"Look out!" We caught a momentary glimpse of the shot high in air, and held our breaths again as it came whirling down with a quick _thud_ into the sea a few hundred feet astern, and a little beyond us.
"Gracious!" cried Kit.

"If that had struck on the deck, it would have gone down, clean down through, I do believe!" "Not so bad as that, I guess," said the captain.

"That heap of sand-ballast in the hold would stop it, I reckon." "Think so ?" "Oh, yes!" There was real comfort in that thought.

It was therefore with diminished apprehension that we saw a fourth shot come roaring down a cable's length forward, and beyond the bows, and, a few seconds after, heard the dull boom following the shot.

The report was always two or three seconds behind the ball.
They fired three more of the "high ones," as Kit called them.