Page:Under three flags; a story of mystery (IA underthreeflagss00tayliala).pdf/185

 red, white and blue still snapping defiantly at the masthead.

"I wonder if the Don can turn in five times his own length," observes the sententious Mr. Beals, as he watches the warship slowly getting under way.

Whether he can or cannot is not at this time to be demonstrated. The cruiser makes no attempt to about ship, but another report booms from the forward gun, followed a second or two later by one from the aft barbette, and a solid shot ricochets along the waves astern of the Semiramis and plunges beneath the water an eighth of a mile distant.

Van Zandt grows grave as he realizes the significance of this last shot, but a glance at the receding cruiser convinces him of the futility of the cannonade. The Spaniard, too, appears convinced, and the cruiser is soon lost to view in the expanse of ocean.

The rest of the day the Semiramis holds unmolested her course for the mountain-girth shores of Cuba. As night draws on the engines are slowed, and, with fires banked and double watch posted, the yacht quietly rocks on the bosom of the deep. A wavy outline on the horizon indicates the southern coast of the revolution-racked isle and somewhere on that outline is the sequestered little harbor of Cantero.

It is a weary, an unnerving vigil, for Don Manada at least. For hours his anxious gaze sweeps the horizon, while the Semiramis rides the breasting waves as gracefully as a summer bird soars into the blue.

As the first shafts of light radiate from the emerging disk, Louise Hathaway, whom the unwonted excitement of the preceding day has driven early from her pillow, cries out with a girlish enthusiasm that brings a smile to the face of Capt. Beals: "Sail ho! Sail ho!"

Every one springs to rail or rigging. "Where away?" is the quick challenge of Mr. Beals.

"Right there, sir," is the unnautical response of Miss Hathaway, and she indicates a point not five degrees north of the rising orb of day.

With the glass at his eyes, the taciturn commander of