was just
in front. His heart seemed to beat almost as loudly as the cannonade
while he felt his way up the broken stones.

Panting with excitement, he struggled to the top and threw himself
forward to the southern edge.

A dull-gray, quiet sea met the dim line of the sky in the south. Halfway
between land and horizon, perhaps a league distant, Jeremy saw two vague
splotches of darkness. Then a sudden flame shot out from the smaller
one, on the right. Seconds elapsed before his waiting ear heard the
booming roar of the report. He looked for the bigger ship to answer in
kind, but the next flash came from the right as before. This time he
saw a bright sheet of fire go up from the vessel on the left,
illuminating her spars and topsails. The sound of the cannon was drowned
in an instant by a terrific explosion. Jeremy trembled on his rock. The
ships were in darkness for a moment after that first great flare, and
then, before another shot could be fired, little tongues of flame began
to spread along the hull and rigging of the larger craft. Little by
little the fire gained headway till the whole upper works were a single
great torch. By its light the victorious vessel was plainly visible. She
was a schooner-rigged sloop-of-war, of eighty or ninety tons' burden,
tall-masted and with a great sweep of mainsail. Below her deck the
muzzles of brass guns gleamed in the black ports. As the blazing ship
drifted helplessly off to the east, the sloop came about, and, to
Jeremy's amazement, made straight for the southern bay of the island. He
lay as if glued to his rock, watching the stranger hold her course up
the inlet and come head to wind within a dozen boat-lengths of the
shore.

CHAPTER IV

One of the first things a backwoods boy learns is that it pays to mind
your own business, _after_ you know what the other fellow is going to
do. Jeremy had been threshing his brain for a solution to the scene he
had just witnessed. Whether the crew of the strange sloop, just then
effecting a landing in small boats, were friends or enemies it was
impossible to guess. Jeremy feared for the sheep. Fresh meat would be
welcome to any average ship's crew, and the lad had no doubt that they
would use no scruple in dealing with a youngster of his age. He must
know who they were and whether they intended crossing the island. There
was no feeling of mere adventure in his heart now. It was purely sense
of duty that drove his trembling legs do