"Captain! Captain!" cried Miss Anstrade, "what are you doing? Ah, heaven, I see it now; may the saints preserve him!" She caught hold of a rope, and stood looking from the catcher to the towering battleship, with its broadside pierced for heavy guns, and its decks crowded with men.
"Oh," she said, "it is cruel!"
Captain Pardoe stood on the bridge before entering the conning-tower, his gla.s.s to his eyes, and his feet braced apart. Then he turned and waved his hand to the _Irene_, bringing it to his mouth in a trumpet.
"Steam away at full speed, and make for Cape Verde. Good-bye."
Another cheer, strangely hoa.r.s.e, broke from the _Irene_, and was responded to by the men on the catcher, and a moment later the four-inch gun opened fire with a roar. The smaller guns spoke, and the whole five of them flashed out shot after shot, making such a volume of smoke that the low ship was at once completely hidden from those on the _Irene_.
"My G.o.d," murmured Webster, "why did I not stay with him?"
"Don"t let his sacrifice be in vain," said Hume, touching Webster on the shoulder. "He will be happier if he knows we can escape."
"It is terrible, Frank; I cannot give the order. Do so yourself."
Hume sadly went to the bridge and gave the order for full speed ahead, but the _Irene_ had not gone a mile when, as though by common consent, the steamer slowed down, and everyone on board, even to the stokers, crowded on to the stern p.o.o.p to watch the unequal battle, letting the steamer drift as she liked.
The cruiser had made not the slightest attempt to stop the _Irene_, for the storm of shot bursting in a sudden upon her, when she was in the full security of conscious strength, had plunged her into a state of wild confusion. At the first smash and yell of the missiles along her sides and through her tall rigging, there had been a wild rush from her decks as the terrified crew sought shelter from the mysterious enemy, and their panic was increased by the fierce bombardment which the catcher poured in from her five quick-firing guns at the rate of thirty shots a minute. They saw approaching a revolving cloud of smoke, out of which there flashed flames of fire, and the cruiser fairly turned and fled, pouring in a scattering broadside which went wide of the mark.
When the _Irene_ slowed down, the cruiser, about two miles distant, was steaming on a south-west course, and the _Swift_ was turning under cover of her smoke, which hung low on the water. The men on the derelict raised cheer on cheer in a state of great exultation.
"It is magnificent," said Miss Anstrade, with shining eyes. "Why don"t you cheer, Mr Webster?" and she gave out a ringing cry.
"It is too good to be true," murmured the Lieutenant, as he anxiously watched the cruiser. "Ah, I feared so. See, he is coming round."
The stately white ship, making a wide sweep to port, came round, letting go her broadside of six guns and her two heavy bow chasers before she steadied on a course which would bring her very soon opposite the _Irene_. The water about the _Swift_ was torn up, and she heeled over to the shock.
"She is struck!"
"Good G.o.d, she is sinking!"
"No; hurrah! she is righting."
Miss Anstrade covered her face with her hands, then threw them from her with a pa.s.sionate gesture, while Webster and Hume stood by with white, set faces.
The _Swift_ had pointed her bows at the cruiser, and was firing now only with her four-inch, at the same time steaming slowly astern, as though waiting for some opening.
The contrast between the combatants was most striking, as the _Swift_ lay broadside on to the _Irene_, a long, low, grey line on the great waste, while, though further off, the high bows of the cruiser, her lofty decks and towering spars, loomed vast and terrible.
"G.o.d"s truth!" cried one sailor, smashing his brawny fist against the bulwarks, in a fury; "it"s wrong; it"s a shame; they"re not matched!"
"Watch him; he"s porting his helm."
The cruiser was now altering her course, and the water was piled up as she turned a few points to port, bringing her bow chasers to bear on the _Swift_.
"They"ll rake the _Swift_ fore and aft; sweep her guns away," muttered Webster, moistening his lips.
"Look! there he goes! G.o.d bless the Captain! Hurrah for our mates!"
