The _Chicken_ was doing her best. Pent's posture at the wheel seemed to
indicate that her best was about thirty-four knots. In his eagerness he
was braced as if he alone was taking in a 10,000 ton battleship through
Hell Gate.
But the _Chicken_ was not too far in the rear and Pent could see
clearly that he was to have no minor part to play. Some of the antique
shells had struck the _Holy Moses_ and he could see the escaped steam
shooting up from her. She lay close inshore and was lashing out with
four six-pounders as if this was the last opportunity she would have to
fire them. She had made the Spanish gunboats very sick. A solitary gun
on the one moored to the wharf was from time to time firing wildly;
otherwise the gunboats were silent. But the beach in front of the town
was a line of fire. The _Chicken_ headed for the _Holy Moses_ and, as
soon as possible, the six-pounder in her bow began to crack at the
gunboat moored to the wharf.
In the meantime, the _Chancellorville_ prowled off the bar, listening
to the firing, anxious, acutely anxious, and feeling her impotency in
every inch of her smart steel frame. And in the meantime, the
_Adolphus_ squatted on the waves and brazenly waited for news. One
could thoughtfully count the seconds and reckon that, in this second
and that second, a man had died--if one chose. But no one did it.
Undoubtedly, the spirit was that the flag should come away with honour,
honour complete, perfect, leaving no loose unfinished end over which
the Spaniards could erect a monument of satisfaction, glorification.
The distant guns boomed to the ears of the silent blue-jackets at their
stations on the cruiser.
The _Chicken_ steamed up to the _Holy Moses_ and took into her nostrils
the odour of steam, gunpowder and burnt things. Rifle bullets simply
steamed over them both. In the merest flash of time, Pent took into his
remembrance the body of a dead quartermaster on the bridge of his
consort. The two megaphones uplifted together, but Pent's eager voice
cried out first. "Are you injured, sir?"
"No, not completely. My engines can get me out after--after we have
sunk those gunboats." The voice had been utterly conventional but it
changed to sharpness. "Go in and sink that gunboat at anchor."
As the _Chicken_ rounded the _Holy Moses_ and started inshore, a man
called to him from the depths of finished disgust. "They're takin' to
their boats, sir." Pent looked and saw the men of the anchored gunboat
lower their boats and pull like mad for shore.
The _Chicken_, assisted by the _Holy Moses_, began a methodical
killing of the anchored gunboat. The Spanish infantry on shore fired
frenziedly at the _Chicken_. Pent, giving the wheel to a waiting sailor,
stepped out to a point where he could see the men at the guns. One
bullet spanged past him and into the pilot-house. He ducked his head
into the window. "That hit you, Murry?" he inquired with interest.
"No, sir," cheerfully responded the man at the wheel.
Pent became very busy superintending the fire of his absurd battery.
The anchored gunboat simply would not sink. It evinced that unnatural
stubbornness which is sometimes displayed by inanimate objects. The
gunboat at the wharf had sunk as if she had been scuttled but this
riddled thing at anchor would not even take fire. Pent began to grow
flurried--privately. He could not stay there for ever. Why didn't the
damned gunboat admit its destruction. Why----
He was at the forward gun when one of his engine room force came to him
and, after saluting, said serenely: "The men at the after-gun are all
down, sir."
It was one of those curious lifts which an enlisted man, without in any
way knowing it, can give his officer. The impudent tranquillity of the
man at once set Pent to rights and the stoker departed admiring the
extraordinary coolness of his captain.
The next few moments contained little but heat, an odour, applied
mechanics and an expectation of death. Pent developed a fervid and
amazed appreciation of the men, his men, men he knew very well, but
strange men. What explained them? He was doing his best because he was
captain of the _Chicken_ and he lived or died by the _Chicken_. But
what could move these men to watch his eye in bright anticipation of
his orders and then obey them with enthusiastic rapidity? What caused
them to speak of the action as some kind of a joke--particularly when
they knew he could overhear them? What manner of men? And he anointed
them secretly with his fullest affection.
Perhaps Pent did not think all this during the battle. Perhaps he
thought it so soon after the battle that his full mind became confused
as to the time. At any rate, it stands as an expression of his feeling.
The enemy had gotten a field-gun down to the shore and with it they
began to throw three-inch shells at the _Chicken_. In this war it was
usual that the down-trodden Spaniards in their ignorance should use
smokeless powder while the Americans, by the power of the consistent
everlasting three-ply, wire-woven, double back-action imbecility of a
hay-seed government, used powder which on sea and on land cried their
position to heaven, and, accordingly, good men got killed without
reason. At first, Pent could not locate the field-gun at all, but as
soon as he found it, he ran aft with one man and brought the after
six-pounder again into action. He paid little heed to the old gun crew.
One was lying on his face apparently dead; another was prone with a
wound in the chest, while the third sat with his back to the deck-house
holding a smitten arm. This last one called out huskily, "Give'm hell,
sir."
The minutes of the battle were either days, years, or they were flashes
of a second. Once Pent looking up was astonished to see three shell
holes in the _Chicken's_ funnel--made surreptitiously, so to speak....
"If we don't silence that field-gun, she'll sink us, boys." ... The
eyes of the man sitting with his back against the deck-house were
looking from out his ghastly face at the new gun-crew. He spoke with
the supreme laziness of a wounded man. "Give'm hell." ... Pent felt a
sudden twist of his shoulder. He was wounded--slightly.... The anchored
gunboat was in flames.