top falling over, its canvas sagging
in great folds. It was all the work of a second. That hasty
flight of iron, coming out of the air, thick as a flock of pigeons,
had gone through hull and rigging in a wink of the eye. And a fine
mess it had made.

Men lay scattered along the deck, bleeding, yelling, struggling.
There were two lying near us with blood spurting out of their
necks. One rose upon a knee, choking horribly, shaken with the
last throes of his flooded heart, and reeled over. The _Scorpion_
of our fleet had got her guns in action; the little _Ariel_ was
also firing. D'ri leaned over, shouting in my ear.

"Don't like th' way they 're whalin' uv us," he said, his cheeks
red with anger.

"Nor I," was my answer.

"Don't like t' stan' here an' dew nuthin' but git licked," he went
on. "'T ain' no way nat'ral."

Perry came hurrying forward.

"Fire!" he commanded, with a quick gesture, and we began to warm up
our big twenty-pounder there in the bow. But the deadly scuds of
iron kept flying over and upon our deck, bursting into awful
showers of bolt and chain and spike and hammerheads. We saw
shortly that our brig was badly out of gear. She began to drift to
leeward, and being unable to aim at the enemy, we could make no use
of the bow gun. Every brace and bowline cut away, her canvas torn
to rags, her hull shot through, and half her men dead or wounded,
she was, indeed, a sorry sight. The _Niagara_ went by on the safe
side of us, heedless of our plight. Perry stood near, cursing as
he looked off at her. Two of my gunners had been hurt by bursting
canister. D'ri and I picked them up, and made for the cockpit.
D'ri's man kept howling and kicking. As we hurried over the bloody
deck, there came a mighty crash beside us and a burst of old iron
that tumbled me to my knees.

A cloud of smoke covered us. I felt the man I bore struggle and
then go limp in my arms; I felt my knees getting warm and wet. The
smoke rose; the tall, herculean back of D'ri was just ahead of me.
His sleeve had been ripped away from shoulder to elbow, and a spray
of blood from his upper arm was flying back upon me. His hat crown
had been torn off, and there was a big rent in his trousers, but he
kept going, I saw my man had been killed in my arms by a piece of
chain, buried to its last link in his breast. I was so confused by
the shock of it all that I had not the sense to lay him down, but
followed D'ri to the cockpit.