Next moment there was a bright yellow flash and a reverberating boom. The shell was seen to strike the water some twenty yards in front of the Dutchman's bows, sending up a small pillar of foaming water. But the stranger, instead of stopping, suddenly altered her course, and a cloud of black smoke which began to pour out of her funnel showed that she was firing up. "All right!" ejaculated the skipper. "But we'll cop her yet. Looks suspicious, her cuttin' away like that. Climb on the fo'c'sle and signal that if she don't stop we'll sink her!" Lawless descended the ladder, staggered across the slippery, reeling deck, and mounted the fo'c'sle head. Crooking one arm round a stay to steady himself, he jerked out the signal in a somewhat uneven succession of dots and dashes. Still the stranger made no answering signal, and at last he climbed down. "Put a shot through her funnel!" yelled Chard. The gunner breathed hard as he adjusted the sights and waited till the _O47_ swung up for a second on an even keel. Bang! The shell sped true, for where the Dutchman's funnel had stood there was now only a jagged stump of metal, with columns of smoke issuing out of it. Also her captain had seen fit to slow down at last. "Mr. Lawless, I'm going alongside," shouted the skipper from the wheelhouse. "Serve out cutlasses and revolvers, in case the Dutchmen start to play monkey-tricks." The Lieutenant served out the weapons, after which he climbed on the fo'c'sle head to help bring the trawler alongside her quarry. It needed no little skill and judgment to accomplish this in such weather and with darkness coming on. The high bows of the _O47_, towering above the low decks of the _Gelderland_ as the trawler came racing up, threatened to crash right into the Dutchman and cut her in twain amidships, but the trawler's engines were reversed in the nick of time, and her stern slewed round so that the two vessels lay alongside each other. Skipper Chard dropped on the _Gelderland's_ deck just as the Captain--a short, stout man--came puffing down from his bridge in a violent temper. "Vat for you do that?" he demanded, pointing to the smashed funnel. "Why didn't you stop when I ordered you?" "Because I saw not any signal. The first thing I know is--plump!--and then vat you call the chiminey is proken." "You mean to say you didn't know I sent a shot over your bows?" demanded Chard incredulously. "I see noddings," answered the Captain. "But you haff done big damages, and I will make you pay." "Oh! will you, my son?" replied the other. "We'll see about that, but in the meantime I must see your papers." The Captain promptly led the way to the chart-room and produced his papers with an alacrity that was calculated to disarm the most suspicious investigator. According to them, the _Gelderland_ had cleared at Amsterdam for Boston with general cargo. "H'm!" grunted Chard, as he looked at the papers. "How long have you been coming up the Channel?"