Under the insistent and continuous urgence of the captain the men on the schooner replied with the Long Tom in her stern, and, when one of the shots swept the deck of the sloop, the fierce, dark sailors shouted in joy.

Robert saw with a sinking of the heart that the gap between the two vessels was still widening, while almost the last star was gone from the heavens, and it was now so dark that everything was hidden a few hundred yards away.
"We'll lose her! We'll lose her yet!" cried the captain.

"Winds and the night fight for us.

See you, Peter, we must be the chosen children of fortune, for this can hardly be chance!" Robert said nothing, because it seemed for the time at least that the captain's words were true.

A sudden and tremendous gust of wind caught the schooner and drove her on, ragged and smashed though she was, at increased speed, while the same narrow belt of wind seemed to miss the sloop.