e
launch, and when the officer in command of her began to see through
Beardsley's little plan, he at once proceeded to set in motion one of
his own that was calculated to defeat it. His howitzer was loaded with a
five-second shrapnel, and this he fired at the schooner at a point-blank
range of less than a hundred yards. He couldn't miss entirely at that
short distance, but the missile flew too high to hull the
blockade-runner. It struck the flying jib-boom, breaking it short off
and rendering that sail useless, glanced and splintered the rail close
by the spot where the captain and his pilot were standing, went
shrieking off over the water, and finally exploding an eighth of a mile
astern. The skipper and Marcy were both prostrated by a splinter six
feet long and four inches thick that was torn from the rail; but they
scrambled to their feet again almost as soon as they touched the deck,
and when they looked ahead, fully expecting to find the launch under the
schooner's fore-foot and on the point of being run down, they saw an
astonishing as well as a most discouraging sight. The boat was farther
away than she was before, and her whole length could be seen now, for
not only was she broadside on, but the darkness above and around her,
which had hitherto rendered her shape and size somewhat indistinct, was
lighted up by a bright glare that shot up from somewhere amidships, and
the sound of escaping steam could be plainly heard.

[Illustration: CAPTAIN BEARDSLEY SURPRISED.]

"Oh, my shoulder! Dog-gone it all, my shoulder!" cried Beardsley,
placing the instep of his left foot behind his right knee and hopping
about as if it were the lower portion of his anatomy that had been
injured instead of the upper. "She's got a steam ingine aboard of her,
and them oars of her'n was only meant for snooping up and down the coast
quiet and still' so't nobody couldn't hear 'em. We're gone this time,
Morgan; and I tell you that for a fact!"

The moment Marcy Gray recovered his feet he made an effort to pick up
the glass that had fallen from his grasp, but to his surprise, his left
hand refused to obey his will. When he made a second attempt, he found
that he could not move his hand at all unless he raised his arm at the
shoulder. He was not conscious of much pain, although he afterward said
that his arm felt a good deal as it did when Dick Graham accidentally
hit his biceps with a swiftly pitched ball. But his right hand wa