“I don’t suppose it is,” said Blood. “It’s not every day that chaps like Shiner and Wolff fit out a cable-cutting party and get information of war right first thing through the cut cable. Ah, the smoke’s clearing and her hull’s coming out; let’s see what she’s like.”
He put the glass to his eye and examined the distant ship; then as he looked he began to whistle.
“Well,” said he, taking the glass from his eye, “I reckon we won’t go through her--she’s a man-o’-war.”
“Whatcha say!” cried Harman, seizing the glass. He looked. Then he said:
“I reckon you’re right; she’s a fightin’ ship sure enough. I guess we’ll let her go this time, our armaments bein’ so unequal; she’s headin’ right for us, and if you ask for my advice I’d advise a shift of helm.”
“Yes,” said Blood, “and don’t you know that the first thing she’d do if we shifted our helm without a reason would be to come smelling round us? Don’t you know that a man-o’-war has no business to do at all but to look after other folk’s businesses? She’s not due to time anywhere; she’s got no cargo to deliver, no owners to grumble at her if she’s a day late. No, her business is to keep her eye out on the watch for shady people like you and me, and of course for the enemy if it’s war time. No, I reckon we’ll keep straight on, but there’s one thing we’ll do, and that is dismantle the spar gun. I reckon a dummy gun would be a difficult thing to explain away, and that, backed by the faces of our chaps and the fact that we haven’t a yard of cable in our tanks and no log except the one I faked up and forgot to keep to date more’n a week ago. Might get us into very serious trouble.”
“Is she a Britisher, do you think?” asked Harman, still ogling the approaching vessel through the glass.
He came down from the bridge, and hustled the fellows round, making them remove the dummy gun and place it down below on the cable deck.
The stranger had ceased firing up, and had cleared herself of smoke. She was a cruiser right enough, one of the modern, swift, small-tonnage cruisers that can yet sink you with a broadside or cripple you most effectually with a bow chaser and from the distance of four miles.
“I expect she can do her twenty-five knots,” said he. “Piracy! Who could do anything with piracy these days between wireless and things like that. Harman, I guess I’m sick of this business and the uncertainty of it. I guess if this chap passes us and leaves us alone I’ll make tracks for home--which means Frisco. We can get rid of the _Penguin_ somehow or ’nother and crawl up home through Central America. Crawl up home, those are my sentiments now, for I’ve got a feeling down my spine that this chap is going to stop and speak to us.”