s. The heavy reports
crashed through the darkness, the sounds rolling sullenly away, and not
every shot went wild. There was a tearing of sails, a splintering of
spars, a shattering of wood, and now and then the fall of a man. Under
the insistent and continuous urgence of the captain the men on the
schooner replied with the Long Tom in her stern, and, when one of the
shots swept the deck of the sloop, the fierce, dark sailors shouted in
joy. Robert saw with a sinking of the heart that the gap between the two
vessels was still widening, while almost the last star was gone from the
heavens, and it was now so dark that everything was hidden a few hundred
yards away.

"We'll lose her! We'll lose her yet!" cried the captain. "Winds and the
night fight for us. See you, Peter, we must be the chosen children of
fortune, for this can hardly be chance!"

Robert said nothing, because it seemed for the time at least that the
captain's words were true. A sudden and tremendous gust of wind caught
the schooner and drove her on, ragged and smashed though she was, at
increased speed, while the same narrow belt of wind seemed to miss the
sloop. The result was apparent at once. The gap between them became a
gulf. The flag flying so proudly on the topmast of the sloop was gone in
the dusk. Her spars and sails faded away, she showed only a dim, low
hulk on the water from which her guns flashed.

The schooner tacked again. A new bank of blackness poured down over the
sea, and the sloop was gone.

"It was a trap and we sailed straight into it," exclaimed the captain,
"but it couldn't hold us. We've escaped!"

He spoke the truth. They drove steadily on a long time, and saw no more
of the sloop of war.

CHAPTER VI

THE ISLAND

Robert came out of his benumbed state. It had all seemed a fantastic
dream, but he had only to look around him to know that it was reality.
Three or four battle lanterns were shining and they threw a ghostly
light over the deck of the schooner, which was littered with spars and
sails, and the bodies of men who had fallen before the fire of the
sloop. Streams of blood flowed everywhere. He sickened and shuddered
again and again.

The captain, a savage figure, stained with blood, showed ruthless
energy. Driving the men who remained unwounded, he compelled them to cut
away the wreckage and to throw the dead overboard. Garrulous, possessed
by some demon, he boasted to them of many prizes they would yet tak