There was a crash of rending iron and an instant stoppage of the engines.

Almost merging into the noise of the blow came a loud report from the land, but that, in its turn, was drowned by the hiss of steam from the exhaust.
Coke appeared to be dumfounded for an instant.

Recovering himself, he ran to the starboard side, leaned over, looked down at a torn plate that showed its jagged edges just above the water-line, and then lifted a blazing face toward a point half-way up the neighboring cliff, where a haze lay like a veil of gauze on the weather-scarred rocks.
"You d--d pirates!" he yelled, raising both clenched fists at the hidden battery which had fired a twelve-pound shell into the doomed ship.
The _Andromeda_ herself seemed to recognize that she was stricken unto death.

She fell away before the current with the aimless drift of a log.
"Let go!" bellowed Coke with frenzied pantomime of action to Hozier.
It was too late.

Before the lever controlling the steam windlass that released the anchor could be shoved over, another shell plunged through the thin iron plates in the bows, smashing a steam pipe, and jamming the hawser gear by its impact.