Page:Ballantyne--The Pirate City.djvu/400

378 vessels cruised about, directing their fire where it seemed to be most needed, and the flotilla of mortar and rocket boats were distributed at the openings between the line-of-battle ships and the mole.

This admirable disposition of the force seemed to inspire the men with additional confidence, if such were possible, but ere long the dense smoke rendered everything invisible beyond a few yards' distance from the actors in the tremendous fight.

In a few minutes after opening fire, the Queen Charlotte had reduced the fortifications on the mole-head to ruins. She then brought her broadside to bear on the batteries over the gate leading to the mole and on the upper works of the lighthouse. Her shot told on it with fatal accuracy, crumbling the tower and bringing down gun after gun, thus proving that the ball-practice on the voyage out had not been undertaken in vain. Indeed, so expert did some of the gunners find themselves that they actually amused themselves at one part of the day in attempting to hit the Algerine flagstaff!

It chanced that, owing to some alteration in the arrangements, our friend Rais Ali was transferred from the battery on the walls, where he had originally been stationed, to that on the lighthouse, and when he beheld gun after gun tumbling helplessly over the crumbling parapets, his spirit fired, and he amazed his comrades by displaying a disregard of