I have seen many a great gun fired in my time but never such a gun as that. The world knows something about it by this time, and has been taught that Guichard fired no shot or shell as we understand it, but that his cannon was charged with chemicals, sending an obus which exploded with a force defying all theories, and when it had exploded, fired what the explosion itself had spared. I tell you it seemed that the Borkum was afire from her fo'c'sle to her funnel when the shot had gone home. Vast sheets of flame, multi-coloured, here a deep crimson, there a staring yellow, now wonderfully golden, anon of the deepest violet, this flame, I say, leaped up above the ship to die away as instantly in the blackest darkness. Hardly had the flash of it expired when a new order was roared from our megaphone. The ransom! Would they pay it? Black gave them five minutes.
I sat in the conning-tower and hid the scene from my eyes. The minutes were ages of intolerable suspense. Inch by inch the warship crept up to us. I heard Osbart raving, and then the complaints of the men. We were done for surely—and done for because the Man of Iron clung tenaciously to his purpose and would not be turned a hair's-breadth from it. There he stood, dominant above the peril of the night. From the sea there came the horrid cries of men burned by fire; wails and shrieks of pain and fear. The Borkum, her valves emitting dense clouds of steam, drifted upon the tide and anon began to forge ahead slowly. Our own men, working until the sweat poured off them like rain, were trying to get the batteries in—the distant warship loomed big upon our horizon, and the light from her mighty lantern began to envelop us as with a vast golden cloak dropped from the heavens. Such a scene must live for ever in my memory. The thunder of the shots will wake me from my sleep until the last of my days.
The race! My God, if we were to lose it! It mattered nothing to us if the German went free. To Black it mattered so much that his pride would have gone astoop many a day had she escaped him. Sooner than that, I believe he would have delivered himself a prisoner upon the warship's decks. For that, he fired a second shot at the very moment the Borkum began to steam away from us, and for the second time he enveloped her decks in the deadly flame. I saw the gun flash out; I saw the fire leaping as a spray of molten metal from stem to stern of the unhappy vessel. Impotently in the far distance the stranger fired a great gun and signalled her presence. Shrieks and prayers for mercy fell upon our ears from the drifting steamer, whose engines were now stopped. A second boat was lowered. It drew near to us, and as it came the light of our lanterns glittered upon the gold and jewels with which it was laden. And then I knew that the Indomitable Will had prevailed once more and that he who would be king had again proclaimed his kingship.
A wild cheer floated over the terrible sea. Again and again it was repeated as a very voice of devils from the depths of the black waters. I heard the clanging of steel doors; the ringing of bells. Then with a fierce rush onward, we headed straight for the coming warship, drew near to her defiantly, and plunged beneath her very bows to the marrow of the ocean.
The Zero had escaped her enemies, who had paid her twenty thousand pounds that they might go free.
CHAPTER XVII
CAROUSAL
It had been Black's way in the old time to reward his crew when they had served him well; just as in the days of Nelson a tot of ruin was given the tarry sailor who had done a hard day's work.
This practice was not departed from upon the Zero; and no sooner had the ship escaped her enemies than a scene of carousal defying all description celebrated her victory. Champagne now ran like water; there was no distinction between fo'c'sle or saloon; but all the hands crowding together, Black gave them the first of the toasts, and they drank in bumpers drained to the dregs.
Thereafter a feast was spread in the chief cabin, and all sat down to it. We were still deep below the seas, and never was such a picture of lights, and silver, and the savage faces of exultant men, while the black waters shone through the ports and the fish stared at us with wondering eyes.
Here you saw a strange sight—black hands thrust into dishes of rare china; vast mouths, whose teeth awry devoured the hectic fruit of millionaires— bare chests and arms tattooed; a fierce, godless company with the great Captain leading them to debauch and the Doctor not a whit behind him. Through the long night they ate and drank and sang their foul songs—and while they sang, I shrank from them to my bunk and wondered anew at the destiny which had sent me among them.
Whither did the voyage carry us, and to what haven? I had asked myself this many times since we left Greenland, but never did it seem more difficult to find an answer. Sooner or later the Governments of the civilized world would win their victory, and this ship and all aboard her be delivered up to justice. Meanwhile, these scenes of death and debauch must be lived through without complaint. I knew that my life depended upon compliance, and, even at that, was but the plaything of an hour. Let a fit of passion fall upon this crew and they would kill me as a butcher kills a sheep.
It had been nearly midnight, I suppose, when the wicked affair of the carousal began, and dawn found it still raging. Try as I would, I could not shut the horrid songs and oaths from my ears; and when they died away at last in drunken moanings or trickling laughter, the fetid atmosphere of the cabin forbade me to sleep. Coming to the truth amid a maze of wild dreams, I started up in my bunk to remember that the ship still lay deep beneath the sea, and that those who should have brought her up were besotted in drink and beyond all hope of reason. And this, I think, gave me as great a fright as I can remember; so that I put on my clothes anyhow, and indifferent to the chances of a drunken brawl, went out to the corridor and so to the cabin.
Here there was a sight to stir the soul of any man that had a glimmer of decency about him. All the fine glass upon the table had been smashed to atoms. I saw costly porcelain chipped and starred as though it had been kitchen stuff; the candles stood awry, and the electric bulbs were broken; plates and silver were all aheap, and the cloth beneath them stained blood-red by the wine they had spilled. As for the men themselves, I was glad to find that Black was not among them; but the engineer, Dingo, lay stark insensible at the foot of the table, where the hulk of a man, Red Roger, had fallen atop of him, and there rested with his arms spread out and his face gone purple. Of the others, I could discern but Ned Jolly and a fellow who served as steward—but the nigger Sambo was asleep in the little pantry below the saloon, and from the engine-hold amidships there came a sound of groans and crying just as though a woman had been there and piped feebly for a man's help.
I shut the cabin door softly, and, following the corridor, came at last to the ladder by which you reach the engine-room. Lights burned here, but seemed to be at their last gasp. A fitful current waxed and waned upon the wires; the lamps were now aglow, now almost gone, and yet they permitted me to take in the scene below at a glance, and to recognize Jack-o'-Lantern and the Frenchman they called the Leopard. The latter was poised upon the rail of the dynamo; he had a long sheath-knife in his hand, and he dared the other to come near him. Plainly he was mad with drink and hysterical as any woman; while, in his turn, the one-eyed man could hardly stand straight upon his legs. like the other he was armed; but his weapon was a great bar of iron he had snatched up from the tool rack in the corner, and he waved it above his head giddily and with a want of control at which a child might have laughed.
"Come out, you French devil," he was saying; "come out of that. Would you send the whole ship to hell, ye frog-eating mouse-trap? Come out of it, I say, or, by thunder, I'll brain ye!"
Upon which he aimed a blow at his adversary which would have knocked the brains from an iron ox. I heard the bar crash upon the steel rail of the dynamo, and I cried aloud for fear of the blow. A foot further and it would