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 The inlet mouth was flanked and dotted with dangerous shoals; the tide, though flooding, was still very low; there was water in the brig's hold so that her draught was greater than normal and she steered sluggishly. It was all but certain that she would smash upon the reefs.

"I am saved the trouble of dropping you overboard," Falcon had said carelessly. "A little while now and we shall all be frolicking among the fishes."

Lachlan looked astern. The Merry Amy had come about and lay broadside on. Then slowly her bow swung landward, her yards were squared, and the chase was on once more. But Lowther was shortening sail rapidly now, and Lachlan saw a seaman in the ship's bow heaving the lead.

"He'll follow us in till the water shoals," growled Falcon. "Then he'll tack and watch us drown."

The minutes passed. Lachlan heard the hiss of the waves, the whine of the wind, the wailing of a wounded man somewhere forward, the groaning and creaking of the brig's straining spars. Yet, now that the guns were still and there came no more the crash of timbers disintegrating under a hail of iron, it seemed to him that they moved through a silence, grim, unnatural, unbearable.

It was more terrible than the tumult of the fight, this silence; it was portentous, black with fate; somehow he knew that it could not last and that after it would come the end.