THE ROVER OF THE SEAS.
It was a month later. The _Goalong_ was six hours out of Hamilton,
Bermuda, bound for Newport News. The time was something after six o’clock
in the evening, and the sun had just sunk below the horizon, thirteen
miles away. The season was the first week in September—a month during
which few if any tourists ever think of visiting the Bermudas.
But Maxwell Kane had for many years been in the habit of spending a week
or two of the summer season in Hamilton, because having, on one occasion,
visited the place by accident at that time of the year, he had discovered
that the statement frequently made by the permanent residents of the
place that Bermuda was much pleasanter in the summer than in the winter
was true.
Ever since that knowledge was impressed upon him he had not lost a season
of rest there, away from the hurly-burly of New York, away from the heat
of Gotham, which is infinitely greater than among the islands—but, above
all, away from people.
This particular day had been one of exceptional beauty, and the evening
promised to excel it. The ocean was as nearly calm as it ever is, and
only the long, heavy rollers, which seafaring men have named “dead
swells,” suggested that such things as violent storms ever visited that
portion of the world.
And these swells were so far apart, so regular in their motion and so
devoid of even a ripple to mar their mirror-like aspect, that the yacht
seemed scarcely to feel them at all, but met them and sailed over them
with the grace and ease of a living thing.
Seated under the awning on the after-deck were four people, three of
whom were women, for Maxwell Kane had left men out of his plans for that
trip. He liked to take his annual trip to Bermuda without men of his own
class around him; and so it happened that the passengers aboard his yacht
numbered merely his wife, his wife’s sister, who was Miss Bessie Harlan,
and Mrs. Starkweather, who was their mother.
“I do not see why you do not make directly for New York, Max,” his wife
had said to him when the anchor was weighed, and all preparations were
made for their start, and he had replied that Newport News was nearer,
and that he was going to North Carolina himself for the early shooting.
“From there,” he added, “you and Bessie, with your mother, can return
home by rail, if you like, or you can remain on the yacht and go where
you please.”
And now they were six hours out from Hamilton; the sun had dropped out of
sight, and the evening was upon them. Bessie Harlan left the low wicker
chair in which she had been seated and walked forward along the deck.
Suddenly she paused and shaded her eyes with one hand, while she gazed
steadily at some object she had discovered off the starboard bow.
“Max, come here,” she called, and her brother-in-law rose lazily from his
chair and strolled over beside her.
“Hello!” he said, before she could call his attention to the object which
had attracted her. “You have discovered a sail, haven’t you?”
“Hardly a sail,” she replied. “What a strange-looking craft it is.”
Maxwell Kane started. Then he raised his voice and shouted:
“Forward, there!”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
“What do you make of that craft off the starboard bow, captain?” he asked
of his skipper, who now walked aft to join them.
“Well, sir,” replied the skipper slowly, “if you had asked me that
question a month ago—which would be about the time we had to do with a
fellow of about that cut, wasn’t it?—I should have replied that I thought
she was a very good copy of the _Shadow_, sir.”
“The _Shadow_!” gasped Bessie, turning a startled gaze upon the skipper,
and then removing it to Max. “Do you mean the pirate? Do you mean Captain
Sparkle?”
Kane laughed aloud, although a close observer might have detected a note
of uneasiness in his merriment.
“Captain Sparkle is in Sing Sing, Bess,” he said.
“He was in Sing Sing when we left New York for Bermuda,” she replied.
“That craft there certainly does look like the _Shadow_,” muttered the
skipper. “She’s bearing down upon us, too, and coming with the swiftness
of the thing she’s named after.”
“Sparkle couldn’t have escaped,” said Max uneasily; “and if he had done
so, he could not very well have repossessed himself of the _Shadow_,
could he?”
“I can’t rightly answer that question, Mr. Kane,” replied the skipper.
“You see, sir, I don’t know any more about it than you do, seeing that
I’ve been with you all the time, and that we left New York so soon after
the capture of the pirate and his wonderful vessel, I don’t even know
what was done with the _Shadow_. She was libeled, wasn’t she?”
“Blessed if I know,” replied Kane. “There was a whole lot of red tape
about the disposition of her, and I didn’t remain around to find out how
it did turn out. The Westchester County authorities claimed her; the New
York police claimed her, and the United States district attorney claimed
her. The last I knew of her, she was in charge of an inspector of the
treasury department, and nobody seemed to know what would be done with
her eventually.”
Bessie Harlan had remained very quiet during this discussion, but now she
interrupted:
“You have forgotten one thing, Max,” she said.
“Well, what?”
“You have forgotten the count.”
“Oh, blast the count!” was the somewhat savage rejoinder.
“All the same,” continued Bessie, “the count escaped, did he not?”
“Escaped! I should say he did. Not a sign of him was seen after Nick
Carter, with his assistant Chick and myself, captured Sparkle and the
_Shadow_.”
“Then you may depend upon it,” she said, “that the Count of Cadillac has
managed somehow to repossess himself of the _Shadow_. It was his craft as
much as his brother’s, was it not?”
