“They’ve got to hit her first, uncle,” cried Rodd excitedly. “Oh, I can’t help it, uncle,” he continued, with his lips close to his uncle’s ear so that the waiter should not catch his words, “but I do hope they won’t.”
“Well, my boy, I can’t help feeling the same, though she’s neither enemy nor friend of ours, and we don’t know what it all means; for I don’t suppose,” he said, with a half-laugh, “that she has got Napoleon Bonaparte on board.”
Uncle Paul had not taken his nephew’s precaution, and as a heavy gust was just dying out, the excited waiter caught a part of his speech.
“Ha, ha!” he cried. “You sink so? You say le Petit Caporal is on board?”
“No, no,” cried Uncle Paul; “I didn’t say so.”
“No, sare; you think so, and zat is it. He has escape himself from ze place where you English shot him up safe, and he come in zat sheep to burn down ze town. But ah–h–h, again they will sink him. Faith of a man, no!” he cried angrily, for there was a shot from another battery, this time nearer the harbour mouth. “They cannot shoot straight.”
For onward glided the brig, making tack after tack, and zigzagging her way through the narrow entrance of the harbour, at times partly sheltered by the great pier to windward, then as she glided farther out careening over in spite of the small amount of reefed sail she carried, but all the while so well under control that she kept on gaining and leaving the two boats farther and farther behind.
“Oh, if it were only lighter!” cried Rodd, stamping his foot with vexation. “Why, she’ll soon be out of sight.”
“Before she gets much farther,” said Uncle Paul gravely, “she’ll be getting within the light cast by one or other of the harbour lights, and that will be one of her critical times.”
“Why critical, uncle?” cried the boy earnestly. “Because the men in the fort will have a better chance of hitting her, I should say.”