"Do you want me to get this boat into port again?"
"Of course. Is there any great need to answer a question like that?"
"At the moment, yes; for, with your pleasure, I'm going to put up the helm and sheer off. I'm not a man that loves fighting myself, and, with a ship and crew to look after, I've no business in any affair of that sort; but it's for you to say."
Before I could answer him, Roderick moved from his place and came up on the bridge where we stood.
"Hold on a bit, skipper," he cried, "as we are, if you please; why, man, it's a sight I wouldn't miss for a fortune."
The skipper searched him with his eyes with a keen, lasting gaze, that implied his doubt of the pair of us. His voice had a fine ring of sarcasm in it when he replied after the silence; but all he said was, "It's your affair," and then turned to the first officer.
"Don't you think he was right?" I asked Roderick in a low voice, when the chief's back was turned, but he whispered again—
"Not yet—we must see more of it; and they're too much occupied to hunt after us. We'll be away long before those two have settled accounts; and, look now, I can see a man on the bridge of the yellow ship. Do you mark him?"
I had my glass to my eye in a moment, and the light was so full upon the vessel, which must then have been a mile and a half away from us, that I could prove his words; for, sure enough, there was now someone moving upon the bridge, and, as I fixed my powerful lens, I thought that I could recognise the shape of a man; but I would not speak my mind to Roderick until I had a nearer view.
"You are right," I answered; "but what sort of a man I will tell you presently. Did you ever see anything like the pace that big ship is showing? She must be moving at twenty-five knots."
"Yes, it's amazing; and what's more, there isn't a show of smoke at her funnel."
This was true, but I had not noticed it. Throughout the strange scene we saw, this vessel of mystery never gave one sign that men worked at her furnaces below. Neither steam nor smoke came from her, no evidence, even the most trifling, of that terrible power which was then driving her through the seas at such a fearful speed.
But of the activity of her human crew we had speedily further sign; for, almost as I answered, there was some belching of flame from her turret, and this time the shell, hurtling through the air with that hissing song which every gunner knows so well, crashed full upon the fore-part of the great liner, and we heard the shout of terror which rose from those upon her decks. The men appeared at the signal-mast of the pursuer, and rapidly made signals in the common code.
"Skipper, do you see that?—they're signalling," I cried out. "Get your glass up and take a sight"; but he had already done so.
"It's the signal to lie to, and wait a boat," he said; "there's someone going aboard."
The fulfilment of the reading was instant. While yet we had not realised that the onward rush of the two boats was stayed the foam fell away from their bows; and they rode the seas superbly, sitting the long swells with a beautiful ease. But there was activity on the deck of the nameless ship, the men were at the davits on the starboard side swinging off a launch, which dropped presently into the sea with a crew of some half-a-dozen men. For ourselves, we were now quite close up to them, but so busily were they occupied that I believed we had escaped all notice. Yet I got my glass full upon the man who walked the bridge; and I knew him.
He was the man I had met in the Rue Joubert at Paris, the one styled Captain Black by my friend Hall.
The last link in the long chain was welded then. The whole truth of that weird document, so fantastical, so seemingly wild, so fearful, was made manifest; the dead man's words were vindicated, his every deduction was unanswerable. There on the great Atlantic waste, I had lived to see one of those terrible pictures which he had conceived in his long dreaming; and through all the excitement, above all the noise, I thought that I heard his voice, and the grim "Ahoys!" of my own seamen on the night he died.
This strange recognition was unknown to Roderick, who had never seen Captain Black, nor had any notion of his appearance. But he waited for some remark from me; yet, fearing to be heard, I only looked at him, and in that look he read all.
"Mark," he said, "it's time to go; we'll be the next when that ship's at the bottom."
"My God!" I answered, "he can't do such a thing as that. If I thought so, I would stand by here at the risk of a thousand lives——"
"That's wild talk. What can we do? He would shiver us up with one of his machine guns—and, besides, we have Mary on board."
Indeed, she stood by us as we spoke, very pale and quiet, looking where the two ships lay motionless, the boat from the one now at the very side of the black steamer, whose name, the Ocean King, we could plainly read. She had, unnoticed by us, seen the work of the last shell, which splintered the groaning vessel, and made her reel upon the water, and Mary's instinct told her that we stood where danger was.
"Don't you think you're better below, Mary?" asked Roderick; but she had her old answer—
"Not until you go; and why should I make any difference? I overheard what you said. Am I to stand between you and those men's lives?"
She clung to my arm as she spoke, and her boldness gave us new courage.
"I am for standing by to the end," said I; "if we save one soul, it's an English work to do, anyway."
Roderick looked at Mary, and then he turned to the skipper—
"Do you wish to go on the other tack now?" he asked; but the skipper was himself again.
"Gentlemen," he said, "it's your yacht, and these are your men; if you care to keep them afloat, keep them. If it's your fancy to do the other thing, why, do it. It's a matter of indifference to me."
His words were heard by all the hands, and from that time there was something of a clamour amongst them; but I stepped forward to have out what was in my mind, and they heard me quietly.
"Men," I said, "there's ugly work over there, work which I make nothing of; but it's clear that an English ship is running from a foreigner, and may want help. Shall we leave her, or shall we stand by?"
They gave a great shout at this, and the skipper touched the bell, which stopped the engines. We lay then quite near both to the pursued and the pursuer, and there was no longer any doubt that we had been seen.
Glasses were turned upon us from the decks of the yellow ship, and from the poop of the Ocean King, whose men were still busy with the signal flags, and this time, as we made out, in a direct request to us that we should stand by.
I doubt not that the excitement and the danger of the position alone nerved us to this work of amazing foolhardiness, which was so like to have ended in our complete undoing; and, as I watched the captain of the steamer parleying with the men in the launch below him, I could but ask—What next? when will our turn be?
But the scene was destined to end in a way altogether different from what we had anticipated.
While a tall man with fair hair—my glass gave me the impression that he was the fellow known as "Roaring John"—stood in the bows of the launch, and appeared to be gesticulating wildly to the skipper of the Ocean King, the nameless ship set up of a sudden a great shrieking with her deck whistle, which she blew three times with terrific power; and at the third sound of it the launch, which had been holding to the side of the steamer, let go, running rapidly back to the armed vessel, where it was taken aboard again.
The whole thing was done in so short a space of time that our men had scarce an opportunity to express surprise when the launch was hanging at the davits again. The great activity that we had observed on the decks of the war-vessel ceased as mysteriously as it had begun. Again there was no sign of living being about her; but she moved at once, and bounded past us at a speed the like of which I had never seen upon the deep.
So remarkable a face-about seemed to dumbfound