The commander was in his cabin studying the chart of the coast of North Carolina; but the report was promptly sent to him, and he hastened on deck.
"Another sail on the port bow, sir!" shouted a seaman who had been sent to the fore cross trees with a spy-gla.s.s.
"What are they?" asked Christy, maintaining his dignity in spite of the excitement which had begun to invade his being.
"Both steamers, sir," replied the officer of the deck.
"The head one is a blockade-runner, I know by the cut of her jib, sir,"
shouted the man with the gla.s.s on the cross trees.
All the gla.s.ses on board were immediately directed to the two vessels.
Christy could plainly make out the steamer that had the lead. She was a piratical-looking craft, setting very low in the water, with two smoke stacks, both raking at the same angle as her two masts. The wind was not fair, and she could not carry sail; but the "bone in her teeth"
indicated that she was going through the water at great speed.
"A gun from the chaser, sir!" shouted the man aloft.
The cloud of smoke was seen, and the report of the gun reached the ears of all on board the St. Regis.
"There is no mistaking what all that means, Mr. Baskirk," said Christy when he had taken in the situation.
At the first announcement of the sail ahead, the commander had ordered the chief engineer to get all the speed he could out of the ship. The smoke was pouring out of the smoke stacks, for the St. Regis had two, and presently she indicated what was going on in the fire room by beginning to shake a little.
"Another sail dead ahead, sir!" called the man on the fore cross trees.
The gla.s.ses were directed to the third sail, and she proved to be a steamer, also pursuing the one first seen. It was soon evident to the observers that the blockade-runner, for the man aloft who had so defined her was entirely correct, was gaining all the time on her pursuers. If she had nothing but her two pursuers to fear, her troubles were really over.
Both of the Federal ships were firing at the chase; but they might as well have spared their powder and shot, for they could not reach her into at least a quarter of a mile. The wind was still at the south-west, and already there were signs of fog. The rakish steamer had probably come from the Bermudas, where she must have obtained a skilful pilot, for without one she would have had no chances at all; and she stood boldly on her course as though she had nothing to fear on account of the navigation.
"What are we going to have for weather, Mr. Makepeace?" asked Christy, after a long look to windward.
"It looks a little nasty off towards the sh.o.r.e, sir," replied the second lieutenant. "I should say it was going to be just what that pirate would like to have."
"Why do you call her a pirate?" asked the commander with a smile.
"Probably she is not armed."
"I call her a pirate because she looks like one; but I think a blockade-runner is a hundred degrees better than a pirate; and our British friends plainly look upon them as doing a legitimate business.
I rather think that highflyer will run into a fog before she gets to the sh.o.r.e."
"She has nothing to fear from the two steamers that are chasing her,"
added Christy. "We are to have a finger in this pie."
"No doubt of that; and I hope we shall make a hole through her before she gets to the coast."
"She is not more than a mile and a half from us now, and our midship gun is good for more than that; but I don"t think it is advisable to waste our strength in firing at her just yet."
"That"s just my way of thinking," said Mr. Makepeace, with something like enthusiasm in his manner; and he was evidently delighted to find that the commander knew what he was about, as he would have phrased it.
"The rakish steamer seems to be headed to the west south-west, and she is exactly south-east of us. We can see that she is sailing very fast; but how fast has not yet been demonstrated. How high should you rate her speed, Mr. Makepeace?"
"I should say, Captain Pa.s.sford, that she was making eighteen knots an hour. She is kicking up a big fuss about it; and I"ll bet a long-nine cigar that she is doing her level best."
"I don"t believe she is doing any better than that," added Christy.
"Make the course south south-west, Mr. Baskirk."
"South south-west, sir," replied the executive officer.
The course of the ship was changed, and Christy planked the deck from the quarter-deck to the forecastle in order to obtain the best view he could of the relative positions of the St. Regis, the chase, and the two steamers astern of her. The blockade-runner showed no colors; and no flag could have been of any service to her. She appeared still to be very confident that she was in no danger, evidently relying wholly upon her great speed to carry her through to her destination.
