Fort McKinley is ten miles from Green Island. At certain times of the year a target is set on a raft and a schooner detailed to drag it about. When the target is in position near Green Island, a plane circling low over the water warns fishing crafts away. Then the great guns of the fort, firing projectiles weighing a thousand pounds and more, break their long silence. Ten miles from the fort, close to the drifting target, the huge projectile falls. It strikes the water with a loud report. It bounces, rises once more in air and, singing its song of hate and defiance, flies through the air to at last sink to the bottom a hundred fathoms below. Into this target practice Betty had blundered.
“I wish I could warn her,” Ruth told herself now. “The man in the seaplane should do it. But he probably does not see her at all. Little dark boat against a broad expanse of dark sea. How could he? And besides, perhaps there is no danger after all. The firing for to-day may stop any minute. The target ship may move off in some other direction.”
The firing did not cease. The target ship did not move away.
“Ought to be getting back home.” Ruth’s gaze swept a hazy sky, then fell to her staunch little sloop. “Going to storm. Can’t tell how bad. Hate to spend a night out here.” But without Betty she could not go.
Turning, she made her way down the rocky slope to the spot where her boat was moored.
Her hand was on the painter when again, closer, more terrifying, there came a Zss-Spt-Boom.
Dropping the painter, she turned and walked hurriedly back up the hill.
With strained attention her eyes sought that small white figure. It was nowhere to be seen.
“Gone!” Vast relief was expressed in her tone. “Thought she’d see how unsafe it was.”
Just to make assurance doubly sure, she took up her field glasses and swept the black waters.