While the captain and the chief engineer were mustering such men as
were in any way fit to work the ship, or to help in getting the port
engine into running order, Chrysie and her father paid a visit to the
staterooms. Hardress and Lord Orrel were both sleeping as deeply as
ever and breathing heavily. The president tried to rouse them, without
avail. Their pulses were beating regularly, and, apart from their
heavy breathing, there was nothing to show that they were not in a
healthy sleep; but they were absolutely insensible to any outside
influence; and Chrysie found Lady Olive, Adelaide, and Madame de
Bourbon in exactly the same condition. Ma'm'selle Felice was in great
distress about her two mistresses, but Chrysie cut her lamentations
very short by saying:
"You look after your ladies, Felice, and don't worry about anything
else; your place is down here, and don't you come on deck, whatever
happens. There's a boat coming up that may be the same one you
telegraphed to at Cherbourg from Southampton. If it is, you see this?"
she went on, taking her revolver out of her pocket. "Yes, that'll do;
I don't want any theatricals, but you go to your cabin and stop there.
If you're wanted you'll be sent for."
Ma'm'selle Felice shrank away white and trembling, and Miss Chrysie
went back on deck to get the Maxims ready for action. She met her
father under the bridge, and said:
"I reckon, poppa, they're all pretty dead down there. We'll have to
see this thing through on our own hands."
The chief and his men worked like heroes on the shaft, and a good head
of steam was by some means kept up, but the other yacht crept rapidly
up across the eastern horizon, and by breakfast time it was perfectly
plain that she was the _Vlodoya_. Moreover, both Miss Chrysie and the
captain from the bridge had been able to make out with their glasses
that she was carrying a Maxim-Nordenfelt gun on her forecastle, and
two others which looked like one-pound quick-firers on either side, a
little forward of the bridge. She was flying no flags, not even the
pennant of the Imperial Yacht Squadron, to which she belonged. The
_Nadine_ was flying the Blue Ensign and the pennant of the Royal Yacht
Squadron. When the _Vlodoya_ was within about eight miles, heading
directly for the _Nadine_, the president sent down to ask Mr M'Niven
how long it would be before the port engine could be used, and the
answer came back, "A good hour yet, but everything is going all
right."
Just at this moment the captain was overtaken with another fit of
sickness and dizziness, and had to go down to his room; and Mr Vernon
remained in charge of the bridge with Miss Chrysie, who was walking up
and down, with a strange look of almost masculine sternness on her
pretty face, and the gleam of a distinctly wicked light in her eyes.
For her the minutes of that hour passed with terrible slowness as she
watched the _Vlodoya_ coming up mile after mile, with torrents of
smoke pouring out of her funnels. She was evidently steaming every
yard she could make. A quarter, half, and three-quarters of an hour
passed, and still she kept on, looming up larger and larger astern,
and Miss Chrysie looked more and more anxiously at the long gun on
deck and the two Maxims on the bridge.
Again a message went down to the engine-room, and the answer came
back--"Another twenty minutes." Just then a line of signal flags
ran up to the _Vlodoya's_ main truck. The chief officer's glasses
instantly went up to his eyes, but after a long look he shook his
head and said to the president:
"That's no regular signal, Mr Vandel; it's evidently a private one,
arranged beforehand, I should say."
"Then we won't answer it," said the president, "and we'll see what
he'll do next. I guess, if he's what we think him, he'll have to
declare himself right away."
They hadn't very long to wait, for about five minutes afterwards a
puff of smoke rose from the _Vlodoya's_ forecastle, and a seven-pound
shell came screaming and whistling across the water. It was the first
time that Miss Chrysie had ever been shot at, but she took it without
a shiver. The chief officer begged her to go below at once. But she
only shut her teeth tighter, and said:
"No, thanks, Mr Vernon, I'm going to have a hand in this. I'm the only
one on deck just now that knows how to run a Maxim, and I can shoot as
straight with it as I can with my own little pepper-box; so if you
just let Mr Robertson come and see to the serving of the ammunition, I
think we'll be able to give our Russian friends just about as good as
we get."