The "highflyer," as the second lieutenant called her every time he alluded to the blockade-runner, and the two pursuers, occupied the three angles of a triangle. The latter were both sending needless cannon b.a.l.l.s in the direction of the chase, but not one of them came anywhere near her.
On the other hand, the highflyer and the St. Regis formed two angles of another triangle, the third of which was the point where they would come together, if nothing occurred to derange their relative positions. By this time Paul Vapoor had developed all the power of the ship"s boilers, and the screw was making more revolutions a minute than her highest record, which was found in a book the former chief engineer had left in his stateroom.
"I don"t think that highflyer quite understands the situation, Mr.
Baskirk," said the commander, as he observed that she did not vary her course, and stood on to her destination, apparently with perfect confidence.
"I don"t think she does, sir," replied the first lieutenant. "She can see the American flag at the peak, and she knows what we are. Doubtless she is making the mistake of believing that all the Federal ships are slow coaches."
"Heave the log, Mr. Baskirk," added Christy, and he walked forward.
It was a matter of angles when it was desirable to come down to a close calculation, and the young commander found his trigonometry very useful, and fortunately not forgotten. With an apparatus for taking ranges he had procured the bearing of the highflyer accurately as soon as the last course was given out, perhaps half an hour before. He took the range again, and found there was a slight difference, which was, however, enough to show that the form of the triangle had been disturbed.
Both ships were headed for the same point, and the sides of the triangle were equal at the first observation. Now the St. Regis"s side of the figure was perceptibly shorter than its opposite. This proved to the captain that his ship had gained on the other. The two chasers had been losing on the chase for the last half-hour, and Christy regarded them as out of the game.
There was some appearance of fog in the south-west, and no land could be seen in any direction. For another hour the St. Regis drove ahead furiously on her course, and the highflyer was doing the same. The two steamers, regardless of the speed of either, were necessarily approaching each other as long as they followed the two sides of the triangle. They had come within half a mile the one of the other, when the commander gave the order to beat to quarters. Ten minutes later the frame of the ship shook under the discharge of the big Parrot. The shot went over the chase; but she promptly changed her course to the southward.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE FIRST PRIZE OF THE ST. REGIS
The shot from the Parrot pa.s.sed between the funnel and the mainmast of the chase, as judged by the splash of the ball in the water just beyond her. It had come near enough to the mark to wake up the captain of the highflyer. He appeared to believe that the pursuer from the northward had simply cut him off by approaching on the shorter side of the triangle, and that all he had to do was to escape to the southward, evidently satisfied that no steamer in the Federal navy could overhaul him in a fair and square race.
"Now comes the tug of war," said Mr. Baskirk, when the St. Regis had been headed for the chase.
"The game will not last all day," added Christy. "If I owned that highflyer, I should not employ her present captain to sail her for me.
He is overloaded with a blind confidence, and he has made a very bad use of his opportunities. If I had been in command of that steamer I should have made her course so as to run away from all three of my pursuers as soon as I made them out. It is six o"clock now, and I should have got far enough into the darkness to give them all the slip, and gone into Wilmington on a new track."
"Her captain appears to trust entirely to his heels, and to look with contempt upon anything like manoeuvring," replied the first lieutenant.
"But we must finish him up before the darkness enables him to give us the slip. I have no doubt we could knock her all to pieces with the midship gun in the next fifteen minutes; but if she can make eighteen knots an hour, which we seem to be all agreed that she can do, she will not be a useless addition to the United States Navy, and it would be a pity to smash her up, for she is a good-looking craft. We are gaining two knots an hour on her, and Mr. Vapoor is keeping things warm in the engine and fire rooms."
"That is taking an economical view of the subject," added Mr. Baskirk, laughing at the commander"s utilitarian views.
"If we continue to fire into her, we must swing to every shot we send, and that would take so much from our speed," argued Christy. "We are as sure of her as though we already had her in our clutches. There are plenty of officers in the navy who would like to command her when she is altered over into a cruiser."
"You are quite right, Captain Pa.s.sford; and there are some of them on the deck of the St. Regis at this moment," said the first lieutenant, laughing.