Ferrara called into the phone:
"It's a British destroyer, sir! She's just rounded the point, three
miles south. Signals up for us to surrender!"
"Machine-guns against naval ordnance!" gritted the Master savagely.
"Surrender?" He laughed with hot defiance.
The first shell flung a perfect tornado of brine into air, glistening;
it ricochetted twice, and plunged into the dunes. A "dud," it failed
to burst.
_Nissr_ rose again as the second shell hit fair in the hard clay of
the wady, cascading earth and sand a hundred feet in air. Both reports
boomed in, rolling like thunder over the sea.
"Shoot and be damned to you!" cried the Master. _Nissr_ was rising
now, clearing herself from the water like a wounded sea-bird. A
tremendous cascade of water sluiced from her hissing floats, swirling
in millions of sun-glinted jewels more brilliant even than Kaukab el
Durri.
Higher she mounted, higher still. The destroyer was now driving in at
full speed, with black smoke streaming from four funnels, perfectly
indifferent to possible shoals, rocks or sand-bars along this
uncharted coast. Another shell screamed under the lower gallery and
burst in a deluge of sand near one of the mooring-piles.
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