The next shot tore away a large section of the rail on the port side, and seemed at the same time to have twisted the ship about.
But Dan was clinging to a stanchion, which fact saved him from being again thrown to the deck.
"I guess they must have decided to cease firing," he said. "I hope they haven't given it up. I know I shall be disappointed. How I wish I were at that gun! Wouldn't it be fun! I believe I could shoot as straight as they do. But——"
Dan did not finish the sentence. There came a report more terrific than those that had preceded it. The stanchion to which the lad bad been clinging suddenly doubled over, striking him on the head, felling him to the deck. The schooner lurched heavily, and, settling over on her starboard side, slipped slowly down a great sloping hill of water into a deep hollow of the sea. But Dan Davis lay still. The blow on his head had been a cruel one, the iron stanchion having been struck by a projectile from one of the seven-inch guns and bent double.
The first gray streaks of the dawn were shooting up from the angry sea when Dan opened his eyes again. His first sensation was that of choking. He was, indeed, choking, for the deck on which he lay was a river of salt water. The lad, in falling, had become wedged between the rails, this being the only thing that had kept him from being washed overboard.
The lad's first thought was that he was drowning. Soon, however, he managed to get his eyes open sufficiently to examine his surroundings.
There was gray, turbulent water wherever the eye roamed, a waste of foaming sea, here and there heaping itself into great dark piles that seemed to tower higher than the masts of a ship.
"It's a wonder I'm alive," exclaimed the Battleship Boy, as he began extricating himself from his uncomfortable position. "The sea is not nearly so high as it was last night, and this old craft is still on its legs. That is the most surprising thing about the whole business."
Dan got to his feet, but he was very unsteady. His first business was to look over the ship and make up his mind how badly she had been hurt by the fire of the battleship. Wreck and ruin greeted him on every hand. The decks were a mass of tangled wreckage, broken masts, twisted stanchions and knotted ropes. In several places the decks were ripped wide open, the lumber beneath them split and torn into shreds.
Peering over the side, the lad discovered a jagged hole in the hull, through which the water rushed with every roll of the ship.