d eluded her foe
only to run, ten seconds later, upon a submerged sand bar. It was now
the Carolinians' turn to cheer, though it soon appeared that they might
better have saved their breath for other purposes. The _Henry_, unable
to check her speed, ran straight ahead, and hardly a minute after her
enemy's mishap was hard aground twenty yards away. Both sloops lay
careened to starboard, so that the whole deck of the _Henry_ offered a
fair target for Bonnet's musketry, while the _Royal James's_ port side
was thrown up, a stout defence against the small-arm fire of Rhett's
men. Owing to the slant of their decks it was impossible to train the
cannon of either ship.

The _Sea Nymph_, meanwhile, in an effort to cut off the course of the
pirate, had put over straight for the channel mouth, and before she
could come about her bows also were fast in the sand, and she lay stern
toward the other two, but out of musket-shot, unable to take a hand in
the hot fight that followed. Had either the _Henry's_ crew or the
buccaneers been able to send a proper broadside from their position, it
seems that they must surely have blown their foe out of water, though we
need, of course, to make allowance for the comparative feebleness of
their ordnance in contrast to that of the present day.

The stranding of the three vessels had occupied so short a time that the
little group of witnesses high up in the bow of the _Indian Queen_ had
not yet exchanged a word. Clinging to the rail, open-mouthed, they had
seen the pirate make her bold dash across the bows of her pursuers, only
to strike the bar in her instant of triumph, then following with the
quickness of events in a dream, the grounding first of the _Henry_,
afterwards of the _Nymph_.

Nor was there an appreciable pause in the spectacle, for the pirates,
who had been shooting steadily during the race down river, wasted no
time in trying to get off the bar, but raked their nearby adversaries'
deck with a withering fire. Rhett's crew tumbled into the scuppers,
where they were under the partial cover of the bulwark, but many were
killed, even before they could reach this shelter, and living and dead
rolled down together, as in a ghastly comedy.

CHAPTER XXII

The boys, intent upon this awful scene, turned as a shout from Job
Howland swelled above the uproar. The big gunner was at the breach of
his swivel-gun, ramrod in hand. The little group scattered to one side
or the other, leavi