It was as when a great light seeks to shine through smoked glass. Last night he had seen only the sodden body; now he beheld the soul, shining dimly, it is true, but shining still through its sullied habitation. The call to action had set it burning. It illuminated the blurred face, notable still. In his youth the man must have been extraordinarily handsome. Even now he was a noble ruin. "Ah, you may stare, Mr. Caryll," said the Gunner, reading the other's thoughts. "It was Lushy Lanyon last night; this morning it's _Me_!" He swelled his chest, and stalked down the deck between his guns, shooting his cuffs. "Yes, sir. A fight's meat and drink to me. It pulls me together, and makes me remember who I am." He threw back his head--"Magnificent Arry, the man that's played more avock with earts in his day than any other seaman afloat.... It's the whiskers done it," he added simply. The two men in him were at war: the high and mighty fighting-man and the confidential toper. Each came bobbing out in turns. "And if you should want to see a main-deck fought as a main-deck should be fought, why, sir, be good enough to take a seat." He kicked a powder-monkey off his box, and offered it with a bow. "Can't," said Kit, turning. "No time. See you again later." The other stooped and peered out of a port. "Doobious, I should say," he replied, picking his teeth. "Vairy doobious. Ah! ----" A great black shadow stole across the port. Its effect on the Gunner was miraculous. He shot up like a flame. He was dark; he was terrible; there was something of the majesty of Satan about the man. Some huge sea of life seemed to lift him above himself, and land him among the giants. "Stand by the starboard battery!" he roared. CHAPTER XI COMMODORE MOUCHE Kit ran up the ladder out of that bellowing Inferno. The _Tremendous_ and her enemy lay side by side with locked spars; the _Coquette_ becalmed beyond. Then Kit understood the ruse of that wary old fighter, his Commander. Old Ding-dong had placed the _Cocotte_ as a bulwark between him and her consort. As he had foreseen, the wind, falling away this hour past, had dropped to nothing now. The _Coquette_ could not bring a gun into action. Four hundred yards away, she might have been as many miles for all the assistance she could render her sister-ship. As the boy came up, the old Commander was leaning against the wheel, bending towards his knee, and breathing hard. There was a dark and peevish look about his face; and a trickle of red was running down his white knee-breeches. "Tell ye 'taint etiquette to have men in your tops only in general actions and duels atween ships of the line," he was saying in slow and painful voice, very querulous. "In all my fifty years' experience o sea fightin, I never see sich a thing afoor, never! Dirty trick I call it." The little Frenchman across the narrow lane of water dividing the ships, chattered excuses, all sympathy and shrugged shoulders.