Honore de Balzac: A Woman of Thirty

5. V. TWO MEETINGS (continued)

"She is gaining on us!" the General broke in.

"She is a Columbian privateer," the captain said in his ear, "and we are still six leagues from land, and the wind is dropping."

"She is not going ahead, she is flying, as if she knew that in two hours' time her prey would escape her. What audacity!"

"Audacity!" cried the captain. "Oh! she is not called the Othello for nothing. Not so long back she sank a Spanish frigate that carried thirty guns! This is the one thing I was afraid of, for I had a notion that she was cruising about somewhere off the Antilles.--Aha!" he added after a pause, as he watched the sails of his own vessel, "the wind is rising; we are making way. Get through we must, for 'the Parisian' will show us no mercy."

"She is making way too!" returned the General.

The Othello was scarce three leagues away by this time; and although the conversation between the Marquis and Captain Gomez had taken place apart, passengers and crew, attracted by the sudden appearance of a sail, came to that side of the vessel. With scarcely an exception, however, they took the privateer for a merchantman, and watched her course with interest, till all at once a sailor shouted with some energy of language:

"By Saint-James, it is all up with us! Yonder is the Parisian captain!"