Elizabeth looked about her with breathless interest, realizing that here she was to find war.  It happened that on her arrival there was a lull in the cannonading.  Both sides had paused to draw breath, but the lull was far from perfect silence, and to her inexperience this occasional thunder of bursting shells seemed sharp conflict.  She said so to the Captain as they drew toward shore.

“Bless yer!” he answered with a laugh.  “This ain’ t no thin’ at all, this is nothin’ but child’s play.  Wait till yer see it hot and heavy.  I s’pose we shall go back to-morrow, though.  I’d like to have yer see some good stout work first.”

“Ain’t we in danger here?” inquired Nancy.

The skipper rolled his quid of tobacco in his cheek reflectively a moment.  “Well, no,” he said, “I guess nothin’ to speak of.  They’re too busy answering the batteries; it’s only the stray shot that comes our way.  There’s a thousand chances to one agin’ its hitting us, and I guess we can stand the one.”  He looked at Nancy closely to guage the amount of her courage.

“I guess we can,” she answered coolly.  This reply seemed to please him.  He had before considered Nancy “a nice lookin’ girl;” and now, as he put down “grit” in his mental catalogue of her fascinations, he smiled to himself, and thought of a neat little home on the Salem shore where his mother now presided, and where it was not impossible that some day Nancy might be persuaded to reign.  But the demands of the hour recalled him from this dream to his usual brisk attention to realities, and as soon as he had cast anchor, he left the ship in charge of the mate, and went in search of the General.

General Pepperell was in his tent, resting after a hard day’s work.  Not only had he been through the camp cheering the soldiers, by imparting to them something of his own indomitable resolution and by seeing personally that everything possible was done for the sufferers in the hospital, but he had also been for hours superintending the arrangements on the new battery that was to do such execution upon the granite walls of Louisburg.  Now everything was in readiness and he had ordered two hours of rest before the firing from it should begin.  Nearly an hour of that had gone by before he entered his tent for the rest he needed, when almost immediately the messenger reached him.

“Mr. Royal and his daughter here!” he cried.  “And Mr. Royal requests to see Captain Archdale?  I don’t understand.  But I shall hear why from them.”  He dispatched an orderly for Stephen who was still at the battery, and then went with the skipper to the little vessel that had brought the unexpected guests.  Elizabeth never forgot the kindness of his greeting.  In the midst of the strange scene and of preparations for work in which women had no part, the friendliness of his face and tones, and his cordial grasp of her hand made her feel almost at home.  She had been sure of courtesy, but she had not dared to look for this, and her eyes grew dim for an instant.