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Backing a considerable distance, so as to enable his little war-horse to get up full-speed, he took careful aim as he charged. It was interesting to watch the swart faces and glaring eyeballs of those on board the first prow, as the gun-boat bore down on them. Some glared from hate, others obviously from fear, and all seemed a little uncertain as to what was about to be done.
Mr Sawbridge threw half his men into the launch, as she carried a heavy carronade, and sent her to assist the cutters, which had made right for the gun-boat.
But as the repeller had not fired a single shot at the fleet, and as the battle had been fought entirely by the crabs, there was every reason to believe that if there were such things as motor-guns, their range was very short, not as great as that of the ordinary dynamite cannon. The great risk run by one of the crabs in order to disable a dynamite gun-boat seemed an additional proof of this.
He had the French gun-boat in mind that was sure, but his craft was making heavy weather of it, and before he was half-way to the gun-boat we were under her stern, on our shoot for the harbor entrance, and from the gun-boat's deck they were peeping down on us, grinning and yelling the same as everybody else, waiting to see us pile up on the rocks somewhere.
When night closed in we weighed anchor and steamed to the entrance of the river, which, from our position being so well defined, we had no difficulty in making out. We received a broadside from a savage little gun-boat quite close inshore, her shot passing over us, and that was all. We got comfortably to the anchorage about half-past eleven o'clock, and so ended our second journey in.
As if but one piece had been fired the whole broadside burst from the side of the gun-boat, shaking the little vessel violently. Miss Pritty's voice came up responsive with an unearthly yell! "Load!" was instantly ordered, and so quickly was it obeyed that before the enemy were ready with their second volley the gun-boat had charged and fired again, doing great damage.
About 150 fathoms of line were run out when the cable was hooked in fifty fathoms of water. This time the lookout reported a Spanish gun-boat coming down the harbor and a signal was sent to the St. Louis, lying half a mile outside. She had already discovered it, and immediately opened fire with her two port six- pounders. The Wampatuck then commenced firing with her one three- pounder.
Of course he was on bad terms at once with Ross, who, finding that things were going badly, felt that it would be unfair to hold his people to the agreement which was made when he thought the whole group was his own, so he offered to release them. They all, except two men and one woman, accepted the release and went off in a gun-boat that chanced to touch there at the time.
Clark, from his post at the Falls, sent out spies and scouts along the banks of the river, and patrolled its waters with his gun-boat; but it was absolutely impossible to stop all the forays or to tell the point likely to be next struck.
Finally, and after my own visit to that chief of all yellow-fever-stricken dens, a British gun-boat put a shell into Joe and blew him into smithereens. In many shark-infested waters, such as around Ocean Island, the natives swim fearlessly among them. This ocean island, by the way, is probably the most intrinsically valuable spot of land on earth, consisting of a solid mass of coral and phosphate.
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