"You appear to be helping yourself," said Messenger, upon whom the excitement of the moment had no power for impression; "I don't see where we come in, any way. The fact is that all you fellows want to deaden your wits with that stuff at the very moment you have most need of them. I shall take coffee, if there's any to be got."
"Wal," interposed Kenner, "so should I if it wasn't an occasion. But if this don't beat a birthday fête, I never knew one. Blarm me! but I can think on liquor."
He consoled himself with the conclusion, and fell to work to prove it, holding a glass in one hand and food in the other, since the yacht rolled so terribly that the swinging lamp above the table threatened to strike the skylight at every lurch. In reality his craving for strong drink was the outcome of the raging anxiety—nay, even fear—which consumed him, and, indeed, all of them but the Prince, who made as good a breakfast as a hunting squire, and did not cease a gentle irony and banter through the whole of the meal.
"Burke," said he, in one of the intervals, "I want to know what you're going to do if we can't show that ship yonder a clean pair of heels before night."
"What em I going to do ? " asked Burke. "Wal, that's a fair question, and I'll give you a fair reply—I dun know!"
"Perhaps you can tell us, Kenner?" said Messenger, turning to the American. "You think on liquor, you know."
"That's so," replied Kenner; "but I ain't full up yet. I guess I can tell you one thing, though, my boy: if this hulk don't show a couple of knots more in the next two hours it's nothing stronger than skilly that most of us will be lapping, and that only for a spell."
Hal Fisher, who listened to the conversation eagerly, looked up at the words, and asked—
"What does he mean, Prince?"
"Means ez he'll have to dance the polker with no par-ket floorin' under him," replied Burke, who took up the conversation.
"And he means also," said Messenger quietly, "that this skipper of ours is a bigger fool than his bulk gives you any idea of."
"What's that?" cried Burke, bringing his huge fist upon the table with Gargantuan strength. "You're going to take that back, I reckon, en quick!"
Messenger leaned against the cushions of his seat, one of his hands resting upon a case of ingots, and just showed his white teeth in the suggestion of a leer. But Burke was fuddled with the liquor and quarrelsome, and he half rose from the table and asked, with a hiccough—
"Who commands aboard this ship?"
"Sober men," replied Messenger quietly.
"I'm asking you for a plain word, en no roundabout! Do I command ye, or do I not?"
"You may command who the deuce you like," answered Messenger testily; "but if you say two words to me, I'll pitch you off your own bridge!"
The threat was mildly said, but the slim man who spoke looked so well able to answer for his words that the great skipper sank back upon his seat with a senseless smile and turned the conversation.
"Go on!" said he. "I always knew ye for a ornery one, and if any one says as there's harm in ye, I give him the lie, the straight lie. The question is: What do yer want? I've done all ez I ken do, I reckon. Ken you do more? Will you tell me that?"
But no one answered him, and the Prince began to speak to Kenner.
"Kenner," said he, "every cock on his own dunghill, and every skipper on his own bridge so long as he's got the wits of a mule. The situation is as clear to me as that coffee-pot there. The ship we're running from is trying to drive us to the mouth of the Channel, and if she does so, the 'In Memoriam' notices will be up for all of us inside a month. Personally, I've no love for assisting at funerals, and I've less hankering to be the chief actor in one. Yet it's quite clear to me that, since they've got the legs of us, we must either find the open ocean, or leave the thing now, like a lot of old women trooping out of an excursion train. You told me that you could show heels to any thing swimming; but you can't, and that's the weak spot in the whole of it——"
"Stay a bit! " cried Kenner; "you're not at a political garden-party, and I don't foller. I said this yacht could do twenty-two knots in a free sea; and so she can—I'll go my last dime on it!"
"That may be," replied Messenger; "but whatever she can do, the other is up to it. You've got eyes, and you can see as well as I can."
Burke looked up suddenly at the words, and chimed in—
"She's doin' twenty-two knots now, if that '11 help you !"
"Possibly," replied Messenger; "but I'm not interested. What I want to learn is the exact time and place when you mean to shoot for the open."
"Wal, if it's shooting you're after, you'll get plenty of that directly you put across her bows!" said Kenner expressively; and the skipper gave a great guffaw at his words, as a drunken man will ever laugh at a hand's breadth of pleasantry.
But the laugh was still upon his lips when the roar of a gun echoed over the sea, and the three mien sprang to their feet together.
"They've begun it already!" said Burke; and in a moment he shook off the grip of the drink and bounded up the companion. Thither the others followed him, to see a cloud of smoke enveloping the pursuing cruiser, and their own men lying about the deck in a depth of fear and craven sullenness which surpassed any thing they had yet been guilty of.
VIII. SOUTH FOR CORUNNA
The hour which the men had spent in the cabin witnessed but little change in the path of the hurricane. There was, perhaps, a slight abatement in the velocity of the wind, and the black banks of cloud had burst asunder into great masses of rolling humidity, which showed other masses, and these of a purer grey or white, in the distance beyond them. Yet there was scarce a glimmer of sun, save for a space of five or six minutes, when a fan of spectral light shot down upon the green of the sea, dazzling with hues of sparkling brightness; but promising no fall of the gale nor moderation of the raging tempest. Everywhere the whited wave-caps tumbled joyously upon one another; everywhere the gigantic rollers made hills and valleys of green water, which swept the yacht and her pursuer onward as they would have swept a faggot of sticks or a board of wood. It was a scene worthy of the mighty grandeur of the Atlantic, of all the traditions of tempests which sweep upon her; but it had little charm for those upon the Semiramis nor, as one may know, for the hands of the cruiser, which then bore the whole brunt of the seas in the work which had fallen to her.
Burke's first question, when he got upon the bridge, was one concerning the gun which had just been fired, and whose smoke still lay upon the sea.
"You, there !" he cried. "Was that shell, or was it blarney?"
"It was a shell, sir," said the mate, Parker; "it just cleared the life-boat davits, sir, may it please you,"
"By thunder, it don't please me!" cried Burke. "What are they doing down below, the scum?"
At the words, he shouted down the tube for more coal, though the men were already reeling under the work, and the furnaces were white hot with an irradiant heat, which was almost unbearable in the stoke-hole. To hope for greater speed was the dream of a dreamer; yet, despite all that was being done, the two vessels maintained their relative places, and it had already become clear that, if there was no coming-between of chance, the yacht must be taken.
When Burke had exhausted his breath in childish abuse to his engineers, the humble mate, Parker, ventured to speak again.
"May it please you, sir, they're signalling," said he.
"Let 'em signal till blazes!" replied Burke ironically. "Do you think ez I'm daft enough to parley