an operation that took just four minutes by the watch. He would have tried the same experiment with the other lug, but the mast was scarce worth the risk, and he thought the holes might act as reefs, and thus diminish the strain. In these four hours, owing to the disadvantage under which le Feu-Follet labored, there was not a difference of half a knot in the distance run by the two vessels, though each passed over more than thirty miles of water. During this time they had been drawing rapidly nearer to the coast of Corsica, the mountains of which, ragged and crowned with nearly eternal snows, had been glittering in the afternoon's sun before them, though they lay many a long league inland. But the formation of the coast itself had now become plain, and Raoul, an hour before the sun disappeared, noted his landmarks, by which to make for the river he intended to enter. The eastern coast of Corsica is as deficient in bays and harbors as its western is affluent with them; and this Golo, for which the lugger was shaping her course, would never have been thought of as a place of shelter under ordinary circumstances. But Raoul had once anchored in its mouth, and he deemed it the very spot in which to elude his enemy. It had shoals off its embouchure; and these, he rightly enough fancied, would induce Captain Cuffe to be wary.