There seemed nothing to mar the success of the gun-boat
in her efforts to prevent the steamship entering the harbor. Dan could
judge of this better than any one else. And yet he kept on. His
spirit dominated the entire vessel. Virginia, as she watched him, with
all that anger that a loser must feel, knew that she was brave, too,
felt that to be otherwise would be a sacrilege. Suddenly her eyes were
riveted on the Captain; she saw him run to the megaphone rack and take
up a cone. Then she saw him dash it to the deck and turn and speak a
few words to the man still kneeling at the wheel. The man nodded and
moved aside, and Dan took his place, erect, immovable.
As he did so, the pursuing gun-boat, not more than four hundred yards
away, let fly another rain of lead, and a few minutes later she slowed
down, swinging broadside across the course of the _Tampico_, firing a
six-pounder shell over the bow of the advancing steamship.
"Too late, too late!" exclaimed Mr. Howland. "All this trouble and
danger for nothing! Now we are caught! But some one will pay--"
His daughter seized his arm.
"Father! Oh, father! We are not stopping. Look!"
It was true. The _Tampico_ was not stopping; she swept on as if
endowed throughout all her length of great black hull with her master's
burning energy and fierce resolve to succeed.
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