The _Nadine_ ranged alongside, Miss Chrysie still sitting at her
Maxim, with Robertson beside her ready to see to the ammunition feed,
and the president, leaning over the forward rail, said, as laconically
as though he had been putting the most ordinary business proposition:
"Good-morning, excellency; I guess you and the countess had better
come on board as soon as possible. If you'll lower the gangway I'll
send a boat; but if there's any more shooting I shall sink you. I
don't want to do anything unpleasant, you understand; but that
high-toned friend of yours the marquise has half-poisoned most of us,
and so the rest have to take charge. Are you badly hurt?"
Count Valdemar held a hurried consultation with the captain of the
_Vlodoya_, and replied, as politely as he could:
"The fortune of war is with you, Mr Vandel, and there is no need for
any further concealment. We are crippled, but the watertight
compartments have been closed and we shall float. Meanwhile, we are
helpless and entirely at your service. What do you wish us to do?"
In the meantime the _Nadine's_ boat had been lowered, and was pulling
round her stern to the gangway of the _Vlodoya_, which had been
lowered, and the president replied:
"We'll have to ask your excellency and the countess to be our guests
for a bit; so if you'll just come right on board and tell your people
to get your baggage fixed up, we'll be able to save you a certain
amount of unpleasantness. You will be a lot more comfortable on board
here than you will there, because we're going to take what coal you've
got and then sink you."
As the president said this the captain of the Russian yacht nodded
towards a man standing by one of the one-pounders on the fore deck. He
pulled the lanyard, there was a sharp bang, and a shell bored its way
through the plates of the _Nadine_ amidships, just missing the
engines. The next moment Miss Chrysie's Maxim began to thud, spitting
flame and smoke and lead, sweeping the decks of the _Vlodoya_ from
stem to stern. Only those on the bridge were spared. For a full three
minutes the deadly hail continued, and there was not a man on deck who
was not killed or maimed. The president had jumped back to the breech
of his gun, the muzzle swung round till it bore directly on the part
of the _Vlodoya_ which contained her boilers. He held up his hand and
Chrysie stopped the Maxim. Then she swung it on to the bridge, glanced
along the sights and touched the spring. There was a crack and a puff
of smoke and flame, and the captain of the _Vlodoya_, who was standing
about a couple of feet away from Count Valdemar and Sophie, reeled
half round and dropped with a bullet through his heart.
"I guess your excellency and the countess had better come on board
right away," said the president, still looking along the sights of his
gun. "That's a pretty unhealthy place you're in, and my daughter's
only got the patience of an ordinary woman, you know."
Sophie looked across at the _Nadine's_ bridge, and saw Chrysie's white
face and burning eyes looking over the barrel of the Maxim. Her thumb
was on the spring and there was death in her eyes. She took her father
by the arm, and said:
"Come, papa, it's no use. That she-devil will shoot us like dogs if we
don't go. Come."
And so they went down to the deck, strewn with corpses and splashed
with blood, to the gangway ladder, at the bottom of which the
_Nadine's_ boat was waiting.
Miss Chrysie at once left the gun with which she had done such
terrible execution, and went with the chief officer to receive them.
To the utter astonishment of both the count and Sophie, she held out
her hand as cordially as though the meeting had taken place on the
terrace of Orrel Court, and said with a somewhat exaggerated drawl:
"Well, countess, and your excellency, I am real glad to see you. We
sort of thought we should meet you somewhere about here, and I am sure
his lordship and the viscount and Lady Olive, when they get better,
will do all they can to make you comfortable. Now, here's the
stewardess. As she didn't have any of the marquise's punch last night,
she's ready to show you to your room. Mr Vernon, perhaps you'll be
kind enough to attend to his excellency. Good-bye for the present: I
guess we shall meet at lunch."
"Really, after the unpleasantness that has happened," said the count,
"your kindness, and your hospitality are quite overwhelming."
"And," added Sophie, as the two prisoners of war passed into the
charge of their respective custodians, "I must say that to me it is as
mysterious as it is charming. If the conditions had been reversed, I
should certainly have shot you."
"It wouldn't have been quite fair," replied Miss Chrysie, sweetly.
"You see I had a gun, and you hadn't."
She watched them disappear down the companion way to the saloon, then
she put her hands up to her eyes, groped her way half-blindly to a
long wicker chair, dropped into it and incontinently fainted.
