"Why should I crouch if you stand up?"
The man's heart swelled within him; but as he looked with proud admiration at the cloaked and hooded figure by his side, the cutter's gun fired for the third time. With roar and hiss the shot came over the bow of the schooner, as she dipped into the trough, and raking the deck, crashed through her side on the quarter. Molly gave a shriek and staggered.
A fearful malediction burst from Captain Jack's lips: he left the tiller and sprang to her.
One of the hands, believing his skipper to have been struck, ran to the helm, and again put the vessel on her proper course which a few moments later was to make her shoot past the revenue cutter.
"Wounded, Madeleine! Wounded through my fault! By the living God, they shall pay for this!"
"Oh," groaned Molly, "something has cut me in the arm and shoulder." Then rapidly gathering composure, "But it's not much, I can move it."
At one glance the sailor saw from the position of the shot hole in the vessel's side that the wound could only have been made by a splinter. But the possibility of exposing his beloved to such another risk was not to be borne—a murderous rush of blood flew to his brain.
The cutter, perceiving the tactics of the swifter schooner, was now tacking about with the intention of bringing the gun to bear upon her once more as she attempted to slip by. But Captain Jack in his new-fanned fury had made up his mind to a desperate cast of the die.
"Starboard, hard a starboard," he called out in a voice that his men had known well in old fighting days and which was heard as far as the cutter itself. "They shall not fire that gun again!"
With a brief, "Starboard it is, sir," the man who had taken the helm brought the ship round, and the silent, active crew in a trice were ready to go about. Majestically the schooner changed her course, and as the meaning of the manœuvre became fearfully apparent, shouts and oaths arose in confusion from the cutter.