"Say, poppa," she went on, leaning over the front of the bridge, "I
reckon that shot broke the law of nations, didn't it? How would it be
if you raised his bluff? Go him a few pounds of Vandelite better?"
"There's no hurry about that, Chrysie," said the president, who had
got his gun loaded, and was squinting every now and then along the
sights. "I guess he doesn't want to hit us; we've got too much
precious cargo on board. You see, that was a seven-pound shell, and if
it got under our water-line--well, we'd just go right down. If our
friends are on board, they just want to scare us into surrender,
that's all; so I think it would be better for us to wait further
developments, and let Mr M'Niven get his work in on that shaft. I can
make scrap-iron out of the _Vlodoya_ just as soon as ever we want
to do it; so don't worry about that."
At this moment another puff of steamy smoke rose from the deck of the
Russian yacht, and this time a shell came screaming away over the
_Nadine's_ masts. Miss Chrysie shut her teeth a bit harder, and walked
towards the Maxim on the port side, the one which she could at any
time have brought to bear on the _Vlodoya_. The chief officer
meanwhile stood anxiously by the engine-room telegraph. It was also
his first experience of being shot at. He was just as cool as Miss
Chrysie or her father, but he didn't like it. He had the Englishman's
natural longing to be able to shoot back, but he recognised that,
trying as it was, the president's strategy was the best. About ten
more minutes passed, during which the _Vlodoya_ drew up closer and
closer, until Chrysie, after a good look through her glasses, was able
to say:
"Why, yes; there's the count and Sophie on the bridge. Poppa, why
don't you let 'em have just one little hint that we're not quite
harmless?"
The last word had scarcely left her lips before another puff of steamy
smoke rose from the fore-quarter of the Russian yacht, and a second or
so after, a bright flash of flame blazed out, about fifty yards on the
port side of the _Nadine_.
"That's a time shell," said Vernon. "They evidently mean business: I
fancy they could hit us if they liked. Don't you think, Mr Vandel,
that we might slow round and give them one from that gun of yours?"
"No, sir," said the president, looking up from his gun: "not till
we've the legs on her. When Mr M'Niven----"
At this moment the chief came up on to the bridge, black and grimed
from head to foot.
"All right, Mr Vernon, you can go full steam ahead now. We've got
every bit of grit out, and she'll work as easy as ever she did."
"Then," said the president, "I reckon that's about all that we want.
Full steam ahead, if you please, Mr Vernon; you can let her go both
engines."
The chief officer pulled the telegraph handle over to full speed. The
next moment two columns of boiling foam leapt out from under the
_Nadine's_ counters as she sprang forward from eight knots to sixteen,
and then to twenty. Almost at the same instant the Maxim-Nordenfeldt
from the _Vlodoya_ forecastle spoke again, and a seven-pound shell,
aimed low this time, came hurtling across the water, and missed the
_Nadine's_ stern by about ten yards.
"I reckon that means business," said the president. "Full speed ahead,
if you please, Mr Vernon, and hard aport."
The _Nadine_ made a splendid swerve through an arc of about a hundred
and eighty degrees, and then began the naval duel, on the issue of
which the future course of human history was to depend.
The _Vlodoya_ fired three more shots in as many minutes, but they went
wide, for she was steaming nearly seventeen knots and the _Nadine_
twenty. Then as the _Nadine_ swung round so that her bow pointed
towards the _Vlodoya_, the president signed to the two men who were
working the gun, a wheel was whirled round, and the muzzle swung
slowly until he put his hand up and said:
"Stop her, if you please, Mr Vernon, and screw her round as hard as
you can."
