The _Nadine_ made a splendid swerve through an arc of about a hundred and eighty degrees, and then began the naval duel, on the issue of which the future course of human history was to depend.
The _Vlodoya_ fired three more shots in as many minutes, but they went wide, for she was steaming nearly seventeen knots and the _Nadine_ twenty. Then as the _Nadine_ swung round so that her bow pointed towards the _Vlodoya_, the president signed to the two men who were working the gun, a wheel was whirled round, and the muzzle swung slowly until he put his hand up and said:
"Stop her, if you please, Mr Vernon, and screw her round as hard as you can."
The engine telegraph rang, a sharp shudder ran through the fabric of the _Nadine_, the water which had been swirling astern mounted up ahead as her engines backed, and her bow came up, till the president raised his hand again to stop her. At the same moment another sh.e.l.l from the _Vlodoya_ whistled over the deck at an elevation of only a few feet. In fact, it pa.s.sed so near to Miss Chrysie that she involuntarily put her hand up to keep her hat on her head. Clifford Vandel saw it. He didn"t say anything, but he set his teeth, squinted along the sights of his gun, and touched a b.u.t.ton in the breech. Five seconds later a mountain of boiling foam rose up under the stern of the _Vlodoya_. She stopped like a stricken animal, and lay motionless on the water, lurching slowly down by the stern.
"Well hit, poppa!" cried Miss Chrysie, from the bridge. "I guess that"s got him on a tender spot. The count won"t have much screws to work with after that. Oh, they"re going to shoot again. Suppose you gave them one forward this time."
While she was speaking, the quick-firer had already been reloaded, the president moved the long barrel a couple of degrees, and touched the b.u.t.ton again. The sharp hiss of the released air was followed by an intensely brilliant flash of light on the forecastle of the _Vlodoya_, and when the smoke had cleared away the Maxim-Nordenfeldt had vanished.
"I guess there"s not much wrong with that automatic sighting arrangement of mine," said the president; "hits every time."
"Couldn"t be better, poppa! I reckon they"re pretty tired by this.
Suppose Mr Vernon gives her full speed again, and we go along and have a talk with Ma"m"selle Sophie and the count. Shouldn"t wonder if they knew by now that we"ve raised their bluff, and are ready to see them for all they"ve got."
The president re-charged his gun, and then, leaning his back up against the bridge, said:
"Well, yes, Chrysie, I think we can see them now, if Mr Vernon will give us full speed ahead for a few minutes."
The chief officer nodded, and pulled the handle of the telegraph over.
The answering tinkle came back from the engine-room, in which the chief had retired after he had given his message, and the _Nadine_ again sprang forward towards the crippled vessel that was now her prey. She described another magnificent curve, and as she rushed up alongside the Russian yacht at a distance of about two hundred yards, Miss Chrysie sat herself down on a camp-stool behind the Maxim, and sent half-a-dozen shots rattling through the rigging of the _Vlodoya_.
Then, as the _Nadine_ swung in closer, she depressed the barrel of the gun on to the bridge, on which she could now recognise the count and his daughter, and sang out, in a clear soprano:
"Hands up, please, or I"ll shoot. My dear Countess Sophie, I never expected this of you."
Countess Sophie looked at her father, and bit a Russian curse in two between her tightly-clenched teeth, and said to her father who was standing beside her on the bridge:
"She has failed--she and the engineer too--and these accursed Americans have done it, I suppose. They have broken our propellers and disabled our gun. What are we to do? It is exasperating, just when we thought that everything was going so well. What has happened to Adelaide?--has she turned traitor too? Surely that would be impossible."
