There was, of course, some concern along with our happiness; first of importance being the declining day that held scarcely more than an hour of light. Had it been otherwise, had the blessing of good sailing weather come to us earlier, we might have held an immediate council of war; but this for the present could be left. It was a profound disappointment, though, and showed in our strained silence. Gates stood at my elbow.
"How"ll we find her in the morning--if we don"t catch up pretty soon?" I asked.
"I was thinking of that, sir. Now, as she sees we can sail circles around her with a good breeze, she won"t hold the same course, and can give us a mighty slip during the night. We"re almost in----" he hesitated, and again ventured: "We"re almost in close enough to send a shot across her bows, sir, if you wish to bring her about!"
Tommy, overhearing, let out a yell of joy. The old skipper"s suggestion electrified us all, particularly myself, for it promised that he would see this affair through at any and all costs--and I had been apprehensive regarding the att.i.tude of Gates, lest his love for me, or for the _Whim_, cause him to balk short of the danger line. So, hastily imploring Monsieur to hug him again, I dashed below for one of the rifles. This arm was a neat high-power sporting model, but I thought it might persuade our kidnaper to look around.
Coming up, however, I found that another plan had been adopted. Gates and Tommy were busily unlacing the canvas cover from our bra.s.s cannon.
While it was only used for signaling, it could make a stunning racket.
Bilkins was holding a box of blank sh.e.l.ls, each containing somewhere near twenty drams of black powder. As I approached, Tommy was excitedly arguing with Gates who, this time, seemed to demur.
"It"s not of the _Orchid_ I"m thinking, sir," he turned appealingly to me, "but ourselves! Miss Nancy--as Mr. Thomas calls this young howitzer, here,--won"t stand much fooling. She warn"t built for it, and if we go pressing her too hard she"ll bust a stay--which is the same, sir, as sending harf of us to the sick-bay!"
"What I want to do," Tommy explained, "is load her up with sinkers and truck like that, and touch her off right! Just a blank won"t tell those devils anything, but if we pepper "em with a hat full of old junk they"ll haul-to in a jiffy!"
"Surest thing in the world," I cried. "Suppose she does bust a stay, Gates! We can huddle in the c.o.c.kpit and fire her with a long lanyard--then let her bust!"
"That"s easy, sir," he still remonstrated, "but suppose Miss Sylvia"s looking out a porthole and stops one of the sinkers!"
The thought of it made me shiver. Tommy, however, his enthusiasm undampened, acquiesced at once, saying:
"Righto, Gates! Blank it is! Cartridge, Bilkins! I"m ready--say when!"
"Wait! Let"s get a bit closer, sir," Gates urged.
Several minutes pa.s.sed. We were only four hundred yards from the _Orchid_ now and cutting down the s.p.a.ce. She stood off our starboard quarter and, although a great deal more obscure in the gathering dusk, her cabin lights came on changing the portholes to a line of golden disks. Then another solitary light appeared, being carried aft by a sailor who fastened it to the taffrail. It was the stern lantern being swung out for the night, and I could not help smiling at this delightful display of audacity, deliberately to put up that tell-tale beacon, right in our faces, as it were.
"It"s a good bluff," Gates chuckled, "but they don"t intend leaving it there for long, sir. I"d say we"d better fire now, Mr. Thomas, and when they stop we"ll have a little chat with "em."
Tommy sprang up and pulled the string, and our eyes were dazzled, our ears jarred, with a perfectly glorious explosion that lighted up the sea for a hundred yards.
"Whiz-bang!" Tommy yelled. "I wish I had this thing in Kentucky! It"d work wonders for the Democrats!"
Nothing happened aboard the _Orchid_. She did not vary her course an inch. The sailor at the helm had given a frantic jump when Miss Nancy went off, but resumed his place evidently aware that no missiles had been fired.
"Load her up again," I urged. "Let"s keep on till they get mad!"
Bilkins pa.s.sed out the sh.e.l.ls and the piece was loaded and fired, loaded and fired, till we seemed surely to have waked old Nep himself. I do not know how many rounds we shot but it must have continued for some time, thoroughly engrossing us. Now suddenly the stern light went out, and immediately afterwards the portholes, losing their glow, became as nothing. The tropical night, always swift in coming, had fallen more stealthily than we realized, and the yacht melted into darkness.
"_Sacre bleu!_" Monsieur raged--for the night was overcast and as black as sin.
But Gates was already stripping the searchlight of its cover. When he had swung open the big lens Tommy struck a match, which blew out. His second was blown out by a hiss of air that preceded the flow of gas, and the professor jumbled matters by trying his hand. But these efforts scarcely took more time than the telling, and when the powerful streak of light finally pierced the darkness the very first thing it showed us was a white sail.
"I shouldn"t have worried about night catching us, sir, if I"d thought of this before," Gates laughed. "And there"s plenty of extra acetylene tanks, too, so she carn"t get away now!"
"You"ll have to haul down some sail, though," I replied, seeing that the _Orchid_ lay nearly abeam of us.
"No quicker said than done, sir."
