"Number two!" said Black quite calmly, when I told him, "and this time a battle-ship. Well, boy, if we don't take that oil yonder in ten minutes you may say your prayers."
CHAPTER XXV.
THE DUMB MAN SPEAKS.
He put up the helm as he spoke, and brought our head round so that we were in a position to have rammed the cruiser had we chosen. This was not Black's object. He desired first to cripple her completely, then to finish her with the Maxim guns.
"Now, let's see what that Scotsman's worth," he cried, as he laid down his cigar, and spoke through one of the tubes. Almost with his words the tower shook with the thunder, the twenty-nine ton gun in the fore turret belched forth flame, and the hissing shell struck the steamer over her very magazine. We waited for a response, but none came. She had received the shot, as it proved, right on her great gun; and the weapon lay shivered and useless, cast quite free from its carriage, while dead men were around it in heaps.
"Dick's earned his dinner," said Black, taking up his cigar again, as he rang twice, and the men rushed to the small guns, and prepared to get them into action. "We'll give 'em a little hail this time, for they haven't the cover we have. If we don't get aboard before the other comes up, they get the trick."
The nameless ship bounded forward into the night as he spoke, and, soon coming up with the helm a-starboard, she was not fifty yards away from her long opponent when the deadly steel storm began its havoc. For our part, the men had cover of a sort in the fore-top, and there were steel screens round the deck-guns; but when the cruiser replied with her own small arms many fell; and groans, and shrieks, and curses rose, and were audible even to us in the tower. Never have I known anything akin to that terrible episode when bullets rang upon our decks in hundreds, and the dead and the living in the other ship lay huddled together, in a seething, struggling, moaning mass. For she had little cover, being a cruiser, and we had opened fire upon her before such of her men as could be spared had got below.
"Let 'em digest that!" cried Black, as he watched the havoc, and puffed away with serene calmness amidst the stress of it all; "let 'em swallow lead, the vultures. I'd sink 'em with one shot if it wasn't for their oil; but they ain't alone!"
It was true. I, who had not ceased to watch that distant light which marked another warship on the horizon, knew that a second light had shone out as a star away over the sea; and now, when I looked again at his words, I saw a third light, but I had no courage to tell him of it. Indeed, we were being surrounded, and the danger was the greater for every minute of delay. The cruiser, although she suffered so grievously from the storm of lead which we rained upon her, had not hurled down her flag, and still replied to our fire, but more feebly. And the search-lights of the distant ships were clearer to my view every moment, so that I watched them alone at the last; and Black saw them, and took a sight from the glass. Then for the first time his cigar fell from his lips, and he muttered an exclamation which might have been one of fear.
"Boy," he said, "you should have told me of this. I see three lights, and that means a fleet of the devils to come. Well, I'll risk it, as I've risked it before. If I can stop 'em now with a shot, the game's ours; if she sinks, they trump us."
He gave a long order in careful words down through the tube to the turret; and, coming up to position, we fired at the cruiser for the last time, hitting her low down in the very centre of her engine-room. A great volume of steam gushed up from her deck, with clouds of smoke and fire; and as all shooting from her small arms ceased, we went out to the gallery, and the boats were cast free. A minute after, the ensign of the other was lowered, and we had beaten her.
"You, 'Four-Eyes,' take the launch, and get her oil," Black sang out at the sight; "you'll have five hands, that's all you want. Go sharp, if you'd save your skins!"
I stood on the gallery, and watched the passage of the small boat, which was at the side of the maimed cruiser almost in a moment. There was no longer any resistance to our men, for the hands of the other ship had too much work of their own to do. I saw some running quickly to the aft boats, while some were bearing wounded from below, and others stood beneath the bridge taking orders from a very young officer, who had no colleagues in the work. Not that there was any confusion, only that awful crying of strong men in their agony, of the dying who feel death's hand upon them, of the wounded who had pain which was hardly to be endured. For a long time it seemed as though no one heard the hail of "Four-Eyes" to be taken aboard; and when at last we watched him get on deck, he met with no resistance, but did as he would. Under the spreading rays of our great arc you could follow the whole scene as though by day—the hurrying crowd of seamen, the work at the boat, the fear and terror of it all. And you could see at the last a sight which to Black had more import than anything else in that picture of distress and desolation.
The great ship began to heel right over. Her stern came high out of the water, so that her screws were visible. She dipped her foc's'le clean under the breaking sea; and so she rode during some terrible minutes. Her own men now cast off their boats anyhow, leaving the wounded, who cursed, or implored, or prayed, or shrieked; but "Four-Eyes" did not come, and Black raved, looking away where the search-lights of the other ships now showed their rapid approach. To this extraordinary man it was the great cast of life. If the cruiser went down and his men got no oil, we should infallibly be taken by the warships then coming upon us; and I wonder not that in that moment he lost something of his old calm, pacing the bridge with nervous steps, and alternately cursing or imploring the men who could not hear.
"Why don't they come?" he asked desperately. "The lazy, loitering snails! What are they doing there? Do you see her heeling? She can't weather that list another five minutes. Dick! for God's sake signal to them—the creeping vermin! Ahoy, there! Do you hear me? You aboard, are you looking to live to-morrow, or will you lay a hundred fathoms under—look, boys! Do you see them lights? They're warships, three of 'em! We've got to show 'em our heels, and we can't—we've no oil, not a gallon! And they're taking their ease like fine gentlemen aboard there—the guzzling swine—but I'll stir 'em! You Dick, fire a shot at 'em!"
Dick had just answered him, saying, "Ay, Captain, I'll gie him a wee bit o' iron in his gizzard," when his further words were broken on his lips, for our hands appeared at the ladder of the doomed steamer, and they tumbled into the launch anyhow, flying madly from her side as she plunged to a huge sea, and with one mighty roll went headlong under the surface of the Atlantic. At that moment day broke, and, as the silver light of the dawn spread over the dark of the sea, we saw three ironclads approaching us at all their speed, and then not three miles distant from us. But the launch was at our side, and as Black leant over, and the new light lit up his bloodshot eyes and haggard face, he asked, with hoarseness in his voice—
"Have ye got the oil?"
"Not a drop!" replied the cox.
The strong man reared himself straight up, and he turned to Karl, at his side. In that moment he was really great, and I shall never forget the nonchalance with which he drew another cigar from his case and lighted it. The two men, who had found their calm as the danger thickened, were in perfect accord; and, as one descended the ladder to the engine-room with slow steps, the other went again to the tower, where I followed him.
"Boy," he said, "I've often wondered how this old ship would break up; now we'll see, but she's going to bite some of 'em yet, if she can't last."
"Are you going to run for it?" I asked.
"Run for it, with two engines, yes; but it's a poor business. And we'll have to fight! Well, who knows? There's luck at sea as well as on shore. If I run, they'll catch me in ten miles; but we'll all do what we can. Now smoke and have a brandy-and-soda. You may not get another."
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