"Impossible or not, my dear Sophie," replied the count, "there is now no choice between sinking and surrender. You see, that gun, one of these diabolical American inventions, I have no doubt, would sink us like a shot, and then----"
"And then we shall have to surrender, I suppose," said Sophie. "But it is still possible that I shall have a chance to shoot that American girl before this little international comedy is played out, and if I do----"
"Hands up, please, everyone on board, or I _will_ shoot this time,"
came in clear tones across about fifty yards of water. Sophie looked round and saw Miss Chrysie looking along the sights of the Maxim, with her hand on the spring. Her face was hard set, and her eyes were burning. There was no mistaking her intention. In another moment a storm of bullets would be raining along the decks of the _Vlodoya_.
"We are beaten, papa, for the present," she said, as she got up from her chair, and put her hands over her head. The count looked at the grinning muzzle of the Maxim and did the same.
"Yes," he said, "we are beaten this time, and it is hardly good policy to be sunk in the middle of the Atlantic. Later on, perhaps, we may retrieve something; but it is strange how these Anglo-Saxons, stupid and all as they are to begin with, always seem to get the best of us at the end. Yes; we must surrender or sink, and, personally, I have no taste for the bottom of the Atlantic at present.
CHAPTER XXIII
The _Nadine_ ranged alongside, Miss Chrysie still sitting at her Maxim, with Robertson beside her ready to see to the ammunition feed, and the president, leaning over the forward rail, said, as laconically as though he had been putting the most ordinary business proposition:
"Good-morning, excellency; I guess you and the countess had better come on board as soon as possible. If you"ll lower the gangway I"ll send a boat; but if there"s any more shooting I shall sink you. I don"t want to do anything unpleasant, you understand; but that high-toned friend of yours the marquise has half-poisoned most of us, and so the rest have to take charge. Are you badly hurt?"
Count Valdemar held a hurried consultation with the captain of the _Vlodoya_, and replied, as politely as he could:
"The fortune of war is with you, Mr Vandel, and there is no need for any further concealment. We are crippled, but the watertight compartments have been closed and we shall float. Meanwhile, we are helpless and entirely at your service. What do you wish us to do?"
In the meantime the _Nadine"s_ boat had been lowered, and was pulling round her stern to the gangway of the _Vlodoya_, which had been lowered, and the president replied:
"We"ll have to ask your excellency and the countess to be our guests for a bit; so if you"ll just come right on board and tell your people to get your baggage fixed up, we"ll be able to save you a certain amount of unpleasantness. You will be a lot more comfortable on board here than you will there, because we"re going to take what coal you"ve got and then sink you."
As the president said this the captain of the Russian yacht nodded towards a man standing by one of the one-pounders on the fore deck. He pulled the lanyard, there was a sharp bang, and a sh.e.l.l bored its way through the plates of the _Nadine_ amidships, just missing the engines. The next moment Miss Chrysie"s Maxim began to thud, spitting flame and smoke and lead, sweeping the decks of the _Vlodoya_ from stem to stern. Only those on the bridge were spared. For a full three minutes the deadly hail continued, and there was not a man on deck who was not killed or maimed. The president had jumped back to the breech of his gun, the muzzle swung round till it bore directly on the part of the _Vlodoya_ which contained her boilers. He held up his hand and Chrysie stopped the Maxim. Then she swung it on to the bridge, glanced along the sights and touched the spring. There was a crack and a puff of smoke and flame, and the captain of the _Vlodoya_, who was standing about a couple of feet away from Count Valdemar and Sophie, reeled half round and dropped with a bullet through his heart.
"I guess your excellency and the countess had better come on board right away," said the president, still looking along the sights of his gun. "That"s a pretty unhealthy place you"re in, and my daughter"s only got the patience of an ordinary woman, you know."
Sophie looked across at the _Nadine"s_ bridge, and saw Chrysie"s white face and burning eyes looking over the barrel of the Maxim. Her thumb was on the spring and there was death in her eyes. She took her father by the arm, and said:
"Come, papa, it"s no use. That she-devil will shoot us like dogs if we don"t go. Come."
And so they went down to the deck, strewn with corpses and splashed with blood, to the gangway ladder, at the bottom of which the _Nadine"s_ boat was waiting.
