Ignorant themselves, those about him saw that he understood, saw that
his work was good.

They raised a joyous, defiant cheer. But a shower of bullets drove them
to cover, bullets that ripped the deck, splintered the superstructure,
smashed the glass in the air ports, like angry wasps sang in a
continuous whining chorus. Intent only on the gun, David worked
feverishly. He swung to the breech, locked it, and dragged it open,
pulled on the trigger and found it gave before his forefinger.

He shouted with delight.

"I've got it working," he yelled.

He turned to his audience, but his audience had fled. From beneath one
of the life-boats protruded the riding-boots of Colonel Beamish, the
tall form of Lighthouse Harry was doubled behind a water butt. A shell
splashed to port, a shell splashed to starboard. For an instant David
stood staring wide-eyed at the greyhound of a boat that ate up the
distance between them, at the jets of smoke and stabs of flame that
sprang from her bow, at the figures crouched behind her gunwale, firing
in volleys.

To David it came suddenly, convincingly, that in a dream he had lived it
all before, and something like raw poison stirred in David, something
leaped to his throat and choked him, something rose in his brain and
made him see scarlet. He felt rather than saw young Carr kneeling at the
box of ammunition, and holding a shell toward him. He heard the click as
the breech shut, felt the rubber tire of the brace give against the
weight of his shoulder, down a long shining tube saw the pursuing
gun-boat, saw her again and many times disappear behind a flash of
flame. A bullet gashed his forehead, a bullet passed deftly through his
forearm, but he did not heed them. Confused with the thrashing of the
engines, with the roar of the gun he heard a strange voice shrieking
unceasingly:

"Cuba libre!" it yelled. "To hell with Spain!" and he found that the
voice was his own.

The story lost nothing in the way Carr wrote it.

"And the best of it is," he exclaimed joyfully, "it's true!"

For a Spanish gun-boat _had_ been crippled and forced to run
herself aground by a tug-boat manned by Cuban patriots, and by a single
gun served by one man, and that man an American. It was the first
sea-fight of the war. Over night a Cuban navy had been born, and into
the limelight a cub reporter had projected a new "hero," a ready-made,
warranted-not-to-run, popular idol.

They were seated in the pilot-hou