The venerable ship had earned her fame after an epic sea battle thirty years earlier in which she'd battered and sunk the infamous Confederate raider, Alabama, off Cherbourg, France. Though evenly matched, Kearsarge had reduced Alabama to a foundering wreck in less than an hour after the start of the battle. Her captain and crew were feted as heroes by a grateful Union after their return to home port.

In later years she had served on cruises around the world. With a length of 198 feet, a beam of 33 feet and a fifteen-foot draft, her two engines and one screw could propel her through the water at eleven knots. Her guns had been replaced ten years after the war with a newer battery consisting of two eleven-inch smoothbores, four nine-inch smoothbores and two twenty-pound rifled barrels. She carried a crew of 160 men. Ancient though she was, she still packed a powerful punch.

Ellis put down the telescope and turned to Hunt. "Shall we investigate, sir?"

Hunt nodded. "Order a ten-degree turn to starboard. Request Chief Engineer Gribble to increase our speed to Full, turn out the crew for gun station two and double the lookouts. I don't want to lose sight of that monster, whatever it is."

"Aye, sir." Ellis, a tall balding man with an expansive, neatly trimmed beard, carried out his orders and soon the time-honored ship began to increase her speed, the waves splitting her bow with sheets of foam as she swung against the wind. A plume of heavy black smoke poured from her funnel along with a spray of sparks.

The decks of the old warhorse trembled with anticipation as she took up the chase.

Soon the Kearsarge began to close with the strange object that neither increased nor decreased its speed. A gun crew assembled, rammed a power charge and a projectile down the barrel of a twenty-pound rifled gun and stood back. The gunnery officer stared up at Hunt, who stood next to the helmsman.

"Number two gun loaded and ready to fire, sir."

"Put a shot fifty yards ahead of the monster's nose, Mr. Merry-man," Hunt shouted through his megaphone.

Merryman simply acknowledged with a wave of one hand and nodded at the man standing next to the gun with the lanyard in his hand and another man who was aiming the elevation screw on the breech.

"You heard the captain. Lay your shot fifty yards ahead of the beast."

The adjustment was made, the lanyard was pulled, the big gun roared and leaped back against the thick stay rope running through the eye ring on its butt. It was a near-perfect shot, and the shell splashed directly in front of the giant hump that effortlessly slipped through the water. Animal or machine, it ignored the intrusion and maintained its speed and course without the slightest deviation.

"It doesn't appear impressed with our gunnery," Ellis said with a slight grin.

Hunt peered through his glasses. "I judge her speed at ten knots against our twelve."