“No, go! it’s a good three miles,” growled Captain Butler, measuring the interval once more with his glass.
“Let me try,” said Bracetaut, quietly taking his stand behind the gun, which was now being charged anew, and carefully adjusting the screws.
Again the sullen thunder spouted from the port, and we marked the ball by its path of fire.
“Gone again,” grumbled the skipper. “We’re paving the floor of the sea with—Ha!” For an instant the messenger had vanished like its predecessor; then, far away to the south, there sprang a fountain of spray—its last dip in the brine—and the mizzen-mast of the stranger snapped short off at the cross-trees, and dragged a cloud of useless canvas down her shrouds.
“Brave shot!” exclaimed the Captain. “Try again, Lieutenant.”
“‘Try, try again,’” sang that limb of a middy, Jerry Bloom, renewing his hornpipe.
But the rigging of the stranger suddenly grew black with men, the broken spars were cleared away as by magic, another sail puffed out broadly from her foretop to make up for the vanished mizzen-mast, and even as we gazed a strain of band-music came floating over the sea, with the “Bonny blue flag” for its burden.
“She’s telling her name,” said Bracetaut, laughing.
“Yes, but she’s going to kick us,” cried Jerry, as a long tongue of flame leaped from the stranger’s stern; and the rolling thunder of her gun came to us almost simultaneously with the ball, which whistled through our tops, letting down a heavy splinter on the cockswain’s head, who dropped like a dead man, but was only stunned.
It was evident that the stranger was plucky, and not to be taken alive. We still worked on her with our bow-gun, seldom doing much damage, but with the best of intentions; while she kicked off the point of our bowsprit with provoking ease, and burned an ugly hole through our maintop-sail.