"No hope," replied Mr. Gibney. "Fight and die is the last resort. She's eight miles astern and gainin' every minute, and when she's within two miles she'll open fire. Of course we won't be hit unless they've got a Yankee gunner aboard." "Let's run up the Stars and Stripes and dare 'em to fire on us," said Captain Scraggs. "No," said Mr. Gibney firmly, "my old man died for the flag an' I've sailed under it too long to hide behind it when I'm in Dutch. We'll fight. If you was ever navigatin' officer on a Colombian gunboat, Scraggs, you'd realize what it means to run from a Mexican." Captain Scraggs said nothing further. Perhaps he was a little ashamed of himself in the face of Mr. Gibney's simple faith in his own ability; perhaps in his veins, all unknown, there flowed a taint of the heroic blood of some forgotten sea-dog. Be that as it may, something did swell in his breast when Mr. Gibney spoke of the flag and his scorning to hide behind it, and Scraggs's snaggle teeth came together with a snap. "All right, Gib, my boy," he said solemnly, "I'm with you. Mrs. Scraggs has slipped her cable and there ain't nobody to mourn for me. But if we can't fight under the Stars and Stripes, by the tail of the Great Sacred Bull, we'll have a flag of our own," and leaving Mr. Gibney and the crew to get the guns on deck, Captain Scraggs ran below. He appeared on deck presently with a long blue burgee on which was emblazoned in white letters the single word _Maggie_. It was his own houseflag, and with trembling hands he ran it to the fore and cast its wrinkled folds to the breeze of heaven. "Good old dishcloth!" shrieked Mr. Gibney. "She never comes down." "Damned if she does," said Captain Scraggs profanely. While all this was going on a deckhand had reeved a block and tackle through the end of the cargo gaff and passed it to the winch. The two guns came out of the hold in jig time, and while Scraggs and one deckhand opened the after hold and got out ammunition for the guns, Mr. Gibney, assisted by the other deckhand, proceeded to put one of the guns together. He was shrewd enough to realize that he would have to do practically all of the work of serving the gun himself, in view of which condition one gun would have to defend the _Maggie_. He had never seen a mountain gun before, but he did not find it difficult to put the simple mechanism together. "Now, then, Scraggsy," he announced cheerfully when the gun was finally assembled on the carriage, "get a sizeable timber an' spike it to the centre o' the deck. I'll run the trail spade up against that cleat an' that'll keep the recoil from lettin' the gun go backward, clean through the opposite rail and overboard. Gimme a coupler gallons o' distillate and some waste, somebody. This cosmoline's got to come out o' the tube an' out o' the breech mechanism before we commence shootin'."