“Aye, aye, sir!”
The midshipman skipped down the bridge ladder and ran aft where, in obedience to the trill of the bo’sun’s mate’s pipe, the whaler’s crew had fallen in.
The boat had already been swung out. The crew took their places, Raxworthy by virtue of his rank being the last to step aboard.
The ropes ran through the blocks as the lowerers paid out the falls. Three feet from the surface the lowerers belayed, waiting for the destroyer to slow down.
“Slip!” ordered the midshipman.
The whaler struck the water with a hearty slap. A touch of the helm threw her clear of the destroyer’s quarter. Buster immediately increased speed, leaving her boat bobbing and pitching in her wake.
“Oars, lads! . . . Give way!”
He had to stand up in the stern-sheets and shade his eyes in order to keep the ditched men under observation.
The destroyer raced past him, and for some moments the man was hidden in the turmoil of her bow wave.
The men gave way with a will, pulling with long, swinging strokes that sent the lean whaler through the water in fine style.
“Way ‘nough! In bow!”
In a trice willing hands hauled the second victim from the sea.
He was a young man in the twenties. His face was partly hidden by several days’ growth of beard; his saturated drill uniform was rent in many places. The knuckles of his left hand were raw.
He was passed aft and deposited upon the grating in the stern-sheets.
Raxworthy ordered the men to resume their oars and steered in the direction Buster and her quarry had taken.
“Been in a rough house, haven’t you?” he inquired of the man coiled up at his feet.
“Rather!”
“I can sympathize with you,” continued Raxworthy. “I’ve had some. How did they get you?”
“I’m the third officer of the S.S. Supreme.”
“Supreme? Artful swine! They cut out the three middle letters and left a Chink name: Su-me. Well, go on.”
“We were bound from London to Yokohama,” continued the third officer. “Native crew, but I don’t think they are in league with the pirates. It wasn’t in my watch, but the second afterwards told me that a junk sent out distress signals. Our Old Man slowed down. The junk had an engine, and directly we’d lost way she ran alongside and poured a hundred or so of armed Chinamen on our deck——”
“Hang on a bit,” interrupted Raxworthy, who during the recital had been watching the pseudo Su-me through his binoculars. “They’ve slung someone else into the ditch. . . . By Jove! He’s splashing like blue blazes! Must be a shark about. Make a good spurt, my lads!”
They had to pull the best part of a mile before they got to the third man. Raxworthy’s surmise was correct. There were sharks in close proximity, swimming in gradually closing spirals around the spot, for the man’s splashings were becoming less active.
“Keep it up!” shouted the midshipman.
He caught a glimpse of the swimmer’s wide open eyes and the horrified expression on his face.
Raxworthy drew his revolver. It was a tricky business firing the weapon. The jerky motion of the whaler and the fact that he had to stand up and fire well over the heads of the men made it even hazardous. He purposely fired wide, the bullet ricochetting a good twenty feet clear of the man.
It saved the situation—or rather the loud report did—for it checked the onrush of the enormous shark that had turned on its back in order to seize its prey.
Then, carrying way up to the last moment, the boat ran close to the swimmer. Again willing hands hauled the third would-be victim into safety—but with what a narrow margin!
Even as the rescued man flopped across the gunwale, a shark rasped under the keel and lifted one of the oars out of the rowlock.
“Hello, Greig!” exclaimed the Supreme’s third officer.
But Greig, the tramp’s wireless operator, made no reply. He had fainted.
“How many of you are left on board?” asked Raxworthy.
“Seven Britishers—at least there were ten of us when the ship was taken,” replied the third officer. “They’ve kept the engineers below; promised all sorts of nasty things if they didn’t keep the old hooker going. But, if I know anything of Old McKie—he’s the chief—he’ll scupper the engines directly he knows that there’s a warship on their track.”
The whaler held on, following the rapidly receding destroyer and the Supreme. Although Raxworthy kept a sharp look out for signals from the latter announcing that yet another captive had been thrown overboard, Buster made no announcement. Nevertheless the midshipman repeatedly swept the intervening stretch of water with his binoculars in case the pirates had jettisoned another of their prisoners, who in the excitement of the chase might have escaped the notice of the destroyer’s crew.
Both vessels were almost hull-down when Raxworthy heard the muffled boom of a gun, quickly followed by another.
Gone were his chances of smelling powder. Buster was in action and he was miles astern in the whaler. It was disappointing, but there was no small measure of compensation in the fact that he was engaged in saving life.
All that could be done for the present was to jog on—there wasn’t the slightest chance of the whaler being upon the scene before the scrap ended—and wait for the destroyer to return to pick her up.
Meanwhile Buster was hard at it, and not having things all her own way.
Opening out—for Maynebrace did not want to expose his crew to unnecessary risks from rifle fire—Buster drew level with the captured tramp. She was between the Supreme and the shore, two thousand yards separating the two craft.
Finding that their savage ruse of dropping the British prisoners overboard was not now deterring the destroyer, the pirates removed the survivors and ranged them along the side nearest their attacker, lashing the captives to the rail at sufficient intervals, so that wherever a shell took effect on the upper deck the helpless men would suffer.
All this Lieutenant-commander Maynebrace saw through his binoculars. There was his chance. He took it.
“Range two, double o, o. Hull her fore and aft!” he ordered through the voice-tube communicating with the bow four-inch quick-firer.
The gun-layer of this particular weapon was an artist at his job; and so was the sight-setter. It was mainly on that account that Buster headed the list in the quarterly gunnery returns.
The pirates had opened an ineffectual rifle fire. The destroyer was out of range, although ricochets occasionally mushroomed themselves harmlessly against her side.
The four-inch barked once—twice.
The first shell burst under the tramp’s counter. The second blew part of her stem away.
Again Maynebrace signalled, calling upon the pirates to surrender. It was a mere waste of time. They hadn’t the faintest intention of giving in. If they couldn’t escape they’d fight until the ship sank under them.
The tramp was slowing down. Her engines had stopped—probably the British engineers had a lot to do with that—and she was slowly swinging round to starboard. Her steering-gear had been shattered by the shell that had exploded under her counter. She was like a crippled wild cat, harmless at a short distance yet dangerous to close with.
But for the prisoners, Maynebrace would have soon settled the business. A few rounds of gas shells and the pirates would quickly be rendered harmless. He could neither use gas nor sweep the decks with machine-gun fire. The only solution appeared to be that of laying the destroyer alongside and carrying the ship by boarding, but that would entail heavy loss of life on the part of the ship’s company.