swabbing the guns were laid handy. In the
galley the cook made hot grog. Cutlasses were looked after, pistols
cleaned and loaded and muskets set out for close firing. Jeremy was sent
hither and thither on every imaginable mission, a tremendous excitement
running in his veins.

The sloop gained rapidly on her prey, hauling over to windward as she
sailed, and when the two ships were almost within cannon range, Stede
Bonnet with his own hand bent the "Jolly Roger" to the lanyard and sent
the great black flag with its skull and crossbones to fly from the
masthead. The grog was served out. No man would have believed that the
roaring, rollicking gang of cutthroats who tossed off their liquor in
cheers and ribald laughter was identical with the grumbling, sour-faced
crew of twenty hours before. As they finished, something came skipping
over the water astern and the first echoing report followed close. The
cannonade was on.

A loud yell of defiance swept the length of the _Royal James_ as the men
went to their posts. The gun decks ran along both sides of the sloop a
few feet above the water line. They were like alleyways beneath the main
deck, barely wide enough to admit the passage of a man or a keg of
powder behind the gun-carriages. These latter were not fixed to the
planking as afterward became the fashion, but ran on trucks and were
kept in their places by rope tackles. In action, the recoil had to be
taken up by men who held the ends of these ropes, rove through pulleys
in the vessel's side. Despite their efforts the gun would sometimes leap
back against the bulkhead hard enough to shatter it. As the charge for
each reloading had to be carried sometimes half the length of the ship
by hand, it is easy to see that the men who served the guns needed some
strength and agility in getting past the jumping carriages.

Jeremy was sent below to help the gunners, as the shot from the
merchantman continued to scream by. Job Howland was a gunner on the port
side and the boy naturally lent his services to the one man aboard that
he could call his friend. There was much bustle in the alley behind the
closed ports but surprisingly little confusion was apparent. The
discipline seemed better than at any time since the boy had been brought
aboard the black sloop.

Job was ramming the wad home on the charge of powder in his bow gun. The
other four guns in the port deck were being loaded at the same time,
three men tending each one.