to give 'em a taste of the machine-guns;" and we
re-entered the conning-tower. Then, as we began to move again, I swept
the horizon with our light; but this time, far away over the black
waste of water, the signal was answered.

"Number two!" said Black quite calmly, when I told him, "and this time
a battle-ship. Well, boy, if we don't take that oil yonder in ten
minutes you may say your prayers."

CHAPTER XXV.

THE DUMB MAN SPEAKS.

He put up the helm as he spoke, and brought our head round so that we
were in a position to have rammed the cruiser had we chosen. This was
not Black's object. He desired first to cripple her completely, then to
finish her with the Maxim guns.

"Now, let's see what that Scotsman's worth," he cried, as he laid down
his cigar, and spoke through one of the tubes. Almost with his words
the tower shook with the thunder, the twenty-nine ton gun in the fore
turret belched forth flame, and the hissing shell struck the steamer
over her very magazine. We waited for a response, but none came. She
had received the shot, as it proved, right on her great gun; and the
weapon lay shivered and useless, cast quite free from its carriage,
while dead men were around it in heaps.

"Dick's earned his dinner," said Black, taking up his cigar again, as
he rang twice, and the men rushed to the small guns, and prepared to
get them into action. "We'll give 'em a little hail this time, for they
haven't the cover we have. If we don't get aboard before the other
comes up, they get the trick."

The nameless ship bounded forward into the night as he spoke, and, soon
coming up with the helm a-starboard, she was not fifty yards away from
her long opponent when the deadly steel storm began its havoc. For our
part, the men had cover of a sort in the fore-top, and there were steel
screens round the deck-guns; but when the cruiser replied with her own
small arms many fell; and groans, and shrieks, and curses rose, and
were audible even to us in the tower. Never have I known anything akin
to that terrible episode when bullets rang upon our decks in hundreds,
and the dead and the living in the other ship lay huddled together, in
a seething, struggling, moaning mass. For she had little cover, being a
cruiser, and we had opened fire upon her before such of her men as
could be spared had got below.

"Let 'em digest that!" cried Black, as he watched the havoc, and puffed
away with serene calmness amidst the stress o