d forward and sponged the gun. At that moment Raoul found leisure
to walk a yard or two toward the rear, in order to ascertain if the
cover of Ghita were sufficient. The girl was on her knees, lost to all
around her; though, could he have read her heart, he would have found it
divided between entreaties to the Deity and love for himself.

The lugger sustained no harm. O'Leary had overshot her, in his desire
to make his missiles reach. Not even a canister had lodged in her spars,
or torn her sails. The usual luck appeared to attend her, and the people
on board fought with renewed confidence and zeal. Not so with the
felucca, however. Here the fire of the English had been the most
destructive. The wary and calculating McBean had given his attention to
this portion of the French defences, and the consequences partook of the
sagacity and discretion of the man. A charge of canister had swept
across the felucca's decks, more than decimating Ithuel's small force;
for it actually killed one, and wounded three of his party.

But, the din once commenced, there was no leisure to pause. The fire was
kept up with animation on both sides, and men fell rapidly. The boats
cheered and pressed ahead, the water becoming covered with a wide
sheet of smoke.

In moments like this, the safest course for the assailants is to push
on. This the English did, firing and cheering at every fathom they
advanced, but suffering also. The constant discharge of the carronades,
and the total absence of wind, soon caused a body of smoke to collect in
front of the rock, while the English brought on with them another,
trailing along the water, the effect of their own fire. The two shrouds
soon united, and then there was a minute when the boats could only be
seen with indistinctness. This was Ithuel's moment. Perceiving that the
ten or twelve men who remained to him were engrossed with their muskets,
he pointed the two carronades himself, and primed them from the horns
which he had never quitted. For the felucca he felt no present concern.
Winchester and all the boats in the centre of the English line were most
in advance, the fire of the ruins urging them to the greatest exertion.
Then McBean, besides being more distant, could not cross the rock in
front of the felucca without making a circuit, and he must, as yet, be
ignorant of the existence of the impediment. Ithuel was cool and
calculating by nature, as well as by habit; but this immunity from
present