PURSUIT
Lieutenant Reginald Beauchamp had been dining at the officers' mess of
the Royal Naval Barracks at Devonport, and was making his way back to
the dockyard, where he expected to find his boat's crew ready to put him
aboard what Enid irreverently called his floating sardine-box. The
_Snipe_ was anchored in the Hamoaze, not far from the docks for the
convenience of victualling.
Reggie, being a youth of convivial but temperate habits had dined
wisely, to the extent of feeling at peace with all the world. The fine
digestive powers of eight-and-twenty had served to assimilate the
excellent fare provided by his hosts; he had enjoyed the society of many
old comrades, whose pockets he had afterwards lightened at snooker pool;
and the few glasses of wine he had drunk had done him no greater harm
than to render him, out here under the stars, mildly sentimental about
his little girl at Ottermouth.
"A rattling good sort, Enid, and no flies on her for a young 'un," he
summed up his mental recapitulation of his sweetheart's virtues. "But if
she tries to boss me afloat as well as ashore the little witch will have
to look out for squalls, that's all."
As he passed through the dock gates his musings were suddenly but
respectfully broken into by the police-constable who admitted him.
Reggie was the kind of officer who is known by sight, and was remembered
even by those who had but little to do with him.
"You're wanted on the telephone, sir," said the man, leading the way
into the gate-house. "Sounds like a lady. Been holding the wire and
ringing up every two minutes for the last half-hour."
Needless to say that there is an all-night telephonic service into his
Majesty's dockyards, and for the commander of a "destroyer" to be rung
up at any hour was nothing out of the common. All sorts of official
instructions fly about irrespective of the sun's position in the
heavens. Port admirals never go to bed, or if they do they leave some
wakeful person to harass their subordinates with ill-timed change of
orders. But a lady on the telephone at 12.30 at night was a novel
experience, considering that the common or garden species has not access
to telephonic communication in the small hours. It must be the port
admiral's wife, Reggie told himself, doing her lord and master's dirty
work for want of an available secretary.
"Who is it?" he asked, when he had been shown to the instrument, and had
made his presence known to the other end.
The reply, which was also in the form of a question, fairly staggered
him, "Is that you, Reggie? It's me, Enid. Yes, you old silly--Enid
Mallory at Ottermouth. The most awful thing has happened, and I want
your help. You are the only person in the whole world who can help. Are
you listening? Are you ready to attend to every word I say?"
"Go ahead!" was Reggie's laconic reply, the flippant gibe that rose to
the tip of his tongue checked by the reflection that the Ottermouth
exchange was not ordinarily open at that time of night. Allowing for
Enid's fondness for exaggerated phrasing, there must be some foundation
for the "something awful," or she would not have been able to get
through to him on the telephone.
And when at last he took up his own parable and spoke his answer into
the transmitter he knew that there had been no exaggeration at all, and
that had she been so minded his saucy sweetheart might have used more
lurid language without going astray. So impressed was he by what he had
heard that he condensed his reply into the crisp sentences----
"What infernal scoundrels! All right, girlie; I'll do it if they break
me. Off at once. Good night!"
Hanging up the receiver, and thanking the janitor of the gate, he
threaded his way along the deserted quays to the stairs, where his boat
was waiting for him.
"By George, but it's a tall order!" he repeated several times as his
bluejackets bent to their oars. "Just as I'd settled it, too, that she
should never interfere in professional duties. But, damme, it's a good
cause to go down in, and perhaps old Maynard will buy me a penny
steamboat if I get the sack over the job."
It was, indeed, a "tall order," coming from a minx in her teens to a
naval officer enjoying his first independent command, being no less
than to employ one of his Majesty's ships on a private enterprise. An
enterprise, too, which an ingenious counsel, before a judge of less than
average intelligence, might very easily contort and twist into an act of
piracy. None knew better than Reggie Beauchamp that for one ship to stop
another on the high seas, and do things to her by armed force unbacked
by supreme authority was a serious matter indeed.
And yet that was the task which the sunny-haired maiden, with eager red
lips to the telephone at the other end of the county, had set him. So
graphically had Enid done her bit of descriptive 'phoning that he was
under no illusions as to what he had to do. Violet Maynard had been
"carried off" in a large steam yacht which had just started from
Ottermouth for India. In a few hours' time at most the yacht would be
off Plymouth. Enid was aware that the _Snipe_ was leaving port very
early every morning for gun practice, and she implored him and
threatened him in the same breath to intercept the yacht and rescue Miss
Maynard. The few words which Enid had added as to the fate in store for
the victim of the outrage had decided Reggie to make the attempt, even
at the hazard of his career.