The _Swift_ suddenly moved ahead, and gaining way from the tremendous power of her engines, leapt towards her huge opponent. That moment the heavy guns roared, but the sh.e.l.ls missed their prey by a few feet. As it was the two funnels were sheered off as though they had been cut, and the fragments whirled aloft. Then the catcher"s guns maintained a furious fire as she swept on, but the cruiser, completing her manoeuvre, went round to port, and from her bow to her stern her broadside guns thundered one after the other.
A shudder, a hoa.r.s.e murmur of grief, ran round the group on the _Irene_.
Out of the smoke the _Swift_ swept to leeward, rolling heavily. Her long gun had been torn away from its fastenings and thrown across the ship, the shields about the twelve-pounders were battered down, and the brave men who had served them were stretched motionless.
Her guns were silenced. There remained yet her torpedoes, but were there any left to work them?
The cruiser was still going round to bring her port broadside to bear, and it all depended now whether Captain Pardoe could turn the _Swift_, carry her under the stern of the enemy, and discharge his torpedoes.
But the _Swift_ rolled heavily, and at the moment when she should have turned to starboard her bows went round.
"Her steering gear has been injured," said Webster, with a groan.
Out of the raffle, forward by the conning-tower, a man appeared, and with a perceptible stagger reeled aft to the wheel, which had escaped uninjured.
""Tis the Quartermaster," whispered the men.
From the cruiser"s deck men fired at him, but he reached the wheel, and threw his strength into it.
Then on the shattered portion of the bridge there stood the figure of the Captain. A moment he looked around him, then above his head to the summit of a single bare pole on board there mounted a black ball, and there streamed out the red and blue of the Union Jack!
Both ships came round, the _Swift_ stem on, and the cruiser with her broadside.
The six guns flashed together in one thunderous roar, the _Swift_ seemed to shrink at the shock, her decks were swept, the bridge torn to fragments; then she leapt forward and buried her ram in the body of her great enemy. Through iron and wood the spur of steel forced its way, and the splinters and crash could be heard above the fierce lashings of the screws and the wild cries of the crew.
For a breathless pause the catcher battered at the wound she had made; then she was swept round against the side of the cruiser, and sunk stern foremost. Into the whirlpool made the cruiser dipped her wounded side, her decks came over at first slowly to the weight of rushing water; then, with a mighty smash her masts struck the sea and she turned bottom up; there was a flash of shining copper, and then the waves above her closed, with a rush, and there was nothing but tossing foam to mark where the two antagonists had gone down, almost locked together in their last deadly embrace.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
"TAKE ME WITH YOU."
The terrible swiftness of the tragedy following upon the fierce combat had left the spectators on the _Irene_ stupefied. They gazed at the tossing waters with startled eyes, and when they withdrew their gaze, and would look at each other, there came between them the vision of falling spars, of people precipitated headlong into the sea, and of a great ship rolling over on them.
Then some of the men sobbed, and some swore.
Webster whispered the name of his sister, and Miss Anstrade seemed to shrink within herself.
Their comrades, those brave hearts, gone, gone in a few minutes, and to save them!
They put about, steamed slowly over the waste of waters, where floated a litter of wreckage, and rescued half a dozen Brazilian sailors. Of Captain Pardoe, or any of his gallant band, there was no trace, and the _Irene_ moved up and down among the wreckage, while those on board searched in vain for a familiar form.
Then Lieutenant Webster steered for the east.
The venture was over. The _Irene_, battered as she was, could not dare to risk another meeting with a cruiser, and so, sick at heart and indifferent, Webster accepted Hume"s advice and steamed away from Brazil.
As for Miss Anstrade, she went, feeling her way, like one blinded, to the cabin that had been prepared for her, and there sat white and silent, while her dark eyes, glaring with an unnatural light, moved restlessly from object to object. In the afternoon she rushed on deck in a raging fever, and, calling on her brother and Captain Pardoe, would have leapt overboard had not Hume caught her as her hand was on the rigging. He and Webster carried her down, struggling pitifully, and in turns the two of them watched through the night by her side, their sorrow tinged with awe and bitterness, because of their helplessness, at the pathetic ravings of a mind in delirium.