Читать книгу The Captain from Connecticut онлайн

44 страница из 86

"Try again, Mr. Murray," said Peabody--the guns were already being wiped and the powder charges rammed in.

He climbed up on the bulwark close behind the starboard, balancing with his hand on the mizzen rigging. The gun went off with a bang, while Peabody's keen eyes searched the line of flight. There it was! Like a momentary pencil mark--come and gone in a flash--upon the seascape, he could see the ball rise to the top of its trajectory, and drop again to the sea, where a minute white spot marked its fall.

"Half a mile short," called Peabody. "But the aim was good. Try again."

The captain of the other gun had badly misjudged the roll of the ship--his shot plunged into the side of a wave not two cables' lengths away, in plain sight of everyone. Impatiently Murray thrust him on one side, and bent over the breach of the gun himself. Peabody watched the firing from his point of vantage; he was able to mark the fall of about half the shot fired, and nothing went nearer than a hundred yards from the target, as far as he could see, and he expected little else on that heaving sea, and with that gale blowing. But the firing was warming up the guns, so that they would soon be shooting with more power and so that the lock mechanisms would soon begin to function--no one could be expected to judge the roll of the ship accurately when firing with a match, so that at least two seconds elapsed between the intention to fire and the explosion.