As it was, he had continued watching the result, but permitting all the other parties gradually to approach him.
It must be allowed that the ruse of the felucca was well planned; and it now seemed about to be admirably executed.

Had it not been for Ithuel's very positive knowledge of the ship--his entire certainty of her being his old prison, as he bitterly called her--it is not improbable that the lugger's crew might have been the dupe of so much well-acted ingenuity; and as it was, opinions were greatly divided, Raoul himself being more than half disposed to fancy that his American ally, for once, was wrong, and that the ship in sight was actually what she professed to be--a cruiser of the republic.
Both Winchester, who was in la Divina Providenza, and Griffin, who commanded the boats, played their parts in perfection.

They understood too well the character of the wily and practised foe with whom they had to deal, to neglect the smallest of the details of their well-concerted plan.

Instead of heading toward the lugger as soon as the chase commenced, the felucca appeared disposed to enter the bay and to find an anchorage under the protection of a small battery that had been planted for this express purpose near its head.

But the distance was so great as obviously to render such an experiment bootless; and, after looking in that direction a few minutes, the head of la Divina Providenza was laid off shore, and she made every possible effort to put herself under the cover of the lugger.