“‘“Hush!” he answered. “My time is mebbe short, mate, and you’ve always been my friend. So listen. Something tells me you’ll be saved, but I am here to die. I want you to bear a message to my parents—to my mother especially. Her address you’ll find in my ditty-box. But go to see her, Sam, when the war is over. Far away west my people live in opulence, and I’m an only son. Father taunted me with cowardice, and I ran away and came to sea. Tell father I forgave him. Tell mother——” Ah, sir, just here the lad broke down. He’s only a boy. “Tell mother,” he sobbed, “how her Jack died for his country. Tell her I felt she’d forgiven me—that will please her—that my every dream was of home and her, that——”
“‘“A boat on the weather-bow,” cried a man to Hobson. “Shall we fire?”
“‘“No,” cried Hobson; “never a shot.”
“‘It had been a picket. We heard her officer shout in Spanish to give way with a will, and she disappeared up into the darkness of the channel we were now entering.
“‘The end was coming; the end was very near, and we all knew it.’
* * * * *
“While the bo’s’n had been telling his story, young Hardy sat silent, but he spoke now almost for the first time.
“‘A moment, sir. The bo’s’n won’t tell you, but I must. He tore off his lifebelt, and fastened it around me. He swore I must wear it or he would fling it into the sea. That’s all!’
“‘Well, sir,’ continued the bo’s’n, ‘the awful silence was speedily broken. They had seen us only as a dark mass, black as the rocks that towered above us. Then their fire opened. We’ll never be under such a fire again as that, sir, and live. Shells burst above us, around us, shells riddled our hull, and raked our spar-deck, and crushed into our deck-house. Fragments and splinters flew about in all directions. I think most of us were flat on our faces just then, and I lay beside Jackie here holding his hand. No tremor there, though! No signs of fear! And the fire poured into us from three sides, sir, from the batteries of Socappa on the left, from Morro on the right, and from a warship ahead.
“‘Speak of thunder. Pah! thunder isn’t in it with such a devil’s din as this, and lightning ’gainst those gun-gleams would have been like the glint of a farthing candle!