"Come downstairs and get some wine into you, boy"; and I went below to his small and not very elegant cabin, where he put champagne and glasses on the table.
"Let's drink against the thirst we'll have to-morrow," cried he, getting quite jovial, and pouring the Pommery down his throat as though it had been beer. "This is an occasion such as we shan't often know--the old ship against Europe, and one man against the lot of them! Why, lad, if it wasn't for the thought of the oil, I'd get up and dance. The lubbers could no more lay a finger on me, given fair fight, than they could touch the moon. You see, it's just the oil that Karl's feared all along; drive by gas, and you want twenty times the grease in your cylinders that you'll ever need in a steam-ship. If there hadn't been that break-up north, we'd never have been in this hole; but that's one of the risks of a game like this, and I'll play my hand out."
He went on to talk of many other things, but as he did not speak of his own past, or of the ship, I began to nod with sleep; and presently I found him covering me up with a rug and turning out the lamp. I was dead worn-out then, and must have slept twelve hours at the least, for it was afternoon when I awoke, and the sun streamed in through the skylight upon a table whereon dinner was set. But Black was not in the cabin, and I went above to him on the bridge, which he paced with a restless step and a betraying haste. There was no land then to be seen; but the clear play of sparkling waves shone away to the horizon over a tumbling sea, upon which were a few ships. Upon one of these he constantly turned his glass; she was a long screw steamer, showing two funnels and three masts, away some miles on the port quarter, and I saw at once that from this ship the Captain got all his fear.
"Do you make her out?" he said in a big whisper directly I came up to him, and then, hushing me, he added--"Keep your tongue still, and say nothing. That's a British cruiser in passenger paint. She's come out from Southampton."
This was about the very best bit of news he could have given me; but I did not let him see that I thought so, for I had eyes only for the ship in our wake. She was a long boat of the _Northumberland_ class; but there was nothing whatever about her to betray her disguise, since she had all the look of an Orient, or a P. and O. liner, and was too far away from us to permit a reading of her flag. The men evidently had not seen her, or took no notice of her if they had; but John upon the bridge followed the movements of Black with curiosity, and once or twice turned his own glass on the black hull just visible above the horizon. He had forgotten the episode of the previous night--when, undoubtedly, he was full of drink--and was almost as troubled as the skipper.