rect in the
stern-sheets with a boat-cloak around him. "We'll send canister and
rifle balls into you next time, and they'll come so thick that they
won't leave so much as a ratline of you. Heave to, I say!"

At this juncture a rifle or pistol shot, Marcy could not tell which it
was, sounded from the schooner's quarter-deck, and the plucky officer
was seen to throw his hands above his head, grasp wildly at the empty
air for a moment, and then disappear over the side of the launch. In an
instant all was confusion among the blue-jackets. The coxswain, who of
course was left in command, shouted to the engineer to shut off steam,
to the crew to drop their muskets and pick up their oars, and to the
captain of the howitzer to cut loose with his load of canister.

"Lay down, everybody," cried Beardsley, who plainly heard all these
orders; and suiting the action to the word, he quickly stretched himself
upon the deck. Marcy had barely time to follow his example before the
howitzer roared again, and the canister rattled through the rigging like
hail, tearing holes in the canvas, splintering a mast here and a boom
there, but never cutting a stay or halliard. If a topmast had gone by
the board, or a sail come down by the run, the schooner would have been
quite at the mercy of the launch; for the latter could have carried her
by boarding, or taken a position astern and peppered the _Hattie_ with
shrapnel until Captain Beardsley would have been glad to surrender. The
captain did not see how his vessel could escape being crippled, and he
would have surrendered then and there if any one in the launch had
called upon him to do so; but when he got upon his feet and saw that
every rope held, and that the schooner was just on the point of entering
her haven of refuge, he took heart again.

"Marcy, go aft and tell Morgan that that buoy ahead is a black one,"
said he, as soon as he had taken time to recover his wits. "Lay for'ard
some of us and cut away this useless canvas. The _Hattie_ ain't catched
yet, doggone it all. I tell you, lads, it takes somebody besides a
plodding, dollar-loving Yankee to get to windward of Lon Beardsley."

"The captain desired me to remind you that that buoy is a black one, and
you want to leave it to port," said Marcy, taking his stand beside the
man at the wheel. "Who fired that shot? It came from this end of the
vessel."

"The second mate fired it," replied Morgan, "and he done it just in the
nick of time