"Right, sir; your time's your own.

I'll manage." The dusk drooped early; a fair breeze was blowing, and the swift schooner loitered with the smacks.

Freeman sent up a rocket, the schooner's foresail was let over, and she rustled away through the squadron of brown-sailed craft.
"What's that, Freeman ?" asked Blair, as a rocket shot up from the Admiral's vessel.
"You'll see, sir, presently." The schooner lay hard over when the big topsails were put on her, and drew past one smack after another.

Then a dingy vessel broke suddenly into spots of fire; then another, then another.

Flares, torches--every kind of illumination was set going; the hands turned up, and a roar that reverberated from ship to ship was carried over the water.