But he was by no means assured that he would succeed. The whole vile
scheme must have been planned with deadly deliberation, and with the
resources of vast wealth behind it. The vessel chosen for such a lawless
errand would certainly be of high speed, and would avoid the regular
steamer tracks. The little _Snipe_, for all her thirty-knot engines,
might well be outpaced by the craft bought or chartered by Bhagwan
Singh's agent; but before he could put that vital question to the test
he would have to find her--no easy matter in the crowded waters of the
Channel, when he had no description of her to guide him, and he was
entirely in the dark as to the course she would steer.
But in all things pertaining to his profession the young commander was
astute beyond his years, and, having once decided to treat the
Maharajah's yacht as a hostile ship, he made his calculations as
thoroughly as if his promotion depended on stopping her. As soon as he
stepped aboard his destroyer he routed out of their bunks the two men on
whose co-operation he would have to rely, one being the only other
commissioned officer, Second-Lieutenant Ellison, and the other the petty
officer who was acting as gunner, a smart young fellow by name Parsons.
Having tersely explained to them the situation, and at greater length
demonstrated that his would be the sole responsibility for what he
proposed to do, he succeeded in rousing their enthusiasm, and from that
moment he was loyally served by both. The three promptly constituted
themselves a council of war in the poky little mess-room, and Ned
Parsons was ready with some valuable advice.
"You'll pardon me, sir," he said with a friendly grin, "but if it was my
girl instead of yours who was on that yacht I shouldn't fumble for my
tactics--not for a single minute."
"It isn't my girl--only a friend of my girl," Reggie corrected him. "But
no matter as to that. What would the tactics be, Parsons? You were
always a helpful chap."
"Well, you see, sir, I'm thinking, as every man on the ship will be, how
to get you out of this without blame," replied the acting gunner. "I
don't know the lady that these blackguards are making off with, but if
it was my Nettle there'd be only one way to it. I'd lay the _Snipe_ as
close as may be to the yacht and trust the girl to do the rest. She'd
holler for help, or clout the helmsman over the head, or do something
that would justify us in interfering, and in asking questions
afterwards. But there! she's a fair cough-drop, though only a draper's
assistant at Weymouth."
Reggie had to smile in the midst of his dilemma. The idea of the stately
Violet Maynard "clouting the helmsman," or even "hollering for help,"
was not to be imagined. Still, the notion of getting as close as
possible to the yacht and trusting to some stroke of good fortune making
it unnecessary to fire on her was a good one. Enid had mentioned on the
telephone that by some inexplicable means Leslie Chermside was also on
the steamer, and Reggie was as good a judge of men as he was a sailor.
That there was some mystery about the reserved young soldier he was
shrewdly convinced, but he did not think that his presence on the
fugitive yacht was due to collusion with the enemies of the girl he was
popularly believed to be in love with. Chermside, he argued, might be
trusted, given the chance, to fill the part which would have fallen to
Ned Parsons' "cough drop," if she had been on board.
"Very well," he said. "We will start as passive resisters anyway, and
trust to luck afterwards. Now as to the course this steamer is likely to
steer. She will want to keep clear of vessels bound for Plymouth which
might report a craft making down Channel at high speed. For that reason
she would leave the Eddystone well to the northward, and she won't
travel more than ordinarily fast at first. That being so, if we up
anchor at once and choose the sea beyond the Eddystone for our firing
practice this morning we ought to sight her before she has slipped away
to the westward."
The necessary orders were given, and, the rumour spreading through the
ship that some unorthodox adventure was afoot, the crew achieved a
record in getting under weigh. In less than twenty minutes from the time
of Reggie coming aboard the _Snipe_ was steaming down past Drake's
Island on to the broad bosom of Plymouth Sound, and so to the open sea.
There were still three hours to daylight, and Reggie's intention was to
utilize them in reaching the spot where his judgment told him he would
stand the best chance of intercepting the runaway.
The break of dawn found the destroyer patrolling the sea some ten miles
south-west of the great lighthouse, in the comparatively lonely stretch
of water that lies between the track of vessels making for Plymouth and
the route of those whose destination is further to the eastward. In the
immediate vicinity were only a few trawlers finishing the harvest of the
night, but away to the north and south faint smears of vapour on the
skyline showed the main lines of the Channel traffic.
And then, suddenly, from his place in the miniature conning-tower Reggie
saw a great blur of black smoke crossing the southern edge of the vacuum
he had selected for his hunting-ground. His binoculars flew to his
eyes, and intuitively he knew that, though he had been right in his main
conjecture, he had made a slight miscalculation of distance. The cause
of the smoke-blur, magnified by his powerful lenses into a graceful
steamer running southward at a high rate of speed, was neither a
man-of-war or a liner, but a huge yacht--just such a one as would have
been selected for a long ocean voyage. And a cry of chagrin escaped him
as he perceived that he had not taken the _Snipe_ far enough out to stop
her. She had in fact already passed him, and was now between him and the
mouth of the Channel, thus being nearer to the open door of the trap he
would have closed than he was.
