Читать книгу The Captain from Connecticut онлайн

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For some time he had been subconsciously noting the fall of the shot as the stern chasers banged away, and now suddenly his attention was called to the business with a jerk. The brief vision of the flying ball coincided with the two-decker a mile astern, and terminated there.

"Good shot, Mr. Murray!" he called. "You hit her fair!"

Murray turned a smiling face back to him, unconscious that the fumes from the vent of the gun had stained his face as black as a negro's. One of the hands was leaping about on the quarterdeck shaking his fists above his head. Peabody's hope that the hit might goad the two-decker into yawing again to use her broadside proved ill-founded; the two-decker held on her course inexorably, driven by the gale. In half an hour she had gained a quarter of a mile, and in an hour she was no more than half a mile astern. Peabody sent the crew by watches to have their dinners--he did not want the men to have empty stomachs while they fought, although he himself felt not the slightest need for food. He walked round the spar deck to see that every carronade was properly manned. With no chance of employing the main-deck guns he could have fifteen men at every carronade, quite enough to ensure that no carronade would get loose during the battle. And at every carronade there was a good gunlayer--most of them had learned their duty in the British Fleet--and still Hubbard had a hundred men under his orders to attend to the working of the ship.