no way, so we had better make the best and most
of it, get what information we can, and then be off back to the
rendezvous to wait for the others, and start for the ships directly they
appear. Give way again, boys; but be silent for your very lives' sake."

Therewith they went swiftly and silently forward again, and shortly
afterward came close alongside a ship for which they had been cautiously
steering. They discovered that she was a Spanish war-vessel, and her
very presence there suggested a plate fleet, which she was probably
destined to convoy.

After pulling very cautiously round her, and ascertaining her strength,
they made off toward another group of lights, and, on arrival there,
found another war-ship. This craft was apparently a sister ship to the
first one they had seen, and of the same strength.

Having ascertained this, and seeing no more lights but such as lay in
the tracks of the other two boats, they turned the bows of the boat
seaward, and, finding that it was well-nigh time for them to be at their
rendezvous, pulled vigorously in that direction. They had taken but a
few strokes when, from somewhere behind them in the town, they heard a
distant clamour, suggestive of voices calling and shouting.

"Listen a moment," said Story. "Stop pulling, lads; I want to hear what
that is going on behind there."

The men lay on their oars, and all strained their ears, listening.
Presently the sound rose from a dull murmur to one of greater volume,
and a trumpet pealed out from the shore, answered almost immediately
afterwards by one from each of the warships; and suddenly, from one of
the batteries, a flash of fire rushed out, illuminating for a few
seconds, as does a flash of lightning, the whole bay, and then came the
dull report of the gun.

"Now, men," said the lieutenant, "give way; give way for your lives!
They have discovered the escape of those other fellows, and will find us
also, if we are not out quickly. Resistance to such overwhelming odds
as we should meet with would be hopeless; so pull, put your backs into
it and make her move!"

Lights now began to flash out from all parts of the bay, disclosing the
presence of vessels which they had not supposed to be there; and,
indeed, it seemed as though they were surrounded on all sides by craft
of all rigs and sizes. How they had threaded their way in without
falling foul of some of them now seemed a mystery. They prayed
fervently that the oth