Miss Chrysie at once left the gun with which she had done such terrible execution, and went with the chief officer to receive them.
To the utter astonishment of both the count and Sophie, she held out her hand as cordially as though the meeting had taken place on the terrace of Orrel Court, and said with a somewhat exaggerated drawl:
"Well, countess, and your excellency, I am real glad to see you. We sort of thought we should meet you somewhere about here, and I am sure his lordship and the viscount and Lady Olive, when they get better, will do all they can to make you comfortable. Now, here"s the stewardess. As she didn"t have any of the marquise"s punch last night, she"s ready to show you to your room. Mr Vernon, perhaps you"ll be kind enough to attend to his excellency. Good-bye for the present: I guess we shall meet at lunch."
"Really, after the unpleasantness that has happened," said the count, "your kindness, and your hospitality are quite overwhelming."
"And," added Sophie, as the two prisoners of war pa.s.sed into the charge of their respective custodians, "I must say that to me it is as mysterious as it is charming. If the conditions had been reversed, I should certainly have shot you."
"It wouldn"t have been quite fair," replied Miss Chrysie, sweetly.
"You see I had a gun, and you hadn"t."
She watched them disappear down the companion way to the saloon, then she put her hands up to her eyes, groped her way half-blindly to a long wicker chair, dropped into it and incontinently fainted.
Just then the chief, washed, shaved, new-clad and thoroughly contented with the really splendid piece of work that had been done on one of his beloved engines, came on deck, looking as though nothing very particular had happened. He saw instantly what was the matter.
"The la.s.sie has a wonderful nerve," he said to himself. "Ay, what a man she"d have made! But she"s only a la.s.sie after all, and we"d better get her below. I"ll just take her down to Mrs Evans without troubling the president. He"s got plenty to think about. Yes; Vernon"s on the bridge, and he"ll see to things."
Then he picked her up in his arms and carried her down to her own cabin and laid her in her berth, and gave her into the charge of the stewardess. Then he went up to the captain"s room, and found him just recovering consciousness.
"What"s the matter, M"Niven?" he said. "That infernal punch last night seems to have poisoned me. I seem to have been having nightmare after nightmare, with guns firing and----"
"That"s all right, captain," replied the Scotsman; "if you"d taken less of that infernal punch and more honest whisky, as I did, you wouldn"t have such an awful head on you as I suppose you have. Still, there"s nothing much to trouble about. We"ve got the engine to rights again; we"ve met the Russian yacht, and fought her, and beaten her. Mr Vandel smashed her up with his gun, and Miss Vandel--a wonderful girl that, sir, a wonderful girl--she sat at her Maxim as if it had been a sewing-machine, and seemed to think no more of shots than st.i.tches, and then, woman-like, she fainted, and I"ve just taken her below and handed her over to Mrs Evans.
"And now, captain, don"t you think that a wee peg would do you good?
Mr Vernon"s on the bridge, the president"s holding up the Russians with his gun, and the engines are working all right, but half the crew and all the company are still something like dead, with that Frenchwoman"s drugs, whatever they were."
Captain Burgess took the chief engineer"s hint, and a stiff brandy and soda. Then he dressed and went on deck, and had a brief conversation with the president, after which he took charge of the operations of clearing all the coal and stores out of the _Vlodoya_ before she was sent to the bottom.
The president and Miss Chrysie had to entertain their involuntary guests at lunch, for although the rest of the _Nadine"s_ company were recovering consciousness, they were still under the doctor"s care and unable to leave their berths; but at dinner that evening Lady Olive, the earl, and Hardress were able to welcome them, and they did so with a sardonic cordiality which compelled both his excellency and Sophie to admit that these Anglo-Saxons were, after all, not such bad diplomatists as Europeans were wont to think. Madame de Bourbon was still prostrate, and the marquise had the best of reasons for remaining in her own cabin.