But nobody could tell. Directly another came in through a port and killed two men who were near him, and then, striking the opposite bulwarks, burst into pieces.
Brown believed it to be some newfangled paixhan or other, and as four or five more of them came slap through his sails, he gave orders to fill away, and actually backed out of the fight, receiving a parting broadside of Dutch cheese.
Where’s the Commandant?
By C. C. WADDELL.
(This interesting story was commenced in No. 140 of Nick Carter Stories. Back numbers can always be obtained from your news dealer or the publishers.)
CHAPTER XXVII.
STRANGE PRECAUTIONS.
While Grail was shaving, at that two-minute gait which, once acquired at West Point, is never forgotten, a sudden suggestion came to him, and he laid down his razor to draft out on a telegraph blank a composition, which seemed, from the way he frowned and bit his pen over it, to require careful consideration.
Finishing it at last, he slipped it into a sealed envelope, and when he had completed his dressing, carried it and the note from Appleby over to the post-telegraph office.
The Appleby note he laid on the table under a paper weight.
“Sergeant,” he said to the man in charge, “I want you to keep your eye on that paper, and if it disappears, instantly transmit this to the address within.” He handed over the sealed envelope.
The man stared at him as though he thought he had suddenly gone crazy. “If the paper disappears?” he gasped.