THE STING OF THE NETTLE
The moment when the _Snipe_ was first sighted from the bridge of the
_Cobra_ was immediately after Brant's refusal to put into Plymouth to
allow Miss Jimpson to communicate with her "young man." The girl had
just turned away to rejoin Violet in the saloon, when her quick ears
caught the phrase--
"There's a torpedo craft of sorts away to the nor'-east, and I'm
jiggered if I don't think she's chasing us."
The speaker was Bully Cheeseman, who thus passed on his discovery to the
captain. The latter took a long survey of the distant destroyer through
his telescope, and then, cocking his eye to see if Nettle was within
earshot, assented to the mate's statement in a string of imprecations,
the pith of which was that the stranger was travelling thirty knots to
their twenty.
Which was perfectly true as far as it went, though had he so wished
Brant might have added that the _Cobra_, fast as she was moving through
the water, was only going at half her possible speed of forty knots. But
he was seized with a malicious desire to raise false hopes on the part
of his prisoners, and he wanted Nettle to draw the inference that the
war vessel could easily overtake them.
To add to the disappointment of the girl who had flouted him he sent
verbal instructions to the engine-room to reduce the speed still
further, with the result, as we know, that the _Snipe_ began to rapidly
creep up. Nettle, after taking in the situation as she believed it to
exist, ran excitedly into the saloon and imparted the glad tidings to
Violet.
"The brute refused to call at Plymouth, but we've beat him for all
that," she cried. "There's a Navy ship chevying us and catching up like
mad. Your friends must have got news through to the admiral at Plymouth,
and he's sent that dear dirty little boat after us. We shall soon be all
right now, Miss Maynard."
The girl's cheery optimism was infectious, and Violet roused herself
from the apathy of despair. "I hope so, dear," she said, leaping up from
the couch where she had spent the miserable night. "Shall we go out on
deck and watch Brant's discomfiture?"
But Nettle was wise according to her lights. "I think it would be better
for you to stay here," she advised. "The captain is such a beast that he
might be rude if you showed on deck. He might hide you away somewhere
till the danger was past," she added, remembering the ghastly inferno on
the lower deck, to which Leslie Chermside had been relegated.
"Then how shall we know what happens?"
"I will keep you posted," Nettle rejoined eagerly. "It doesn't matter
about me. Anyhow, I'll stay on deck till I'm stopped, and run in here
now and again. What a lark it would be if that was the _Snipe_, with my
Ned aboard. I was reading a tale the other day where they hung a pirate
at his own yard-arm, which is a thing I don't believe they've got on
this ugly up-and-down steamer. But I'll bet a pair of Grigg and Winter's
best one-and-eleven-penny white kids that Mr. Edward Parsons, of his
Majesty's destroyer _Snipe_, will find something to hang Captain Simon
Brant on if that's him out yonder."
She skipped out on to the deck without waiting for an answer, and her
stout heart pulsed with joy as she saw the lean, venomous hull of the
warship much nearer than when she had entered the saloon. Her appearance
was the signal for a violent flow of language from Brant, who had
confided the secret of his mummery to the mate. Cheeseman, with his
tongue in his cheek, played up to the lead of the apelike skipper,
simulating the wildest terror of the oncoming destroyer.
Nettle leaned over the rail not far from the saloon door, into which she
darted at brief intervals with the latest news. Each time she was able
to improve on her last report--that she could make out objects on the
deck of the pursuer clearer than before. But the highwater mark of
ecstasy was reached when Nettle ran in with the announcement that it was
indeed the _Snipe_ which was after them, that she had recognized her
Ned, and had received an answer to her signals.
"They'll be alongside in a few minutes," she cheered Violet. "Brant and
Cheeseman are tearing their hair with rage."
But disaster followed swift on her triumph. Running back to the rail,
she saw to her dismay that the distance between the two vessels had
increased, and that the reason was not far to seek. The _Snipe_ was
steaming as fast as ever; but the _Cobra_ was tearing through the calm
sea at the pace of an express train. During Nettle's absence in the
saloon Brant had rung down to the engineers to let loose the full power
of the mighty turbines, and the fugitive was running away at ten knots
an hour faster than the little war-vessel could follow.
From behind the wind-screen on the bridge the evil face of the captain
peered down at the girl he had mocked with false hopes. Miss Jimpson was
engaged in a dumb-show demonstration of her requirements to her lover,
whose stalwart figure as he conversed with his officers in the
conning-house of the _Snipe_ seemed to be growing momentarily smaller.
Her gestures did not conform to the correct motions as laid down in the
gunnery drill-book, but they conveyed a fair impression of what she
wanted.
Brant's sinister face was creased in a malignant grin. "Go it, my
vixen," he jeered down from his eyrie. "Living statues ain't in it with
you for showing off the female figure in the wrong pose. But you can
spare your antics, for they'll never dare fire on us without orders, and
them I'll lay a whale to a herring they haven't got."
Nettle bit her ripe red lip to keep back the retort that surged up. It
was no time for wasting breath in futile insults, when something had to
be done, and done quickly, if the tragedy implied by the escape of the
_Cobra_ was not to be consummated. But, if the _Snipe_ would not use her
guns or torpedoes, how was she, with the pluck of the devil but only the
experience of a draper's girl, to enable a slower ship to catch a faster
one? If only she had a man to help her, with knowledge equal to her
determination.