The engine telegraph rang, a sharp shudder ran through the fabric of
the _Nadine_, the water which had been swirling astern mounted up
ahead as her engines backed, and her bow came up, till the president
raised his hand again to stop her. At the same moment another shell
from the _Vlodoya_ whistled over the deck at an elevation of only a
few feet. In fact, it passed so near to Miss Chrysie that she
involuntarily put her hand up to keep her hat on her head. Clifford
Vandel saw it. He didn't say anything, but he set his teeth, squinted
along the sights of his gun, and touched a button in the breech. Five
seconds later a mountain of boiling foam rose up under the stern of
the _Vlodoya_. She stopped like a stricken animal, and lay motionless
on the water, lurching slowly down by the stern.
"Well hit, poppa!" cried Miss Chrysie, from the bridge. "I guess
that's got him on a tender spot. The count won't have much screws to
work with after that. Oh, they're going to shoot again. Suppose you
gave them one forward this time."
While she was speaking, the quick-firer had already been reloaded, the
president moved the long barrel a couple of degrees, and touched the
button again. The sharp hiss of the released air was followed by an
intensely brilliant flash of light on the forecastle of the _Vlodoya_,
and when the smoke had cleared away the Maxim-Nordenfeldt had
vanished.
"I guess there's not much wrong with that automatic sighting
arrangement of mine," said the president; "hits every time."
"Couldn't be better, poppa! I reckon they're pretty tired by this.
Suppose Mr Vernon gives her full speed again, and we go along and have
a talk with Ma'm'selle Sophie and the count. Shouldn't wonder if they
knew by now that we've raised their bluff, and are ready to see them
for all they've got."
The president re-charged his gun, and then, leaning his back up
against the bridge, said:
"Well, yes, Chrysie, I think we can see them now, if Mr Vernon will
give us full speed ahead for a few minutes."
The chief officer nodded, and pulled the handle of the telegraph over.
The answering tinkle came back from the engine-room, in which the
chief had retired after he had given his message, and the _Nadine_
again sprang forward towards the crippled vessel that was now her
prey. She described another magnificent curve, and as she rushed up
alongside the Russian yacht at a distance of about two hundred yards,
Miss Chrysie sat herself down on a camp-stool behind the Maxim, and
sent half-a-dozen shots rattling through the rigging of the _Vlodoya_.
Then, as the _Nadine_ swung in closer, she depressed the barrel of the
gun on to the bridge, on which she could now recognise the count and
his daughter, and sang out, in a clear soprano:
"Hands up, please, or I'll shoot. My dear Countess Sophie, I never
expected this of you."
Countess Sophie looked at her father, and bit a Russian curse in two
between her tightly-clenched teeth, and said to her father who was
standing beside her on the bridge:
"She has failed--she and the engineer too--and these accursed
Americans have done it, I suppose. They have broken our propellers and
disabled our gun. What are we to do? It is exasperating, just when we
thought that everything was going so well. What has happened to
Adelaide?--has she turned traitor too? Surely that would be
impossible."
"Impossible or not, my dear Sophie," replied the count, "there is now
no choice between sinking and surrender. You see, that gun, one of
these diabolical American inventions, I have no doubt, would sink us
like a shot, and then----"
"And then we shall have to surrender, I suppose," said Sophie. "But it
is still possible that I shall have a chance to shoot that American
girl before this little international comedy is played out, and if I
do----"
"Hands up, please, everyone on board, or I _will_ shoot this time,"
came in clear tones across about fifty yards of water. Sophie looked
round and saw Miss Chrysie looking along the sights of the Maxim, with
her hand on the spring. Her face was hard set, and her eyes were
burning. There was no mistaking her intention. In another moment a
storm of bullets would be raining along the decks of the _Vlodoya_.
"We are beaten, papa, for the present," she said, as she got up from
her chair, and put her hands over her head. The count looked at the
grinning muzzle of the Maxim and did the same.
"Yes," he said, "we are beaten this time, and it is hardly good policy
to be sunk in the middle of the Atlantic. Later on, perhaps, we may
retrieve something; but it is strange how these Anglo-Saxons, stupid
and all as they are to begin with, always seem to get the best of us
at the end. Yes; we must surrender or sink, and, personally, I have no
taste for the bottom of the Atlantic at present.