“Yes, sir. But I think I’d like to stay, anyway,” said Jerry; for he was down under the wind, and he was very tired. “Right-o, my hearty.” The man untied the rope. “Now we can lie yard and yard, but mind you keep quiet, ’cause I’m dead for sleep. One wiggle, and out you go. All quiet below decks. That’s discipline and them’s man-o’-war orders.” The sailor turned down the lantern, and settled himself with a grunt. IV JERRY MAKES A TOUR The norther certainly was slackening off, as if it had blown itself out. The wind died to a fitful breeze, and this itself finally ceased. There was a dead calm. Overhead the stars sparkled again. It seemed to be a great relief to everything――this calm, after the lashing and the howling and the general strain. Only the gulf surf roared dully in the distance. Now voices sounded, right and left and behind, as if the American camp had aroused and the men were issuing from their coverts. They had weathered the storm. Jerry carefully raised, to look. He could see the occasional flash of a lantern. Then he lay down. In the calm he was more exhausted than ever. That had been a tough trail through the brush, fighting the wind at every step. Before he knew, he was asleep, beside the snoring sailor; and the next that he knew, he was awakened into gray dawn by a bustle around him. Where was he? Oh, yes; he was safe with the Americans. So he got up, shook himself, and took stock. He was still out in the plain, instead of at the edge of the dunes; the trench which sheltered him was six feet wide and the same in depth, and was screened by brush outside the dirt thrown out. It ran right and left, as if connecting with other trenches. Figures of sailors and their officers hurried back and forth, scarcely noticing him. There were gruff orders. He had to see what was going on; so he fell in with the busy files, and in a moment he had arrived at the breech of an enormous cannon, surrounded by sailors stripped to the waist and tugging and heaving to move the cannon into place. Beyond it there was another cannon, already in place, its muzzle pointing out through sandbags, its squatty solid iron frame resting upon little wheels which fitted a pair of iron rails bolted to a plank turn-table upon a platform. Beyond that was still another great gun. And to the rear there was the sand-bagged roof of a low hut, sunk deeply almost on the level with the surface of the ground. This was a battery, then; and that probably was the powder house――the magazine. And all had been dug out, and erected, here, between the dunes and Vera Cruz, in point-blank range of the walls! By the hurry and bustle something was going to happen very soon. A smart naval officer in blue and gold, with sword drawn, was overseeing the work of setting the first gun into position. A boatswain, his shirt open upon his hairy chest and a whistle dangling at the end of a cord, was bossing. Everybody was a sailor, so it must be the naval battery.