ve their heads. Instinctively they ducked, the glasses falling from
their hands. Ten seconds later Ross ventured to look up. Vernon was
still holding his hands over his face. Then slowly he, too, opened his
eyes.

The lads smiled sadly at each other, picked up their binoculars, and
somewhat shamefacedly resumed their former positions.

It was their baptism of heavy gun-fire. A 42-centimetre shell had
ricochetted and leapt full twenty feet above their heads.

Captain Syllenger was standing a few paces from them. Luckily, thought
Ross, the skipper's back was turned, and he had not noticed the action
of his young subordinates. But Trefusis was wrong. The Captain had
seen them. Out of consideration, for he remembered his own sensations
when first under fire, he affected not to notice the temporary panic
that had overtaken the midshipmen.

The _Capella_ was now running at half speed, in a direction parallel to
the shore. All around, the sea was torn by the falling projectiles,
most of which were sufficiently large to send her to the bottom like a
stone. Yet, beyond the wounding of her wireless operator, the loss of
her signalling-mast, and the shattering of one of her boats, she came
off lightly. Although not the object of the hostile guns, she narrowly
escaped several ricochets, until, at a signal from the senior officer,
the patrol-vessels withdrew to a safer distance.

One of the monitors, too, was slowly steaming seawards, well down by
the bows and smoke issuing from her fo'c'sle, while her single funnel
was riddled like a sieve.

"Sea-plane returning, sir!" announced Sub-lieutenant Fox.

Flying at an altitude of about a thousand feet, one of the aerial
scouts was making towards the line of patrol-vessels. She was flying
steadily; her motor was purring rhythmically; a trail of thin bluish
smoke from her exhaust belied the suggestion of an overheated engine.
Yet something must have taken place for her to have quitted her
observation station.

Promptly Captain Syllenger gave orders for the _Capella's_ motors to
stop, then "Easy astern" until way was off the ship.

Making a graceful volplane, the sea-plane alighted with a faint splash
upon the surface of the water, and "taxied" to leeward of the
motionless vessel.

The sea-plane was a "two-seater". The rearmost or observer's seat was
unoccupied. In the foremost was a young Flight-Sub-lieutenant heavily
clad, and his clean-shaven face almost hidden