To this
information Captain Truck added that it was their old pursuer the Foam.
"She is corvette-built," said the master of the Montauk, "and is obliged
to carry more canvas than we, in order to keep out of the way of the seas;
for, if one of these big fellows should overtake her, and throw its crest
into her waist, she would become like a man who has taken too much
Saturday-night, and with whom a second dose might settle the purser's
books forever."
Such in fact was the history of the sudden appearance of this ship. She
had lain-to as long as possible, and on being driven to scud, carried a
close-reefed maintop-sail, a show of canvas that urged her through the
water about two knots to the hour faster than the rate of the-packet.
Necessarily following the same coarse, she overtook the latter just as the
day began to dawn. The cry had arisen on her sudden discovery, and the
moment had now arrived when she was about to come up, quite abreast of her
late chase. The passage of the Foam, under such circumstances, was a grand
but thrilling thing. Her captain, too, was seen in the mizzen-rigging of
his ship, rocked by the gigantic billows over which the fabric was
careering. He held a speaking-trumpet in his hand, as if still bent on his
duty, in the midst of that awful warring of the elements.
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