“It is too good to be true,” murmured the Lieutenant, as he anxiously watched the cruiser. “Ah, I feared so. See, he is coming round.”
The stately white ship, making a wide sweep to port, came round, letting go her broadside of six guns and her two heavy bow chasers before she steadied on a course which would bring her very soon opposite the Irene. The water about the Swift was torn up, and she heeled over to the shock.
“She is struck!”
“Good God, she is sinking!”
“No; hurrah! she is righting.”
Miss Anstrade covered her face with her hands, then threw them from her with a passionate gesture, while Webster and Hume stood by with white, set faces.
The Swift had pointed her bows at the cruiser, and was firing now only with her four-inch, at the same time steaming slowly astern, as though waiting for some opening.
The contrast between the combatants was most striking, as the Swift lay broadside on to the Irene, a long, low, grey line on the great waste, while, though further off, the high bows of the cruiser, her lofty decks and towering spars, loomed vast and terrible.
“God’s truth!” cried one sailor, smashing his brawny fist against the bulwarks, in a fury; “it’s wrong; it’s a shame; they’re not matched!”
“Watch him; he’s porting his helm.”