“That’s what they’ve been doing, with your money and mine and Uncle Phil’s,” remarked his brother in a low voice. “I wish the _Georgetown_ would help to get some of it back for us.”
“Maybe she will,” Frank murmured. They had followed their plan of not telling their shipmates the peculiar situation which had led them to enlist.
Everyone who could get a vantage point, and was not obliged to be at other duties, was watching the chase. The battleship was running under forced draft, and Ned and Frank were very thankful that they were not coal-passers, or firemen. For the temperature in the stokehole of a battleship, when forced draft is being used, is about the highest in the world.
Still everything possible is done to make the men comfortable, and they only work in short shifts, changing frequently, and receive the best of medical treatment and advice if they are temporarily overcome, as often happens. But word had gone into the engine room that the _Georgetown_ was really making her first race after what might be considered a hostile craft, and the coal-passers and firemen stuck to their tasks with great grit, determined to make their craft do her best.
So through the sea plowed the great battleship, an immense wave piling up on either bow as she pushed her way along driven by the powerful engines deep in her interior.
“We don’t seem to be catching up very fast,” observed Frank.
“No, that little craft is showing a clean pair of heels,” agreed Ned. “We aren’t built for speed, anyhow.”
This was true enough, though for her size the _Georgetown_ was one of the fastest battleships afloat. Still a smaller boat which did not meet with so much resistance going through the water, could get away with comparative ease. And it looked as if this was what was going to happen.
“Why don’t we fire a shot at her?” murmured Tom Dawson.
“We can’t very well put one across her bows when we’re dead astern,” commented Ned. “And if we fire any other way we’re likely to hit her.”
“Which I suppose we haven’t a right to do,” observed Frank. “We aren’t at war with Uridio. It’s only that we aren’t going to let her revolutionists do things to our citizens.”
But it was evident that something was going to be done, for there sounded, a little later, the order for clearing the ship for action. With cheers the men sprang to their stations, Ned and Frank going to the big gun turret, though it was hardly possible the great guns would be used on so small an opponent.