"Yes, Captain. And the men——"
"They'll keep at their stations and wait for the boat to come off. Let the Frenchman stand by the tube. It may be a case of sink or swim, Jack. I'll leave it to the Germans to begin."
He climbed back to the platform and I followed him with what skill I could. The steel doors of the conning-tower were open, and he did not shut them when he went in, so I followed him there, and to my surprise found Osbart, quite cool and collected, and carrying a heavy revolver in his hand. We were hardly down the ladder when the Frenchman cried to us from above that the liner was signalling to us— and this proved to be the case. Even I, who was no trained sailor, could read the message of her flashing lanterns.
"What are they saying?" the Doctor asked me quite in the old way. I told him, as well as I could, that they were asking us our name.
"Then they don't know the truth," says he; but it was hardly spoken when there came a rattle of rifle bullets, and they struck upon our hood of steel as a hail which left fire in its train.
"A pretty blundering lot," cries the Captain grimly; but he gave no other order, and presently I saw the great ship's lantern flashing again, and I read the second message. It offered us five minutes to decide whether we would surrender as we were or take the consequences. Evidently their captain thought that he had us stricken and helpless. There could be no other excuse for his folly.
"A gem of a man," says Black, falling to an Irish manner of speaking; but he gave no word of command, and so there we lay in the trough of the sea, with the great ship looming above us like a fortress, and the beacon blazing at our backs, and the swell ruddy as with a floor of blood. Never would a man ashore understand the moment of it or what the crew of the Zero must have lived through in those instants of waiting.
Had they any kind of gun or had they not? There are German liners that sail the seas in cruiser's trim and are little less serviceable than warships. Of the Borkum I myself knew nothing, either of her history or her armament; but it was plain that the men had some kind of a story about her, and that what was in my mind was in theirs also. If the great ship carried any kind of machine-gun, we were done for beyond any hope whatever. If she did not carry a gun, we might outwit her, poor as the prospect seemed. So the affair went in my manner of reckoning, and thus it was that I could hear my own heart beating as I stood at the glass of the conning-tower and looked out over the blood-red sea. The question of the gun stood paramount. I waited for the thunder of its report as for a judgment from Heaven upon the pirates. The instants of delay were an agony to suffer.
Well, no shot was fired, and, at that, courage seemed to come upon the men as a freshet. Black himself had not turned a hair from the beginning, and none was quicker than he to perceive the significance of the liner's silence. Plainly, he had staked all upon the hazard of her armament, and fortune rewarded him. As a man triumphant he turned to Jack-o'-Lantern, and bade him make an answer to the signal. Then through a monstrous megaphone, one of Guichard's designing, there went across the sea a word of defiance which might have set even our own men shuddering.
"Ahoy, there, you on the Borkum! I give you ten minutes to put twenty thousand pounds on this ship. Move a cable's length from where you are, and I'll blow you to hell, by the Lord above me! Do you hear me? Then put out a boat before I do you a mischief."
Jack shouted the order, and it was taken up instantly by another voice—that of the Frenchman, who spoke German very well, and translated for the benefit of the captain of the Borkum in case he had no English. When the message was delivered there was a little interval of waiting, and upon that an answer from the Borkum's lanterns. She told us that she understood, and that a boat was being put over immediately.
Now, you will say that this was a rejoinder which a fool might have understood, and, to be sure, there could have been none so foolish aboard the Zero that he was deceived by it. Had the Germans temporized with us, or made a show of argument, we might have been led into a trap; but such immediate acquiescence could only mean that they judged us to be at the mercy of any ship which happened upon us, and were determined, whatever the risk, to enjoy the reward and the réclame which would attend the capture of the great pirate. So they put over a boat without any loss of time whatever, and, rowing straight toward us, it seemed that they would be aboard us almost before we understood what they were at. It was then that Black spoke for the second time since the beginning of it.
"Cover your men!" he cried to our fellows; and then in a tremendous voice. "At them, my lads!"
The rifles cracked on the still air; a loom of smoke drifted above us; loud cries of rage and agony rang out. So sudden was it that my first thought would have it that the Germans had fired at us and not we at the Germans. As swiftly I realized Black's prescience and the wonder of his judgment. The ship's boat lay drifting at our very gunwale; we pulled it in with a long boat-hook, and flashing one of the big lamps upon it, we saw twenty men there, armed with pistols every one, and some with rifles as well. These had come in answer to our challenge, and had they boarded us, no man on the Zero would have lived to tell the tale.
"So that's their twenty thousand pounds?" said Black grimly, while the lantern shone upon the living and the dead; "that's the German hog's game, is it? So help me Heaven, I'll teach him something before this night's done."
And then, in a very whirlwind of passion, he roared, "No. I with the gun—you there, Jack, give 'em three minutes to bring the money. Do you hear me, lad?"
Jack-o'-Lantern cried, "Aye, aye, sir!" and once more the howling megaphone wafted its defiant message over the waters. If my thoughts could be turned aside, even for an instant, from the stress and strife of combat, it was that they might dwell upon the disparity of the antagonists; and I would look, now at the great ship frowning upon us like a citadel of the ocean, then at the Zero as she lay half submerged by the rolling seas. What a contrast it was; what an unbelievable encounter. And that we should have endured it and be still afloat, aye, and more than afloat, defiant and resolute. This, I say, might have been the trend of my thoughts had not they been called, now to this, now to that, scene of the turgid drama, which spoke of death upon the one hand, and of vigorous and all active life upon the other. So the contrasts of it became less to me than the realities, and my eyes were drawn at one glance to the great ship, at the next to the boat which spoke so eloquently of treachery. There were men worming in the agony of wounds so near to me that an outstretched hand could have touched them. There were the stark figures of those who had paid the price—and supreme above all stood the massive figure of the pirate, triumphant as David in the hour of his victory.
We had sent down the men in the boat (who came to take us alive or dead), and the next move lay with the German steamer. If I had been tempted to think that all which happened hitherto had been a medley of chance, a play of circumstance without order or method upon Black's part, a new event put that idea from my mind and left me amazed at his prescience. For now the great beacon went out suddenly, and the sea, which had shone blood-red, became but a sheen of rolling green waves which the struggling moon-beams disclosed capriciously. In a twinkling the Zero was hidden from her giant enemy. I heard the clang of the steel doors which covered the launch, and knew that men were launching her to bring the batteries on board. The work was hardly begun when a searchlight flashed out upon the far horizon, and with a startled cry Osbart declared that a warship was upon us.
"It's the Invincible out of Plymouth, by all that's hellish," said he. Black did not answer him immediately, but I knew that he was moved. The wide beam of light, winging over the dark waters, must have been a sudden vision of victory to the men on the German steamer. They had us now for a certainty—so much they must have said. Vain had been our impudent boasting that they should pay us twenty thousand pounds—the very sum offered by the Government for Black's capture. Let them stand for an hour, and that would be the end of it. We, in turn, must have begun to think of the clock already. Could we get our engines going before we came with-in range of the warship's guns? If we could not, God help us.
Of course, I thought that all the fighting was over now. The new turn of events