An hour—two hours—and nothing but the roar of the surf, the endless white beach, the low sky.
Then Badeau reached up and shook Peabody's leg. “Wake up there, Herm! Look down the beach.”
“Wha—what's that? I don't see anything.”
“What are your eyes for?”
“Oh—team o' horses, eh. What's the crowd doing?”
“Can't you see the beach cart?”
“No—is it? Coming right along, ain't they.”
The cart was hauled up at a spot opposite the Dean. Over the ice-cones Badeau and Peabody could see the crew bustling about, until suddenly the crowd fell back, and they caught the shine of a brass gun and saw a projectile leap into the air trailing a line behind it.
“Not by fifty yards! It'll take a bigger charge than that. There—they're getting out another.”
Another moment of preparation, and another projectile came spinning toward them, passing high over their heads and directly between the foremast and the stump of the mainmast.