Just then the chief, washed, shaved, new-clad and thoroughly contented
with the really splendid piece of work that had been done on one of
his beloved engines, came on deck, looking as though nothing very
particular had happened. He saw instantly what was the matter.
"The lassie has a wonderful nerve," he said to himself. "Ay, what a
man she'd have made! But she's only a lassie after all, and we'd
better get her below. I'll just take her down to Mrs Evans without
troubling the president. He's got plenty to think about. Yes; Vernon's
on the bridge, and he'll see to things."
Then he picked her up in his arms and carried her down to her own
cabin and laid her in her berth, and gave her into the charge of the
stewardess. Then he went up to the captain's room, and found him just
recovering consciousness.
"What's the matter, M'Niven?" he said. "That infernal punch last night
seems to have poisoned me. I seem to have been having nightmare after
nightmare, with guns firing and----"
"That's all right, captain," replied the Scotsman; "if you'd taken
less of that infernal punch and more honest whisky, as I did, you
wouldn't have such an awful head on you as I suppose you have. Still,
there's nothing much to trouble about. We've got the engine to rights
again; we've met the Russian yacht, and fought her, and beaten her. Mr
Vandel smashed her up with his gun, and Miss Vandel--a wonderful girl
that, sir, a wonderful girl--she sat at her Maxim as if it had been a
sewing-machine, and seemed to think no more of shots than stitches,
and then, woman-like, she fainted, and I've just taken her below and
handed her over to Mrs Evans.
"And now, captain, don't you think that a wee peg would do you good?
Mr Vernon's on the bridge, the president's holding up the Russians
with his gun, and the engines are working all right, but half the crew
and all the company are still something like dead, with that
Frenchwoman's drugs, whatever they were."
Captain Burgess took the chief engineer's hint, and a stiff brandy and
soda. Then he dressed and went on deck, and had a brief conversation
with the president, after which he took charge of the operations of
clearing all the coal and stores out of the _Vlodoya_ before she was
sent to the bottom.
The president and Miss Chrysie had to entertain their involuntary
guests at lunch, for although the rest of the _Nadine's_ company
were recovering consciousness, they were still under the doctor's care
and unable to leave their berths; but at dinner that evening Lady
Olive, the earl, and Hardress were able to welcome them, and they did
so with a sardonic cordiality which compelled both his excellency and
Sophie to admit that these Anglo-Saxons were, after all, not such bad
diplomatists as Europeans were wont to think. Madame de Bourbon was
still prostrate, and the marquise had the best of reasons for
remaining in her own cabin.
It was perhaps as strange a dinner party as ever sat down afloat or
ashore, and it was rendered doubly strange by the fact that the last
time they had all sat together most of them suspected, and some of
them knew, that this very conflict, which had ended in spite of all
disadvantages so completely in favour of the _Nadine_ and her company,
was certain to take place, yet very few references were made to the
state of active hostilities which had now been practically proclaimed.
Count Valdemar and Sophie were treated on board the _Nadine_ exactly
as they had been at Orrel Court. Lord Orrel and Lady Olive were just
as they had been at Cowes, and in the Solent. Hardress, who had taken
a somewhat perilously large dose of the fair Adelaide's punch, looked
pale and seemed rather sleepy, until he had had two or three glasses
of champagne, and then he seemed to brighten up, and began discussing
international politics with a frankness and an intimate knowledge
which simply astounded their involuntary guests. So far as the party
was concerned, there was now no further need for anything like
concealment, and not only were the Storage Works discussed, in their
full nature and purpose, but even the advent of the French and Russian
expeditions at Boothia Land was anticipated with what the Count
afterwards described to Sophie as brutally disgusting frankness.
Miss Chrysie, eating her strawberries at dessert as daintily as though
her hands had never been within a mile of a Maxim gun, chatted and
chaffed just as she had been wont to do at Orrel Court, and the
president talked gunnery and machinery with the captain and Mr
M'Niven, who had been invited to join the party; and finally, when
even the marquise came into dessert on Lady Olive's pressing
invitation, all that she heard about her deliberate attempt to drug
the whole ship's company was from Lord Orrel, who rose as she entered,
and said in just such a tone as he might have used in the drawing-room
at Orrel Court:
"My dear marquise, I am delighted to see that you have recovered from
the same mysterious indisposition that has affected all of us. I am
really afraid that there must have been something wrong with the
recipe for the punch _a le Grand Monarque_, or perhaps it was not
intended for general use. However, as we are all happily recovered, we
need not trouble ourselves any further about that."
