Johnny Kent, no longer a sighing sentimentalist, bellowed at his engineers, oilers, and stokers, and the discipline of shipboard took hold of them. There was the loudest uproar in the Cuban camp. Because of their race, the patriots had to be melodramatic, to defy the unknown steamer by running to the beach and brandishing their rifles and machetes at the ribbon of smoke that trailed across the opalescent sea. But Colonel Calvo, very much more of a man in this emergency than when he had been afloat on the bounding billows, drove them back to camp and got them well in hand. The canvas shelters were hastily ripped down and set up inside the earthworks as a protection against the sun which blazed into this windless enclosure with fierce intensity. Johnny Kent paused to say to O’Shea: “It’s goin’ to be hades in there for the women. They can’t stand it long.” “They won’t have to, Johnny. This will be a short performance. Ye can expect a show-down between now and sunset.” The haze had vanished. The steamer was visible beneath a far-flung banner of smoke. A tiny foremast, a ring around it, and O’Shea exclaimed: “A fighting-top! It looks to me like the cruiser that chased us down the coast.” “That’s her, dollars to doughnuts, Cap’n Mike. She ain’t in such a hurry to-day.” “No need of it. We can’t get away.” “Do you think she’s really lookin’ for us?” “’Tis not a bad guess, Johnny. As soon as word was telegraphed to Havana that the gun-boat was destroyed, the whole blockadin’ fleet must have been ordered to watch for us at both ends of Cuba. They knew we had to round Cape Maysi or San Antonio to get home. And when we were not seen or reported anywhere they may have begun to look for us down here to the south’ard.” “She can’t help sightin’ the wreck of the _Fearless_,” said the engineer. “And then she will know who we are. ’Tis time for all hands to take to cover.” The Spanish man-of-war, gray, and slim, and venomous, slowly lifted her hull above the sea-line, and was heading to pass to the eastward of the sandy islet. It was a fair conjecture that her captain was roving away from his station on the coast in the hope of finding the _Fearless_ disabled or short of coal. Some of the refugees surmised that she might pass them unobserved, but at a distance of two or three miles she turned and laid a course to pick up the key at closer range.