"Give way!"
As one man, the rowers bent to their oars, the boats shot out into the darkness, and were lost to view by those left on board. The oars had been muffled, so that the only sounds which could be heard were the soft plash of the blades as they dipped into the water and the creaking of the thwarts and stretchers. But soon these noises died away in the distance, and then all seemed perfectly still to the dark figures crouching beside the guns on the Hawk's decks.
About five minutes after the boats had left a tongue of flame suddenly leapt from the fort, followed by a dull boom. Evidently the Germans had just discovered the attack, and were attempting to sink the boats before they reached the shore. The sound of the gun had scarcely died away when Mr. Dykes passed the word to open fire on the fort, and there ensued a lively duel between the latter and the Hawk. As it was a pitch dark night, each side had to guide its fire by the flashes of the enemy's guns, so that, at first, the shooting was somewhat erratic. But, after a while, the Germans began to get the range of the Hawk and to make such good practice that Mr. Dykes had to order some of his men to fill bags with sand ballast and stack them along the bulwarks to afford additional protection to the gun crews. Unfortunately, the enemy's guns were of much heavier calibre than the Hawk's, so that, when a shell struck the vessel, it did considerable damage.
"By Gum!" ejaculated the mate, "this is getting durned hot."
He had not reckoned upon receiving such a tremendous fusillade from the fort, and, though by no means a timorous man, began to fear that the Hawk would be sunk at her moorings. So far as he was able to tell at present, there had been only a few casualties on board, the bulwarks and sandbags affording an excellent protection for the men working the guns, although, had it been daylight, these would probably have been of little avail. But the steamer herself had suffered considerably; the deck-houses were mostly in splinters, all the skylights had been smashed, and where the funnel had once stood there was now only a jagged stump. Once the enemy succeeded in battering down the defences, his guns would simply annihilate every living thing on board.
"I wish some of them shells would cut our cables," he murmured to himself, "then we could just skidoo out of the harbour, and the old man couldn't say a word."
The notion of slipping the cables himself and creeping out of the harbour occurred to him more than once, but each time he dismissed it from his mind. It would certainly savour of cowardice to leave Calamity and his men on the island without a chance to retreat, while, if the Captain should ever succeed in getting within reach of him afterwards, the consequences would be very far from pleasant.
By this time one of the Hawk's machine-guns had been put out of action, and still the fort kept up an unceasing bombardment. Mr. Dykes was now fervently hoping that Calamity would abandon the attack, return on board, and get out of this hornet's nest with all possible speed—if, of course, the steamer was not already too battered about to get under way. With this possibility in view, he sent a man to fetch McPhulach and was exceedingly surprised to learn that the engineer could not be found.
"Ain't he in his cabin?" he inquired.
"No, sir, nor yet in the engine-room," replied the messenger.