Adelaide entered instantly into the spirit of the comedy that was
being played, and she replied:
"Ah, my lord, it is so kind of you not to blame me! Believe me, I am
desolated, and have been very nearly killed, and my poor aunt believes
too that she is going to die. It is my last performance at
punch-making, for I have torn the horrible recipe up and thrown it
into the sea."
"I am rather sorry to hear that, marquise," said Hardress, looking at
her with a cold, steady stare, which at once enraged and infinitely
saddened her; for it proved that the empire, which until a few hours
ago she had hoped to gain over him, and through him the world, was now
only a dream never to be realised. Still, she kept herself under
command marvellously, and greeted the count and Sophie just as though
the _Nadine_ had been lying off Cowes instead of being lashed to the
_Vlodoya_ in mid-Atlantic, with the steam winches rattling and roaring
over their heads, emptying the Russian yacht's bunkers into the
_Nadine's_ as fast as her own crew and what was left of her enemy's
could do it. In short, a most unexpectedly pleasant evening was spent
by everybody.
Coffee and cigars and cigarettes were taken up into the smoking-room,
which was well to windward of the coal dust. Adelaide went to the
piano and played brilliantly. Then she accompanied Sophie in quaint
and tenderly-touching Russian folk-songs. Then Miss Chrysie sang coon
songs and accompanied herself; and Hardress, on her suggestion, made
with a wicked humour in her dancing eyes, recite Kipling's "Rhyme of
the Three Sealers" to her own piano accompaniment. They both did it
very well, and more than one person in the cosy little smoking-room
could have killed them for it.
Nothing occurred to give the count and Sophie or Adelaide and the
innocent Madame de Bourbon any idea that they were really prisoners
until they retired for the night. Then the chief steward knocked at
the count's door and asked if he wanted anything more. Mrs Evans did
the same for Sophie and the marquise, and then the doors of the
staterooms were locked. They were unlocked again at seven the next
morning, and, after baths and early coffee, Hardress invited his
guests on to the bridge to watch the end of the _Vlodoya_.
During the night she had been completely stripped of everything that
could be useful to her captor. Every pound of coal was taken out of
her bunkers. The two little quick-firers had been transferred with all
their ammunition to the _Nadine_. Her four boats, amply provisioned
and watered, were comfortably filled with such of her officers and
crew as Chrysie's Maxim volley had left alive. There was a southward
breeze, and in forty-eight hours at the outside they were certain to
be picked up, either by a liner or a cargo boat, and plenty of money
had been given them to pay their passages either to Europe or America.
When they had hoisted their sails and began to bear away towards the
steamer-track, the _Nadine_ cast off from the _Vlodoya_, her screws
began to revolve, and the president got his gun loaded.
"I reckon we might have a little gun practice, and see how far this
pea-shooter really will carry," he said, looking up at the bridge,
with a smile in which neither Sophie nor her father found very much
humour. "Will you make it five miles, captain?"
The captain rang for full speed.
The _Nadine_ sprang forward with a readiness which showed how utterly
futile the plot to cripple her had been, and in a few minutes the
motionless hull of the _Vlodoya_ was a white speck on the water. Then
she stopped and swung round. The president adjusted his automatic
sights, waited till she rose on the swell, and let go. There was a
hiss and a whizz, and then, where the speck was a bright flash blazed
out. Two more shells followed in quick succession, and as the last
flash blazed out, Count Valdemar took his glasses down from his eyes
and looked at Hardress, and said, with a touch of bitterness in his
tone:
"She has gone! That is a wonderful gun, viscount."
"Yes," replied Hardress, dryly. "That is a twelve-pounder. We have
some hundred-pounders at the works, as well as a new weapon which may
interest your excellency very much. It destroys without striking. If
the French and Russian North Polar Expedition should chance to pay us
a visit, you may perhaps see them both in action."
"And now, president," he went on, "I suppose we may as well shape our
course for Boothia Land."
"There is nothing more to wait for that I know of, viscount," he
replied. And so the _Nadine's_ head was swung round to the north-west,
her engines were put to their full power, and so she began her voyage
to that desolate spot of earth which was soon to become the seat of
the world-empire.