"Steady, steady now," cried the young captain. His mate was steady at
the helm until a musket ball or two ran past them.

"Let go!" shouted the captain. "Swing your bonnet. Let them know
you're a woman and they won't fire on _you_."

The little mate stood erect. She waved her pink flag of a sun-bonnet.
Distinctly the soldiers saw the pink frock of Anna Kull; they saw her
long hair as the sea breeze lifted it when she shook her pink banner.

A second, two, three went by as the girl stood there, and then a flash
was seen on the bank, a musket-ball ran through the bonnet of the
little mate, and the waves of air rattled along the shore.

The bonnet was in the sea; Anna had dropped to her seat and caught the
helm in her left hand.

"Cowards!" cried Valentine, for want of a stronger word, and then he
fell to working the boat on its way. The tide helped them now; it
swung the boat over toward the Jersey shore.

The firing from Staten Island called out the inhabitants on the Jersey
coast. They watched the approaching boat with interest. Everything
depended now on the cow's lying still, on the boy's strength, on the
meeting of the tides. If he could reach there before the tide came up
all would be well; otherwise it would sweep him off again toward the
island.

"Can't you row?" asked Valentine, at length.

"Bub, I can't," said Anna, her voice shaking out the words. It was the
first time she had spoken since she sat down.

"Are you hurt?" he questioned.

"I tremble so," she answered, and turned her face away.

"I reckon we'd better help that boy in," said a Jersey fisherman as he
watched, and he put off in a small boat.

"Don't come near! Keep off! keep off!" called Valentine, as he saw him
approach. "I've a cow in here."

The fisherman threw him a rope, and that rope saved them. The dewy
smell of the grassy banks had aroused the cow. She was stirring.

The land was very near now; close at hand. "Hurry! hurry!" urged the
lad, as they were drawing him in. Before the cow had time to rise, the
boat touched land.

"You'd better look after that girl," said the fisherman, who had towed
the boat. The poor child was holding, fast wrapped in the remnants of
her pink frock, her bleeding hand. The musket ball that shot away her
bonnet grazed her wrist.

"Never mind me," she said, when they were pitying her. "The cow is
safe."

The same evening, while, in Philadelphia, bonfires were blazing, bells
ringing, cannon boomi