The schooner heeled until the lad was sure that she was going to turn turtle. The Battleship Boy felt a shiver running up and down his spine.
"If I had a light I might signal them and attract their attention. I don't believe they are able to pick me up with the searchlight. If they saw me they surely would not keep on shooting at me."
Dan hastened to the cabin below. There was not a lantern to be found so he grabbed up the cuddy lamp and ran to the deck with it. The instant he reached the deck the wind blew the light out.
The boy put the lamp down on the deck and crept over to the port rail which was the side nearest to the distant battleship.
Once more the seven-inch gun let go, the projectile going just a little high and cutting a gash in the deck as it went screaming over, losing itself in the sea off to starboard somewhere.
"About six feet nearer, and my name would have been Dennis," muttered the lad.
He remembered, afterwards, that he had not experienced any feeling of fear. The sensation of being under fire, and that with the knowledge that a battleship was trying to sink the vessel under him, filled him with awe and curiosity. Dan found himself wondering just how long it would take for the guns of the warship to put the schooner under. Had she not been loaded with lumber the schooner no doubt would have gone down under the first projectile that struck her.
"My, but those boys can shoot," he muttered with a feeling of pride. "Ah, that one went too high. Lower, lower!" fairly screamed the boy.
"Crash!"
"That's the time you did it," he shouted exultantly, picking himself up from the deck, his clothing torn, his body scratched from the splinters that the projectile had rained over him in a perfect shower. "A few more shots like that and you'll have her. But I'm glad there isn't any flag flying here. I'd have to take it down. I couldn't stand it to see them shooting at the Stars and Stripes."