"Better stand on your tiptoes and stick cotton into your ears," Browning warned, as the big gun was quickly made ready for hurling its terrible projectile.
"Wh-what if the dinged old thing should bub-bub-burst?" Gamp anxiously asked.
"We should have to
"'Ask of the winds, that far around!
With fragments strewed the sea!'"
was Danny's comforting answer.
Dismal and Rattleton retreated a step or two, as did Elsie Bellwood. But Inza stood her ground as bravely as Merriwell himself.
Then, before more could be said, the big cannon boomed forth its volume of deafening sound, making the very walls shake. Danny tumbled backward, then picked himself up and felt over his person very carefully.
"Am I all here?" he anxiously queried.
All watched the direction in which the huge shot had been fired, but it fell miles away. Merriwell and a few others, provided with strong glasses, saw it drop into the sea. The captain was talking again.
"The instruments record an initial velocity of one thousand feet per second, with a pressure of twenty-four thousand pounds."