It represented the young cadet of seventeen years on the gunboat at the supreme moment.
Elizabeth stood with her hands clasped before her silently engrossed, while Salve kept her from being pressed upon behind.
"Look!" she said, turning half round to him, but without taking her eyes off the picture,--"the Belgian captain is inviting him to surrender.

He has no choice--they are too many for him.

But don't you see the thought he has in his mind ?--you can read it in his face.

And what a fine fellow he looks, with his handsome uniform, and his epaulets, and his short sword!" she said, in a lower tone, with a revival of her old childish enthusiasm for that kind of show.
Her last words were like a dagger's thrust to Salve.

She still had a hankering, then, for all this, and he stood behind her pale with suppressed feeling, while she continued to gaze at the picture and think aloud to him.
"Poor, handsome lad! But he never will surrender--one can easily see that; and so he must go down," she said, in a subdued voice, involuntarily folding her hands, as if in fancy she went with him; "and he blows up Belgian and all into the air, Salve," she said, turning to him with a fine spirited look in her face, and with moistened eyes.
He made no reply; and supposing that, like herself, he was lost in the scene before them, she turned again to the picture.