A shell splashed to port, a shell splashed to starboard.

For an instant David stood staring wide-eyed at the greyhound of a boat that ate up the distance between them, at the jets of smoke and stabs of flame that sprang from her bow, at the figures crouched behind her gunwale, firing in volleys.
To David it came suddenly, convincingly, that in a dream he had lived it all before, and something like raw poison stirred in David, something leaped to his throat and choked him, something rose in his brain and made him see scarlet.

He felt rather than saw young Carr kneeling at the box of ammunition, and holding a shell toward him.

He heard the click as the breech shut, felt the rubber tire of the brace give against the weight of his shoulder, down a long shining tube saw the pursuing gun-boat, saw her again and many times disappear behind a flash of flame.

A bullet gashed his forehead, a bullet passed deftly through his forearm, but he did not heed them.