ply _had_ to give it up!"

As they now slowly steamed up the beautiful bay it was almost like
sailing over a mill-pond, after the past roughness, for it lay still
beneath the vertical sun, and was thronged with shipping of every
description and nationality. Presently there came a reverberation that
seemed to ricochet from rock and wave, and a little girl cried blankly,

"Oh dear! Are they firing at us?"

But an officer called out,

"No, it's a Russian corvette, saluting. See its dragon flag of black
and yellow? Now--watch!"

He pointed shorewards just as a puff of white smoke issued from an
innocent-looking clump of trees on the rocky hillside, which preceded
the sound of an answering boom from the iron lips of the fortress.
This was repeated many times, the hoarse cannon barks alternating
between gun-ship and shore, in an awe-inspiring exchange of courtesies.
As the girls grew used to the thunderous sounds they delighted to
speculate from which bastion, or ledge, or flowering bush, would come
that little puff of smoke, to be followed by the lightning and thunder
of man's invention, scarcely less terrible than those of nature's cloud
contests.

"I'm glad to have seen it," said Faith somewhat tremulously, when the
salvo was over. "It gives one some idea of what it might be if that
fortress were really firing for business. Just think how dreadful!"

"But do tell me," cried her sister, "how can trees and shrubs grow so
luxuriantly on that rocky soil, and what keeps the houses from blowing
off some of those steep cliffs? Do you know, I never supposed there
were any houses, before. I thought, from the pictures, that the rock
went straight up out of the water, with the fort stuck on top, like a
thimble on a big chocolate caramel. But here's a regular town."

Mr. Lawrence laughed.

"It's odd, the ideas we get of places till we see them! To be sure,
the rock is nearly perpendicular to the north and east, but here, as
you see, it makes a long slope to the water's edge, and the cliff is
broken into many elevations. Of course, you'll go ashore and take a
closer look at it all?"

"Yes, father's going with us. We'll be here quite a while to take on
coal, and he wants us to see the galleries, and the signal-station."

"And I want to see the tailless monkeys," added Dwight, as he joined
them. "We'll have a procession to brag of, for nearly everybody's
going ashore. Mr. Malcolm's to lead the van with the chil