ere with Clif fully realized the task which was
before them.

It was then about dusk, and the night was coming on rapidly. Two of the
men were stationed as lookouts, and the other two took the wheel.

Clif set to work to try to calculate as best he could how far and in
what direction he was from Key West; he wished to take no chances of
running ashore or getting lost.

Those, and the possibility of collision, seemed the only dangers that
had to be guarded against; the possibility of meeting a Spanish vessel
was not considered, for the chance seemed very remote.

The two lookouts were both stationed in the bow. That fact and the other
just mentioned sufficed to account for the fact that the real danger
that threatened the crew of the merchantman was not thought of or
guarded against in the least.

For Clif had no way of knowing that any trouble was to come from behind
him; but coming it was, and in a hurry.

Within the shelter of a narrow inlet just to one side of the batteries
that had made so much trouble for the Uncas had lain hidden and
unsuspected an object that was destined to play an important part in the
rest of the present story.

It was a Spanish gunboat, of much the same kind as the Uncas, only
smaller. Hidden by the land, her officers had eagerly watched the
struggle we have just seen.

The Spanish vessel had not ventured out to take part, for one important
reason; she had not steam up. But she would probably not have done so
anyhow, for the Uncas was the stronger of the two.

And so venturing out would have been little better than suicide. The
Spanish captain had a plan that put that one far in the shade.

The Uncas was still visible down the shore, and the merchantman had
hardly gotten well started out to sea before great volumes of black
smoke began to pour from the furnaces of the Spaniard.

Her men worked like fiends; sailors pitched in to help the firemen
handle coal, while the shores of the dark little inlet flared brightly
with the gleam of the furnaces.

Meanwhile the officers with their glasses were feverishly watching the
distant steamer, now hull down to the north, and almost invisible in the
darkness.

It was about half an hour later, perhaps even less, that that Spanish
gunboat weighed her anchor and stole silently out to the open sea.

She breasted the fierce waves at the entrance to the inlet boldly. A
minute later she was plowing her way through the storming sea. It was
dark