But if their marksmanship was bad their speed was not.  The El Toro was, in fact, shooting up rapidly; and as she began to circle in on the freighter it was plain to every one that her path would cross that of the fugitive.  There seemed nothing to mar the success of the gun-boat in her efforts to prevent the steamship entering the harbor.  Dan could judge of this better than any one else.  And yet he kept on.  His spirit dominated the entire vessel.  Virginia, as she watched him, with all that anger that a loser must feel, knew that she was brave, too, felt that to be otherwise would be a sacrilege.  Suddenly her eyes were riveted on the Captain; she saw him run to the megaphone rack and take up a cone.  Then she saw him dash it to the deck and turn and speak a few words to the man still kneeling at the wheel.  The man nodded and moved aside, and Dan took his place, erect, immovable.

As he did so, the pursuing gun-boat, not more than four hundred yards away, let fly another rain of lead, and a few minutes later she slowed down, swinging broadside across the course of the Tampico, firing a six-pounder shell over the bow of the advancing steamship.

“Too late, too late!” exclaimed Mr. Howland.  “All this trouble and danger for nothing!  Now we are caught!  But some one will pay—­”

His daughter seized his arm.

“Father!  Oh, father!  We are not stopping.  Look!”

It was true.  The Tampico was not stopping; she swept on as if endowed throughout all her length of great black hull with her master’s burning energy and fierce resolve to succeed.  A sharp cry came from the gun-boat, a cry sharply in contrast with its crew’s former yells of triumph.  There came another six-pounder shell, this time cutting cleanly through the Tampico’s bow.  But that was the last.  On, on like an avenging sea-monster swept the Tampico, sullen, silent, with the potential energy of dynamite lurking in the force of her momentum.  And straight, inexorable, Captain Merrithew stood on the bridge with his hands on the wheel spokes.  No longer was he young in the eyes of Virginia Howland.  No, he was old, old as the avenging ages and as cruel, as cold as the march of time.  Straight he made for the pretty white side of the gun-boat, as some grim executioner might measure for the blow of the sword which was to sever the white neck of some captive maid, some Joan of Arc.  And the girl caught his spirit and became cruel too.  She laughed at the gun-boat, as she fired again; she laughed as the Tampico quivered and went to the heart of the quarry; she laughed as Dan, with another twist of the wheel, made more sure of his victim.

The screw of the gun-boat revolved desperately.  She was backing; but it was too late.  Another sound now!  A heaving swell rose in between and threw the bow of the steamship slightly off.  With an angry cry Dan jerked at the wheel.  But the lost point could not be regained, and the Tampico, instead of hitting the gun-boat amidships and cutting her in two as intended, struck the quarter obliquely, slicing off a triangle of the hull and stern as a big knife cuts a cheese.