"Yes, I think you would better," answered Jones, stretching out his hand.
"Good-bye, sir," said the other, grasping it firmly.
"Good-bye; God bless you, Richard," said the older man, looking gravely at his beloved subordinate.
"And you, sir," returned Dale, with an unusual accent of tender affection; then he turned and ran rapidly to his station.
"Pass the word quickly," said Jones to young Brooks, "for the men to deliver their fire promptly and together when the word is given. Not a gun is to be discharged until the order. After that, as rapidly as possible."
As the fleet-footed midshipman ran along the decks, a little murmur of excitement arose. There was a shifting of positions; men sprang to their stations; hoarse whispers came from the gun captains, as the smouldering matches, or glowing loggerheads, were handed to them by their subordinates.
"Silence fore and aft the decks!" came the clear voice of the captain.
The murmurs died away as young Brooks sprang up the ladder and reported that everything was ready. The boy officers choked down something that rose in their throats as they walked nervously up and down their divisions. A fleeting thought they gave to home, mother, hours of play, so far away. It was the first battle for many of them. Down on the berth-deck in front of the hatchway, little Payne looked to the priming of his pistols and whispered a word or two to his men, who stood with their muskets pointing down through the gratings covering the hatchway. He wished he had been up on deck with the rest, fighting a great gun, or attached to the side of the captain; but the captain had told him that the post of honor and importance was here, and here he would stand. There, on the starboard side, his young messmate and friend, McCollin, gave another careful inspection to his three old eighteen-pounders, firmly resolved to give such an account with them, if they did not burst, as would decide the action.
Caswell and Mayrant were in the forecastle to fight the two guns there. Mr. Mease, the purser, as brave a man as ever stepped a deck, though no sailor, had charge of the quarter-deck guns. Stacey, the sailing-master, stood aft by the wheel to assist in working the ship. Brooks and De Chamillard were on the poop near Jones. Fanning, with his bullies in the maintop, was anxiously wishing that he, too, might have a place in the centre of the conflict, the gun-deck, little knowing what decisive moment was in store for him.
They were nearer now, well within gun-shot, yet there was no sound from either ship. The tense expectancy of the moment was becoming unbearable to the younger hands. What were the captains of the ships about? Why didn't they fire? Away off on the horizon, flashes of light and the deep boom of artillery reverberating across the water, told that their consort had joined in battle with the Scarborough. Why were they so slow? Suddenly, in the midst of the silence, broken only by the soft sigh of the summer wind through the top-hamper, the splashing of the bluff bows, as they forced themselves through the rippling water, came the sound of a hail from the English ship, the words of which were indistinguishable.