He went to direct this, while we held our light squarely on the fleeing outlaw. n.o.body was astir about her deck; indeed, so undisturbed did she appear that the sailor standing statue-like at her wheel might have been the only living thing aboard.
I breathed fast with thinking that maybe Sylvia might come up, and my senses were so alert, my mind, eyes, ears so intently reaching toward her, that now I heard what was indeed a most unexpected sound: a piano.
Grasping Tommy"s arm I whispered this to him, and he nodded, saying in a low tone:
"Yes, I hear it plainly. Reminds me of Monsieur"s master musician playing a rhapsody in the dark, d"you remember? Listen! G.o.ds, it"s "_De puis le jour_," from Louise!" Yet in the next breath he added: "Cheerful girl you have, Jack,--she"s switched off from her love song to Chopin"s funeral march!"
I dolefully smiled to myself, not at the funeral march but at the realization that dreams are only dreams and nothing more, that Gates"s common sense had come nearer hitting the mark than all of our professor"s psychology; for I had seen no piano in that cabin, and five minutes ago I would have sworn its interior was as well known to me as the _Whim_. But an instant later my smile had given way to a cry of rage, as a little streak of fire spat from one of the portholes and the big lens of our searchlight, with a bang, shattered into a thousand pieces.
"The nerve of it," Tommy yelled, violently shaking his hand that had been resting on the bra.s.s frame. "d.a.m.n his hide, he nearly shot off my finger!"
"Are you hit?" I asked quickly.
"h.e.l.l, no; but my hand feels like a pincushion! Say, he knows how to shoot, though! I"ll give him that much!"
"Those people are prepared for all that comes, I tell you," Monsieur vigorously nodded his head. "They must even have violet spectacles for looking into search-lights, else that fellow"s eyes could not have stood the glare."
Again the _Orchid_ was invisible. For a moment I thought that out of the dark sky my G.o.ds were derisively mocking me; but it was a human sound, a long, triumphant laugh, doubtless from the coa.r.s.e-throated creature who had made the lucky shot.
Gates, fearing we might answer it in kind, came forward to counsel silence, at the same time sending a sailor for the megaphone and ordering another to extinguish our own lights. With his knife he then hastily cut the megaphone in half, keeping the large end whose openings now tapered from about eight inch to eighteen inch diameters. As we stood, not understanding what he meant to do, I heard across the water a rattling of blocks and knew the _Orchid_, free of pursuit, was changing her course. Gates c.o.c.ked his head and listened, then whispered to the mate who went back and changed the _Whim"s_ course.
"Now, Mr. Jack," he said, in a guarded tone, "we"re behind her, and dark, too; so keep all hands as quiet as mice, sir! Take the wheel and steer as I signal from under my coat with this electric torch, like this: one long, means put your helm up a point, two long means two points; but a short flash means down a point, two short down two points. D"you understand, sir? We"ve got to keep close to her, or daylight"ll find her gone! I"m going out on the bowsprit and, with this piece of megaphone to help, think I can follow by sound. They"re apt to make some noise, believing themselves safe. And their blocks are bound to rattle when they change their course--which they"ll be doing before long as we"re both headed for the coast of Florida, twenty-five or thirty miles off. Now go back quiet, sir, and watch for my lights."
G.o.d bless old Gates, I said to myself.
Till well into the night that indefatigable sea dog sat astride the bowsprit with the crude sound magnifier over his ear, while I, alert and watchful, gripped the wheel as though I were driving a speed boat. In the beginning he had sent a few signals, and we jockied this way and that, but after perhaps an hour we settled down to another straight course--though I could not tell how near we were, or if we were sailing right, or if they suspected us.
Tommy had come aft to keep me company, and now asked in a whisper:
"What do you think about that piano?"
"I think she played like an angel."
"Son, you don"t get the point. What do you think about changing suddenly from that exquisite Charpentier love song to a funeral march--just before the rifle went off?"
"You don"t mean she was signaling?" I asked in surprise, for the idea knocked me a little bit silly.
"I mean just that; of course, she was signaling, and taking a big chance, too. You may put your own construction on the first piece she played, but the instant she saw what they were up to she sent us the flash. The only trouble about it was that we weren"t anywhere near as quick."
"But look here," I said, alarmed by another thought, "suppose she meant it would be _her_ funeral march if we keep up the pursuit?"
Tommy considered this.
"I reckon not," he finally replied. "They might threaten us with her death if we don"t turn back, but there"d be no reason to kill her otherwise. No, she saw them preparing to shoot--which you can"t deny that they did, jolly good and well."
"She"s a queen," I murmured.
"Queen! That girl must be a royal straight flush in hearts, and if it weren"t for Nell I"d adore her to the tips of my teeth!"
At midnight I sent the mate to relieve Gates and gave the wheel to a likely sailor, and after making sure they understood the signals we went below for a bite to eat. Although the day of suspense had been wearing, my brain was too active to permit much thought of sleep; but finally Gates nodded, awoke with a jerk, and started off to bed. He had had no easy time of it on the bowsprit, good old Gates!