"Thank heaven!" said Marie. "Dewey will surely come, and when I put a solid shot through the 'Olympia' just below the water line--the battle will be half over. Oh! I'm so anxious! May I go down there tonight and take charge of the gun at once?" The Sergeant told her to report to the headquarters of the artillery department where she would receive instructions. At last she found herself on actual duty. How her young heart throbbed as her black eyes peered forth into the darkness. Toward midnight, small clouds began to drift oceanward. For a few moments at a time they would obscure the quartered cheek of the young moon. Oh! if Dewey would but come. The hopes of a life-time were poised on that painful "if." Before her was the dream of glory; behind her, the dreary forgetfulness of the past. Hour after hour whiled away. The tiny lights in the natives' shacks along the opposite shore began to go out and grow fewer and fewer until the closing day had died safely away into the solemn night. As usual, "taps" were blown at ten o'clock and things on the island grew very quiet. Days--yes, weeks--seemed to crowd themselves into those long hours. Would he ever come? Presently she heard the sentry's shrill cry on the brow of the hill, "Twelve o'clock! All's well!" The echo of his repeated call had scarcely died away when Marie thought she saw something dark on the water near the center of the channel, perhaps three miles away. She whispered to a member of the artillery corps, who sat near her watching the shadow of his pipe on the rock near the base of the cannon. They both looked. Surely! it's Dewey! The artilleryman sent up a rocket as a warning. Marie took hurried aim. "Boom!" went her cannon, and from its mouth a seven-inch shot was hurled over the "Concord," between its main and mizzen masts. It went a trifle high and did no harm. "Bang!" went one of the port batteries on the "Raleigh" and before its flash was gone a shudder shot through every vein, every nerve and every fiber of Marie's body. Such a crash she had never heard before. "War is hell" to be sure. She sniffed the smoke from her own gun, and looked around to see what had happened. The stone precipice behind her was torn into fragments. A man's hand protruded from the debris. "My God!" she murmured. Yes, there was the evidence. The man who had sat by her side and who sent up the rocket, lay cold in death. His head was torn off and his body was mangled among the pieces of broken rock. The gunner on the "Raleigh" had done his work well; and Marie's dream of American cowardice, of their poor marksmanship and of her ability to sink Dewey's flag ship, were shattered in an instant. She had fired the FIRST gun of the war, but not the LAST! CHAPTER III. AVENGED HER LOVER'S DEATH