While there was this hubbub of order upon the decks below, there was upon the bridge a display of fine command and skilled seamanship. Burke, who ruled with resonant voice, and was easy to be heard above the wind, had eyes both for his own men and the plunging cruiser. Messenger gripped the rail and smoked a cigar with easy assurance. Kenner was restless, and dared a pessimistic forecast at unseemly intervals.
"Wal," said he, "I said it was a swinging job at Monaco three months ago, and, by gosh! it looks like setting me up in the prophet line!"
Messenger listened to him with a child-like smile playing about his mouth, and answered—
"Why not go to bed till we're out of it? They tell me that some men get wonderfully good notions with their heads under the clothes."
"Maybe," replied the American, "and maybe I squirm. But don't you see he's driving us right along agen the Irish coast? and where are ye then?"
"Why, right along the Irish coast, I suppose, as you say so."
Kenner stood before him and looked him up and down.
"Prince," said he, "I guess if I rubbed ice agen you, you wouldn't melt it. Hang me if your mother didn't feed you on snowballs!"
"Perhaps," said Messenger; "anyway, she taught me that you don't go far on a harum-scarum, and it's true."
"But," argued the other, getting angry, "don't you see, man, that once she's forced us shoreward there'll be twenty ships on our tail? You don't seem to take it in!"
"That's likely," replied Messenger, as he struck a fusee. "There are few things, however, I don't take in when the opportunity comes. The fact is, I wasn't born a skipper, and I'm too old to turn to that job. Don't you think it's as well to leave the business to Burke?"
This latter word expressed the whole of the man. Since he had got the money upon the ship he knew that the better part of his work was done. He was not a seaman; it rested with Burke, the skipper, to get the bullion into port. He could only wait and watch, and take from chance the gift apportioned to him. Kenner, on the other hand, was a man who concerned himself in every person's business, and did nobody's. He envied the Prince his sang-froid, his illimitable calm, his assurance; and when he could get nothing out of him, he went to Burke, who had his hand upon the communicator, and renewed his absurdities.
The situation was at that time very critical. Dark still held down upon the sea, save in that arc of whiteness which the search-light cast. The wind blew almost a full gale; green seas swept the foredecks and threatened to flood the fo'castle. The yacht trembled from stem to stern as every foam-capped mount of water struck her and went swinging away down her whole length. So great was her speed that she scarce rode a sea, but dashed through it with foam-spurts shooting up incessantly above her prow and a quivering of her plates which sent fear palpitating through all who felt it. There was no thought then, however, either of tempests or of the great rolling volumes of foam and water which were driven by the wind in mighty devouring masses, until they struck the iron coast of Donegal, fifty miles away. All eyes were turned upon the cruiser there, pursuing as a hideous phantom of the night, clinging to them, despite the vast use of fuel, seeming to have gained upon them every time there was a lift of the night or any show of her beaming light. And when another hour passed, the conviction, which had been growing since the beginning of it, became emphasized, and men expressed it, crying: "We're took! Heaven help us, we're took!" and clinging together as those upon whom a vengeance comes, to find them unready.
And thus the night passed, and the angry dawn rose above the wildness of the sea.
VII. "A TEMPEST DROPPING FIRE"
Day broke slowly, with a low mount of black cloud over the sea and but scant abatement of the wind, which began to blow again from the fuller west. Torrents of cooling rain now poured upon the decks of the Semiramis and were sport for the hurricane, which tossed them hither and thither in blinding sheets. All over the angry waste of water the loud contest of the thundering rollers was to be heard and seen, booming out with the dull roar of rushing cataracts, or spurting high in silvery cascades where the greater waves were checked. The darkness of night was scarcely worse than the gloom of the new dawn—a gloom of lowering black vapour and raging sea, of the mournful wailing of the wind and suggested desolation.
When the light, such as it was, gave clearer outline to the worn face of the Atlantic, those upon the bridge of the yacht looked down upon a strange scene. There were but two ships on the sea with them; and of these one was the cruiser, which plunged through the swelling tempest a couple of miles away on their starboard quarter; the other was a full-rigged ship, now running under a storm-jib and reefed topsails toward the Irish coast. For the rest, there was nothing but the restless flash of white water, the swirl of giant billows, the crash of breaking rollers, the hemisphere of gathering cloud.
With such an environment the customary spirit of Burke's crew was altogether lacking. For the most part, the men lay huddled together just abaft the fore hatch, and had eyes for nothing but the pursuing cruiser, which seemed to hold the yacht so easily, yet could gain nothing upon her. They had even ceased to ask the question: "Shall we be took?" but remained inert and hopeless as the chase went on and the situation remained unchanged. Nor did those upon the bridge speak, but took it as men at war with chance but to whom chance is no taskmaster. This tension was almost insupportable for some hours, while the yacht plunged onward at a terrible pace, and thrilled and quivered as a woman who has received a blow. It might have endured to the end had not the cook, one-legged Joe, to whom all things were but meat for the pot, come up from the galley and begun, after his usual habit, to stump the deck, and call the hands to breakfast, as a muezzin calls to prayer in the cities of the Prophet. Joe was a half-caste, and his jerky step upon the fo'castle was the surest signal to merriment forward under placid circumstances; but on that morning of the fourth day it was little welcome, and for some time, at any rate, it met with curt response.
"Be gor!" cried the man, as he hopped up and down, his fine balance disregarding the vigour of the lurches—"be gor! if this don't beat cold rum! A sight of gemmelen what hab forgotten eight bells; and all for a bit of a ship that Joe wouldn't go for to jump over, sahs—not for to jump over!"
He stopped his antics before the Scotchman, Johnson, who was holding fast to the shrouds of the short foremast and surveying him with withering contempt.
"Man," said he to the cook, "ye're ower blithesome for the time of day, I'm thinking. Have ye no stomach for yon?"
"Sah," replied Joe, "you warm the innar man, sah; you gib 'em plenty stomach by-and-by; you gib 'em what young gemmelen call hot-pot and slops, sah—Joe know; he smell war, sah, while him a long way off!"
With this he fell to hopping up and down again on that ill-made steel leg, which served him at once as a means of ambulation, and, as the crew declared, in place of a cooking-spoon when the need was. For the matter of that, he bawled so lustily and with such effect that a few men presently turned down to breakfast, and Burke followed their example, leading Kenner and the others with him.
It was not the hour when men might think of food; but the skipper knew that long and arduous labour was before them all; and, for himself, he showed as good an appetite as a roisterer at a village fair, and washed down great hunks of meat with frequent potations from a bottle of Hollands.
"That's the stuff ez'll warm you best for a picnic such ez this is," said he, as he pushed the bottle to the others. "None o' your slops and fizzing pison fer me. Prince,