Instead of avoiding the narrow pass between the two islands, Raoul glided boldly into it; and by keeping vigilant eyes on his fore-yard, to apprise him of danger, he succeeded in making two stretches in the strait itself, coming out to the southward on the starboard tack, handsomely clearing the end of the islet at the very instant the frigate appeared on the other side of the pass.

The lugger had now an easy task of it; for she had only to watch her enemy, and tack in season, to keep the islet between them, since the English did not dare to carry so large a ship through so narrow an opening.

This advantage Raoul did not overlook, and Cuffe had gone about twice, closing each time nearer and nearer to the islet, before he was satisfied that his guns would be of no service until he could at least weather the intervening object, after which they would most probably be useless in so light a wind by the distance between them and their enemy.
"Never mind, Mr.Griffin; let this scamp go," said the captain, when he made this material discovery; "it is pretty well to have cleared the seas of one of them.

Besides, we do not know that this _is_ an enemy at all.

He showed no colors, and seems to have just come out of Porto Ferrajo, a friendly haven." "Raoul Yvard did _that_, sir, not once, but twice," muttered Yelverton, who, from the circumstance that he had not been employed in the different attempts on le Feu-Follet, was one of the very few dissentients in the ship touching her fate, "These twins _are_ exceedingly alike; especially _Pomp_, as the American negro said of his twin children." This remark passed unheeded; for so deep was the delusion, in the ship, touching the destruction of the privateer, it would have been as hopeless an attempt to try to persuade her officers, and people generally, that le Feu-Follet was not burned, as it would be to induce a "great nation" to believe that it had any of the weaknesses and foibles that confessedly beset smaller communities.