The other stooped and peered out of a port.
"Doobious, I should say," he replied, picking his teeth. "Vairy doobious. Ah! ——"
A great black shadow stole across the port. Its effect on the Gunner was miraculous. He shot up like a flame. He was dark; he was terrible; there was something of the majesty of Satan about the man. Some huge sea of life seemed to lift him above himself, and land him among the giants.
"Stand by the starboard battery!" he roared.
CHAPTER XI
COMMODORE MOUCHE
Kit ran up the ladder out of that bellowing Inferno.
The Tremendous and her enemy lay side by side with locked spars; the Coquette becalmed beyond.
Then Kit understood the ruse of that wary old fighter, his Commander. Old Ding-dong had placed the Cocotte as a bulwark between him and her consort. As he had foreseen, the wind, falling away this hour past, had dropped to nothing now. The Coquette could not bring a gun into action.
Four hundred yards away, she might have been as many miles for all the assistance she could render her sister-ship.