“Mate,” he said, “it’s the same sloop that followed us before. It makes me feel better. We know what’s about the best she can do. If this wind holds, I think we can fetch Vera Cruz at nightfall. No one Yankee’d dare to follow us under the guns of San Juan de Ulua.”
“I reckon not,” slowly responded the mate of the Goshawk, “but we don’t need to get under that chap’s bow-chasers, either.”
“No,” said Captain Kemp, “but I’ll risk a shot or two.”
Ned Crawford heard him, for he had been following him pretty closely, to know what was coming.
“I don’t know,” he was thinking, “how far one o’ those cannon of hers’ll carry. I don’t believe, either, that they can hit a mark that is plunging along as we are. It’d be worse than shooting at a bird on the wing. Still, it’s kind of awful to be shot at by our own people.”
The sailors of the Goshawk were also thinking, and they were beginning to look at one another very doubtfully. Not only were they Americans, most of them, but they had not shipped for any such business as this, and they did not fancy the idea of being killed for nothing. Moreover, Ned himself heard one of them muttering:
“There’s an ugly look to this thing. If a shot from that cruiser were to strike us amidships, we’d all be blown into the air.”
Decidedly that was not a pleasant thing to think of. Neither was there any great amount of comfort in a suggestion made by another of the men:
“Well, we’d never know what hurt us. We must keep out o’ range.”
Not long afterward there was a flash at one of the bow-ports of the cruiser. The report which followed was a peremptory order to heave to, under penalty of consequences. The gun was shotted, and a great many eyes watched anxiously for the dipping of that well-aimed ball of iron. It skipped from crest to crest of several waves before it sank, and then Captain Kemp shouted: