CHAPTER V.
A HAIL FROM THE DARKNESS.
The four sailors who were with Clif fully realized the task which was before them.
It was then about dusk, and the night was coming on rapidly. Two of the men were stationed as lookouts, and the other two took the wheel.
Clif set to work to try to calculate as best he could how far and in what direction he was from Key West; he wished to take no chances of running ashore or getting lost.
Those, and the possibility of collision, seemed the only dangers that had to be guarded against; the possibility of meeting a Spanish vessel was not considered, for the chance seemed very remote.
The two lookouts were both stationed in the bow. That fact and the other just mentioned sufficed to account for the fact that the real danger that threatened the crew of the merchantman was not thought of or guarded against in the least.
For Clif had no way of knowing that any trouble was to come from behind him; but coming it was, and in a hurry.
Within the shelter of a narrow inlet just to one side of the batteries that had made so much trouble for the Uncas had lain hidden and unsuspected an object that was destined to play an important part in the rest of the present story.
It was a Spanish gunboat, of much the same kind as the Uncas, only smaller. Hidden by the land, her officers had eagerly watched the struggle we have just seen.