In her twenty years Nora Forbes had never lived as intensely as now. The blood of an adventurous ancestry was in her veins. She was thrilled, but not afraid. More than she was aware, the dominating personality of Captain O’Shea was influencing and attracting her. Unconsciously she was sharing his simple, clear-eyed courage, which accepted things as he found them. There was singular comfort in standing beside him. They lingered for a moment in the wheel-house, where the tall young mate gripped the spokes, his eyes fixed on the swaying compass-card in the binnacle. “You have never filibustered before, I take it, Miss Forbes,” said Captain O’Shea, “but ye are as cool as an old hand.” “I never dreamed that men were living such lives as this nowadays,” she replied. “Tell me, do you----” Down the wind came the report of a heavy gun. O’Shea leaped to the bridge and the girl followed, her heart throbbing with a sudden, sickening fear. Twilight was shutting down. The first star gleamed in the pale sky, but a curious after-glow lingered to flood the sea with tremulous illumination. The cruiser showed like a gray shadow, a vague blur, from which shot a second flash of red. Again the boom of her gun was heard on the _Fearless_, and this time the steel shell kicked up a water-spout far off to starboard. “Johnny Kent has lost distance in the last half hour,” muttered the skipper. “His men can’t stand the pace.” “What does it mean?” implored Nora, and she caught her breath with a sob. “Are they really and truly trying to kill us?” “Those are the intentions, but the shooting is pretty bad, Miss Forbes. I will bet ye ten to one they do not hit us.” Unwittingly she moved closer to him. Her hand was upon the rail and he covered it with his hard palm. At the firm, warm contact her fortitude returned. His tremendous vitality was like an electric current. She smiled up at him gratefully, and he said in a big, friendly way, to put her at ease: “’Tis good to have somebody to hang onto in a tight pinch, isn’t it? Look! There he goes again! A better shot. It struck the water within two hundred yards of us. If he keeps on improvin’ his target practice, I may lose me bet.” Nora was silent. She could think of nothing to say as she stared at the darkening horizon and the flashes of the cruiser’s guns. The after-glow died, and night marched swiftly across the tropic sea. It curtained the cruiser and obscured the _Fearless_. Johnny Kent had won in the first act of the drama. Every light on board the tug was extinguished, and the word was carried below to close the draughts and slacken the fires in order to show no sparks from the funnel. The _Fearless_ swerved sharply from her course and ran straight away from the Cuban coast, heading to the southward across the Caribbean. To follow her was a game of blind-man’s-buff, and Captain O’Shea knew every trick of shaking off pursuit.