"What's her speed?" he asked, passing the glasses to his
second-lieutenant. "I put it at about twenty-five."
The other, after a careful scrutiny of the receding vessel, gave it as
his opinion that twenty knots was nearer the mark. Anyway, bar fog, the
_Snipe_, with her thirty-knot engines, ought to be able to catch her in
something under five hours.
"Yes, if she is doing her best now," said Reggie doubtfully. "She may be
keeping a bit up her sleeve for an emergency. But we'll shove this old
hooker along at her top notch anyhow."
So, with disrespect, do the boys to whom the nation entrusts its
mosquito fleet speak of the little spitfires they love--a disrespect
which they would swiftly and haughtily resent if it was evinced by any
but themselves.
A word to the man at the wheel caused the _Snipe's_ ugly snout to swing
round for her quarry, and then the engine-room gong clanged its sharp
command, "Full speed ahead." Reggie, with his eyes glued to his glasses,
watched like a cat for any increase of speed or suggestive manoeuvre
on the part of the chase, but she held on her way as if supremely
indifferent to, or unconscious of, the fact that she was being pursued
by the destroyer.
"She's slowing down a trifle, isn't she, sir?" Parsons called up to his
chief after the pursuit had lasted twenty minutes or so. "That doesn't
look as if she had a guilty conscience."
Reggie was of the same opinion on both points. The yacht certainly was
not travelling so fast as when first sighted, and her slackened speed
suggested that her commander had no reason for showing his heels to a
navy ship--was, perhaps, moved by curiosity to learn why the spiteful
little man-of-war was tearing after him. Whatever the cause might be the
result was that in less than an hour the _Snipe's_ lean black hull was
within a mile of the yacht, and that objects on the deck of the latter
were plainly distinguishable by the aid of Reggie's binoculars.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "there's a woman on board right enough--about
Miss Maynard's height, too. And, good God! she's waving to us like blue
murder. But no, her face gets clearer every second--no, it isn't the
lady we're after."
"We shall soon know what's wrong," said the second-lieutenant. "The
yacht has pretty nearly stopped. She's only keeping enough way on her
for steerage."
The acting-gunner, Ned Parsons, who had also been examining the
mysterious vessel through his own pair of cheap inferior glasses, here
uttered an exclamation of combined incredulity and dismay.
"If you'd be so good, sir, as to let me have a squint through those
binos of yours," he said, "I might be able to tell you something."
Reggie handed over his own splendid pair, the last word in telescopic
art and a present from his mother. They had hardly bridged Parson's
sun-browned nose when they were lowered again, and the gunner turned a
face full of whimsical concern upon his commander.
"Asking your pardon, sir, but it's a funny thing," he said, "but that
gal behaving like a semaphore yonder is my young lady--the one I was
telling you of, seeing as there have been others--Miss Nettle Jimpson,
of Grigg and Winter's drapery warehouse, Weymouth. How the Holy Moses
you've gone and got her mixed up with the lady the Rajah has his eye on
licks me, but what licks me most is how Nettle came to be aboard that
steam yacht. She ought to be in her beauty sleep on Grigg and Winter's
top floor, preparing for a busy day behind the underlinen counter."
"You're sure?" said Reggie, receiving the binoculars back.
"Sure as eggs," responded Parsons. "I could see that she was holding
language towards the little monkey on the bridge, him being the captain,
I reckon. That's Nettle Jimpson all over."
"Well," said Reggie, after a moment's reflection, "if your girl hails
from Weymouth it's fair proof that that is the steamer we want, for
Weymouth was her last port of call."
"Didn't I tell you, sir, that she was a cough-drop," rejoined Parsons
excitedly. "You can stake your shirt she's bested that dirty little
captain somehow. That's why he's stopping for us."
"But he isn't stopping for us," chimed in the second-lieutenant, and his
dictum was emphasized by his slight lisp. "See, he's started at
full-speed, and that means that he has scored the trick, for his
rascally packet is fitted with turbine engines. He's been fooling us,
sir."
Reggie Beauchamp was generally a clean-mouthed man, but the tea-party
old ladies of Ottermouth would have banned him for evermore could they
have heard the sultry oath that flew from his lips as he realized the
truth of the assertion. Simon Brant, near enough now for his loathsome
personality to be appreciated, was making insulting gestures at them
with the hand which he had just withdrawn from the engine-room
telegraph. And like a hound slipped from the leash the _Cobra_ leapt
forward and went racing to the south-west at forty knots--a speed which
would quickly reduce her to a speck upon the horizon.
And after that--chaos!