And then, suddenly, it flashed across her brain that there was such a
man on board if only she could get to him unobserved. Chermside, chained
in the black hole on the lower deck, had risked life once already in
Violet Maynard's cause, and would doubtless do so again, were he granted
the opportunity. Or if that were not possible he might tell her what to
do.
Deciding for the present not to harrow Violet with news of the altered
situation, she spent a grudged five minutes in lulling suspicion by
sauntering about the upper deck. The crew were too interested in the
game their captain was playing with the destroyer to pay any attention
to her movements, and, watching Brant out of the tail of her eye, she at
last slipped down the companion stairs on to the main deck. In another
minute she had clambered down the ladder into the obscurity of the lower
deck, and so safely reached the den where Leslie was confined.
Revived by the water she had given him on her last visit, he was
suffering now from little more than the discomfort of cramped limbs, and
was able to follow intelligently the breathless story which the girl
poured out to him. At the conclusion he groaned at his own impotence.
"If I was only free I might find a way of stopping the ship," he said.
"Do you think if you could get tools you could draw the staple to which
the chain is fastened?"
Nettle stood on tiptoe, and, after a careful scrutiny in the half light,
was compelled to admit that the task, even with the aid of tools, would
be beyond her powers. The staple, which was really a heavy iron ring,
was firmly driven into the oak bulk-head, and without mechanical
leverage would remain immovable.
"But what should you have done supposing you were loose?" she asked.
"Find a pistol and shoot Brant and the mate? I am afraid I should miss
them, or I'd have a try myself."
"You would have to shoot the whole crew," replied Leslie, with a weary
smile for her eagerness. "No, I should endeavour to hit upon some plan
for damaging the engines. Those of a turbine steamer like this are a
very delicate piece of mechanism, and a comparatively trifling injury,
not necessarily entailing great violence, would do the trick. Ever such
a little delay for repairs would enable the _Snipe_ to catch up if they
have allowed her to come as close as you describe."
"Then the sooner I set to work the better," said Nettle, knitting her
brows, as the germ of an inspiration was born. "Good-bye, Mr. Chermside,
and keep your pecker up. Miss Maynard doesn't know the hobble we're
in--still thinks we're on the point of being rescued."
"God bless you for that," Leslie flung after his departing visitor.
But she was already half-way to the ladder to the main deck. In her
exploration of the steamer during the run from Weymouth on the previous
day she had been idly interested in what Chermside had called the
delicate piece of mechanism, so far as its throbbing pulses were visible
through the dome-shaped skylight of glass on the upper deck over the
engine-room. The glass was opaque and thickly corrugated, but a slide in
the dome had been opened for ventilating purposes, and through the
aperture Nettle had been fascinated by the antics of gyrating fly-wheels
and sucking piston-rods below. As she emerged into the free air of the
upper deck she wondered if that convenient slide was open now.
But her first glance was for the pursuing warship, and it told her that
the destroyer was a good half-mile further astern since her plunge into
the bowels of the _Cobra_. Her second anxiety was about Brant, and she
was comforted to see that he was not on the bridge. As a matter of fact
he had gone to his cabin for breakfast, tiring of a joke which had lost
its zest with Nettle's disappearance from the deck.
The glass dome over the engine-room was amidships, abaft the funnel.
Thither she strolled with seeming carelessness, passing on forward
without stopping, but satisfying herself as she did so that the
ventilating slide was open. She walked nearly to the bows, and then, on
turning to come back, struck a gold mine in the way of good fortune,
though it took the humble shape of a zinc bucket full of cinders. It had
been placed by the cook outside the door of the caboose, ready to be
thrown overboard by one of the sailors--a duty which had been neglected
in the excitement of the chase by the _Snipe_.
Miss Jimpson looked slyly round. With the exception of the look-out man
in the bows the crew were all aft, watching the outpaced war vessel and
exchanging ribald jests at the expense of her commander. But between the
cook-house and the superstructure in which were the saloon and the
state-rooms was an open stretch of deck in clear view of the bridge. And
on the bridge Bully Cheeseman was stalking to and fro, in charge of the
ship.
To reach her objective, the skylight over the engine-room, she would
have to traverse the open space as far as the deck-house, when the
latter would furnish some sort of cover; but the real danger would be
after she had passed under the bridge into the after-part of the vessel.
The eyes of the mate, who was watching the destroyer, were naturally
turned in that direction. The only compensation was that the skylight
was close to the bridge, and that she would not be long in the perilous
zone of Cheeseman's vision before attempting her self-set task.
Anyhow, the danger had to be faced, and, timing her start so that the
mate should be at the opposite end of the bridge from the side of the
ship she selected for her rush, Nettle seized the bucket and raced for
the shelter of the deck-house. She reached it without, so far as she
knew, being observed, and so came to the alley under the bridge, where
she waited till the lighter sound of Cheeseman's heavy steps overhead
told that he had again receded from the side where she meant to
operate.
[Illustration: "Looking up, she caught the furious eye of Cheeseman
glaring at her along the blue barrel of his still levelled pistol."]
Then, with a queer little sob of expectancy, she darted forward to the
glazed cupola and raised the bucket shoulder high over the open slide.
As she stood there, her splendid young figure posed like a Greek
goddess, a hoarse oath was yelled from the bridge, followed instantly by
the simultaneous crack of a revolver and the ping of a bullet on the
bucket. The missile glanced off and seared the bloom on the girl's
cheek.
Looking up, she caught the furious eye of Cheeseman glaring at her along
the blue barrel of his still levelled pistol. She smiled up at him, and
before he could fire again she dumped the contents of the bucket into
the whirling tangle of machinery below.