The white gunboat without a word of explanation fired three guns at the flat-iron, cutting the trees on the banks into green chips. Bai-Jove-Judson was at the wheel, and Mr. Davies and the current helped the boat to an almost respectable degree of speed. It was an exciting chase, but it did not last for more than five minutes. The white gunboat fired again, and Mr. Davies in his engine-room gave a wild shout. “What's the matter? Hit?” said Bai-Jove-Judson. “No, I've just seized of your roos-de-gare. Beg y' pardon, sir.” “Right O! Just the half a fraction of a point more.” The wheel turned under the steady hand, as Bai-Jove-Judson watched his marks on the bank coming in line swiftly as troops anxious to aid. The flat-iron smelt the shoal water under her, checked for an instant, and went on. “Now we're over. Come along, you thieves, there!” The white gunboat, too hurried even to fire, was storming in the wake of the flat-iron, steering as she steered. This was unfortunate, because the lighter craft was dead over the missing buoy. “What you do here?” shouted a voice from the bows. “I'm going on. Hold tight. Now you're arranged for!” There was a crash and a clatter as the white gunboat's nose took the shoal, and the brown mud boiled up in oozy circles under her forefoot. Then the current caught her stem by the starboard side and drove her broadside on to the shoal, slowly and gracefully. There she heeled at an undignified angle, and her crew yelled aloud. “Neat! Oh, damn neat!” quoth Mr. Davies, dancing on the engine-room plates, while the Kroo stokers grinned. The flat-iron turned up-stream again, and passed under the hove-up starboard side of the white gunboat, to be received with howls and imprecations in a strange tongue. The stranded boat, exposed even to her lower strakes, was as defence-less as a turtle on its back, without the advantage of the turtle's plating. And the one big blunt gun in the bows of the flat-iron was unpleasantly near. But the captain was valiant and swore mightily. Bai-Jove-Judson took no sort of notice. His business was to go up the river. “We will come in a flotilla of boats and ecrazer your vile tricks,” said the captain with language that need not be published. Then said Bai-Jove-Judson, who was a linguist: “You stay o where you are o, or I'll leave a hole-o in your bottom o that will make you much os perforatados.” There was a great deal of mixed language in reply, but Bai-Jove-Judson was out of hearing in a few minutes, and Mr. Davies, himself a man of few words, confided to one of his subordinates that Lieutenant Judson was “a most remarkable prompt officer in a way of putting it.” For two hours the flat-iron pawed madly through the muddy water, and that which had been at first a mutter became a distinct rumble. “Was war declared?” said Mr. Davies, and Bai-Jove-Judson laughed. “Then, damn his eyes, he might have spoilt my pretty little engines. There's war up there, though.”