“I suppose so.”
“And, as a matter of fact, you never did know which of the brothers was
the real count, and which was the genuine Captain Sparkle, did you?”
“No; I’m in doubt if they knew themselves apart, let alone the
possibility of a third person being wise about it.”
The eyes of all three were still fixed upon the approaching vessel, which
was now not more than half a mile away.
“Don’t you think we had better run for it?” asked Bessie now.
Kane laughed.
“Why, Bess,” he said, “if that craft is the _Shadow_, we would have
about as much chance of running away from her as a snail would have in a
foot-race with a rabbit.
“And it is the _Shadow_, too. I recognize her now, all right.”
“What shall you do, Max?” asked Bessie anxiously.
“Do? Nothing. What is there to do?”
“Are you going to let that pirate board you, and do as he pleases with
you, without offering the slightest resistance?”
“Eh? Look here, Bess. In the first place, we do not know that he is a
pirate, and the chances are about a thousand to one that he is not. The
last we knew about the vessel—that is, the last I knew about her, was
that she was captured, that her captain and crew were all sent to prison,
and that she was herself as much a prisoner as any of her former crew.”
“And yet we see her now, directly in front of us, and bearing down upon
us as if she meant business. Max, haven’t you got any revolvers or guns
aboard?”
“Why, yes; there are two or three, I imagine.”
“I’ve got one,” said the skipper. “The mate has another.”
“And, Max, you have got two. Wait; I will get them.”
She was gone in an instant, and presently she reappeared with a revolver
in either hand. One of these she gave to her brother-in-law, retaining
the other one herself.
The skipper, who had gone to possess himself of his own weapon, and also
to call the mate to his side, reappeared at the same instant; and Kane’s
wife and her mother, having discovered that something out of the ordinary
was happening, left their seats under the awning and added themselves to
the group.
In the meantime the _Shadow_ had drawn much nearer, and she had now
changed her course so that she would lie directly across the bow of the
_Goalong_, a maneuver which Kane remembered as one which was a favorite
with her commander. And now, too, the sharp crack of a rifled gun came to
their ears from the deck of the stranger, and a vaporlike smoke, which
ascended from amidships, told them as plainly as words could have done
that it proceeded from the turret, where they knew there had formerly
been a machine gun located.
“What is it?” asked Mrs. Kane of her husband; but it was the skipper who
replied.
“It’s the pirate, ma’am,” he said. “It’s the _Shadow_. Perhaps you’ll
remember her, for this isn’t the first time we’ve been afoul of her. And
that there gun from her amidships turret is an order for us to slow down
and lay to. Now, Mr. Kane, what shall I do? Shall I obey it, or shall I
go right along as if nothing had happened?”
Kane had entirely recovered his composure. He was thoroughly master of
himself, now that he knew an emergency was at hand.
He turned coolly, and faced his skipper.
“You will keep going ahead at full speed, just as long as the wheel will
turn,” he said. “And, Mr. Manning, I wish you would call down to the
engine and fire rooms and give orders to crowd her to the limit. If that
fellow gets aboard of me he will have to do it on the fly, I can tell you
that.”
“It’s more than likely that his next cartridge won’t be a blank,” said
Manning.
“I don’t care if it is loaded with dynamite; I won’t stop now till I’m
obliged to,” was Kane’s reply.
Then he turned to his wife, who was standing beside him.
“Cora,” he said, “you and Bessie and your mother will have to go below.
More than likely there will be bullets coming aboard of us before we are
many minutes older, and I don’t want you people here to get hit.”
“Cora and mama can do as they like,” said Bessie Harlan, replying as
if Kane had addressed his remark to her, “but you don’t catch me going
below, Maxwell Kane.
“I’d much rather be up here where I can see things than to go down there
and never know a thing about what is happening.”
“But, Bess, you’ll be—— There! Look there!”
A half-dozen sharp reports, one following another with great rapidity,
came from the deck of the _Shadow_ at that instant, and at least three of
the half-pound shot fired from the machine gun knocked splinters out of
the woodwork forward, and one of them went through the wheel-house and
clipped off one of the spokes as deftly as if it had been a ninepin.
“That looks like business, Mr. Kane,” said Manning coolly.
“Yes,” replied Max. “That chap means business. There is no doubt of that.
Hello! What is he going to do now? Sheer off, do you think?”
“No; he’s up to some new deviltry. Forward, there, at the wheel!” called
the skipper.
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Lay her off two more points to port.”
“Aye, aye, sir; off she goes.”
“The pirate is coming about, now, Mr. Kane,” said the skipper, then. “I
think I can tell you what her game is now.”
“Well, what is it?”
“Why, sir, that pirate fellow means to run up alongside of us. The
_Shadow_ is enough faster than we are for him to do that with ease, and
with this smooth sea it will be like running a baby-farm. When he has
done that, he’ll either make fast to us and board us, or he’ll riddle us
with those half-pound shot at his leisure, sir.”