nwieldy
body. There is no living creature to which I can easily compare it. I
should judge it would have weighed a ton,--more perhaps; for it was
immensely thick and broad: though the head struck me as very small for
its bulk otherwise.

"Now, all together!" whispered Raed. "Aim at its body above and back
of its forward flippers. Ready! Fire!"

We let drive. The great creature gave a hoarse grunt, and, raising
itself on its finlike legs, floundered over into the sea.

"Round the ledge!" shouted Kit. "He won't get far, I don't believe!"

Guard was tearing down, barking loudly; and we had started to run,
when, above the shouting and barking, the sudden boom of a cannon was
heard.

"Hark!" cried Weymouth.

"Hold on, hold on, fellows!" Raed exclaimed.

"Wasn't that our howitzer?" Donovan asked. "Sounded like it."

"It's the cap'n firing, for a joke, to let us know he heard us,"
Weymouth suggested.

"Oh! he wouldn't do that," replied Raed.

"Of course he wouldn't!" exclaimed Donovan. "He ain't that sort of a
man!"

"That's a summons!" said Wade, coming hurriedly back up the rocks; for
he and Kit were a little ahead. "Put for the top of the ledges up
here! We can see from there!"

We had got twenty yards, perhaps, when a second loud report made the
rocks rattle to it.

"There's trouble!" exclaimed Wade at my heels, as we climbed up the
steep side.

An undefinable fear had blanched all our faces. Scarcely had the
echoes of the gun died out among the crags when another heavier report
made the islet jar under our feet.

"Oh, there!" exclaimed Raed despairingly.

Donovan was a step ahead; but Kit and I sprang past him now. Another
shelving incline of forty or fifty yards, and the blue sea burst into
view over the rocks. My eyes burned in their sockets from the violent
exertion. At first I saw only "The Curlew" with her great white sails
both broadside to us, and our bright gay flag streaming out. A glance
showed that she had been brought round, and that the sails were
flapping wildly. A jet of flame streamed out from her side; and, like
a warning-call, the sharp report crashed on our ears, infinitely
louder now we had gained the top. All this in a second.

"Why! what is it?" I exclaimed. Turning, I saw them all staring off to
the west.

Heavens! there, under full sail, was a large ship not two miles off!
How like the shadow of doom she loomed up! and how suddenly white the
faces of Kit and Wade just beyo