The real action had begun; the night’s work had been child’s play. There was a terrific din as the long gun threw shot after shot, and in ten minutes a dense bank of smoke enveloped the Swift. The firing was suspended a minute.
The Captain stood in the conning-tower, his hands on the wheel, and his eyes fixed in a narrow slit under the steel roof. Giving a turn of the wheel to starboard, he brought the stem free of the smoke, and saw the enemy slowly gathering way, while men rushed about her decks in a state of terrible confusion at this sudden tempest of shells that had poured upon them.
Some damage had been done evidently, but principally to her top rigging. And now she spoke from her stern guns, but not allowing sufficiently for her height, the first stinging flight of shells went over the catcher.
“Stand by the six-pounders!” cried the Captain, his voice rising to a roar. “Depress your muzzle, Mr Webster! Fire!”
Again there was another tremendous fusillade, continuous and deafening, while the men’s eyes smarted from the sulphur in the smoke, and their throats grew dry and husky. For five minutes the rain of lead was kept up, and from the three guns one hundred projectiles tore into the sloop, plunged along the port side, and shattered her rigging. Lieutenant Webster devoted his second storm of fire at the stern guns, and the stanchions and bulwarks about them were ripped up, and the guns themselves dismounted.
The order to cease fire was again given, and the Captain made a point to starboard just as the sloop was swinging round to bring her port broadside to bear.
The ships were now but two hundred yards off, the sloop bearing off from the port quarter of the catcher in her attempt to come round and bring her bow guns to bear. Once she could do that she could blow the Swift out of the water, but Captain Pardoe had foreseen the manoeuvre and was ready for it. Counting upon the narrow turning power of his boat, he swept on, and suddenly put the wheel hard to port, bringing the vessel round within her own length, and bringing the boats stern to stern. At the same moment he flashed the signal below to fire the stern torpedoes. Then he stepped out to watch the effect, and the men, with heaving chests and smoke-blackened faces, from which their eyes glared with the fever of battle, watched too. There was a cry from the deck of the sloop, as they saw the leap from the tubes of the two torpedoes, a hoarse cry from the Captain to the man at the wheel, a terrible pause, and then two lines of bubbles below the water marked the swift rush of the deadly tubes. One line, it was seen, would continue free of the ship, the other went straight for her stern, and a sailor, in a mad fit of rage, first discharged his rifle at the approaching torpedo, then plunged overboard with a wild yell. A moment later there was a muffled roar, a vast column of water was thrown up, followed by a rending and grinding noise. The stern of the sloop was raised, then settled down in the trough of a great sea raised by the explosion. The torpedo had reached its mark, and Captain Pardoe stood by to give what assistance he could.
There was the wildest consternation on board the sloop, and the rending noise continued; but though she lay helplessly on the water she showed no signs of sinking.
The men on board the Swift set up a hoarse cheer, and shook each other by the hand.
“It’s twenty minutes since we went into action,” said Webster, wiping the blood from his brow. “Three cheers for our Captain, men!” and waving his hat, he led the hurrahs.