He noticed that the unwelcome stranger was shouldering the wind on the new course. He looked at the girl.
"Ay, we have teeth, sweeting," he said, "and soon we'll be gnashing them."
Though the Heart of the West sailed well, to windward, the big craft astern sailed even better. The ships, crowded with canvas, the dancing blue water and cloudless sky, and the brown and azure coast to leeward, made a fine picture under the white sun. As the stranger drew near and nearer, excitement increased aboard the merchantman. Old Trowley bawled to be set free, that he might not die in the sail-locker like a rat in a hole. Tom Bent spat on his hard hands, and pulled his belt an inch shorter. Ouenwa lugged up shot and powder, and was for opening fire at an impossible range. Beatrix roused Maggie Stone from her devotions, and took her forward to a place of greater safety in the men's quarters.
Along either side of the after-cabin of the Heart of the West ran a narrow passage. Each passage ended in a blind port, and behind each port crouched a gun of unusual size for so peaceful an appearing ship. Now Kingswell blessed the day that a youthful love of warlike gear and a heart for adventure had led him to add these pieces to the armament of his ship. He remembered, with a contented smile, how Master Trowley had growled at the delay caused by getting the great guns aboard and partitioning off the passage. Even his mother had urged him to put more faith in the great ship which the king was so gracious as to send to Newfounde Land each spring, as a convoy to the fishing fleet. But Master Bernard, spoiled child, had had his way; and now he thanked the gods of war for it.
Both ships sailed as close to the wind as their models and rigging and the laws of nature would allow. They went about often on ever shortening tacks. The hunter outsailed the hunted, though it is safe to say that her seamanship was no better. Suddenly she luffed until her sails quivered, and from her bows broke two puffs of smoke with inner cores of flame. Both shots flew high, and fell ahead of the quarry in brief spouts of torn water. At that, the blind ports in the stern of the merchantman opened up, and the sinister muzzles of the guns were run out with a gust of English cheering. Then their sudden voices boomed defiance, and the smoke rolled along the water and clung to the leaping waves.
Kingswell felt the deck jump under his feet. His pulses leaped with the good planks. "Hit!" he cried—and sure enough, one of the enemy's upper spars, with its burden of flapping canvas, tottered desperately, and then swooped down on the clustered buccaneers beneath. Half an hour later the Heart of the West was spinning along on her old course, and far astern the stranger lay to and nursed her wound.
Three days later, at high noon, the Narrows opened in the sheer brown face of the cliffs, and the people of the Heart of the West caught a glimpse of the harbour and the shipping beyond. Then the rocky portals seemed to close, and the spray flew like smoke along the unbroken ramparts. The ship was put about, and again the magic entrance opened and shut.
"I knows the channel, sir," said Tom Bent. "Ye needn't wait for no duff-headed pilot."
So the stout ship went 'round again, with a brisk shouting of men at the braces and a booming of canvas aloft. Her colours flew bravely in the sunlight, answering the colours of the fort and the battery on Signal Hill. She raced at the towering cliff as if she would try to overthrow it with her cocked-up bowsprit. Even Kingswell caught his breath. Beatrix looked away, so fearful was the sight of the unbroken rock that seemed to swim toward them with a voice of thunder and the smoking surf along its foot. Ouenwa wondered if Tom Bent were mad. But the boatswain gripped the big tiller, and squinted under the yards, and cocked an eye aloft at the flags and men on the cliff. Then, of a sudden, the narrow passage of green water, spray-fringed, opened under their bows, and the walls of rock slid aside and let them in.