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Somehow or other Englishmen are apt to think if a vessel can float she is fit to go anywhere, and that there is no considerable difference between smooth water and a heavy cross sea, a summer breeze and a snorting gale. Mr Oliver had with him a young midshipman, ten seamen, and a boy a very much smaller crew than the gunboat had under the Spanish flag.
They sighted mail-boats moving on their appointed routes; passed well-found home ships with rusty iron sides anchored in the shallow sea waiting for a change of weather or the turn of the tide; an English gunboat, white and trim, with two slim masts, crossed their bows one day in the distance; and on another occasion a Dutch corvette, black and heavily sparred, loomed up on their quarter, steaming dead slow in the mist.
Captain Magowan led his own party to the office of the commander of the gunboat. "Er gentlemen " began Magowan, slowly, "I must admit that our most elaborate case of circumstantial evidence seems to be knocked into a cocked hat by the one substantial fact that the 'Thor' still has her full number of torpedoes on board."
The Manhattan had found the gunboat and was using the signals. It was a second later that the puff of the exploding rocket reached the ears of those gathered about the boxes on the island, for sound does not travel as rapidly as light. When it came, Lieutenant Carstens made a dash for the side of the mountain and began the ascent.
After some parleying it was agreed that O'Toole should go on shore in their canoe, be allowed to purchase some provisions, and return in two hours. The bucaneer thought the time too short, but I insisted that if O'Toole were not brought back in two hours, I would speak the first gunboat I met, and return with her and have their nest of freebooters broken up.
Johnny Reb evidently did not suspect that Tom was "playing 'possum," as the Tennessee sharpshooters would have expressed it. The voyager's efforts appeared to be made in good faith; and certainly he applied himself with a degree of zeal and energy which ought to have overcome the inertia of a small gunboat.
Near, and lower than the urn, was discovered the head of the colossal statue, to-day the best, or one of the best pieces, in the National Museum of Mexico, having been carried thither on board of the gunboat Libertad, without my consent, and without any renumeration having even been offered by the Mexican government for my labor, my time and the money spent in the discovery.
Encouraged by the cessation of fire from the Su-chen, the junks had redoubled their own, and the gunboat was rapidly becoming as riddled as a sieve, while men were falling fast in every direction.
When the Benton had got abreast of us, I pulled off to her, boarded, had a few words with Admiral Porter, and as she was drifting rapidly toward the lower batteries at Warrenton, I left, and pulled back toward the shore, meeting the gunboat Tuscumbia towing the transport Forest Queen into the bank out of the range of fire.
Sally might have retorted with baffling words about seams and camisoles and voile; but she was shrewd in mystic silence. "You'd have to see the ships.... Then I could point it all out to you. I mean, a gunboat or a cruiser or a trawler.... What I mean, they're different. See a big liner going out from Liverpool: I tell you, it's a sight.
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