IX
The gale was blowing itself out. Thunder still rolled wildly with seas bursting over her rails and spray flailing across the bridge, and the wind still snapped that spray from the crests of the big, green seas, but the sky was clearing, seeming swept clean by that wind. There was little of the day left but what there was promised to be beautiful.
Visibility was good and on the bridge they could just see the ship now, a speck under the marking black banner of her smoke. The masthead look-out could see her better. “She’s a gunboat!”
Garrick said, “She’s making up on us, but slowly.”
Knight ventured: “Maybe she isn’t the German.”
That was a possibility. She could be Chilean or any of a score of warships pursuing their lawful business in these waters. Smith did not believe it. He turned away and lowered his glasses. Everyone else who could reach a point of vantage was straining his eyes aft but he would not. He would know soon enough. Elizabeth Bell wallowed ahead of Thunder and rolled as badly. He wondered how Sarah Benson was managing aboard her and decided he did not give a damn. Whatever she got she’d asked for. Elizabeth Bell was barely making eight knots. If this sea fell flat calm she might make ten knots but as it was eight was her best. Astern of her and ahead of Thunder steamed Ariadne, riding the seas better than either of the others. She could make another four or five knots in this. Elizabeth Bell had a crew of twenty-two. Ariadne’s crew and passengers totalled a hundred and thirty.
Once more the hail from the masthead: “She’s that German! Leopard!” The look-outs had all seen the gunboat more than once when she lay at Malaguay.
Smith said, “Mr. Knight. Make to Ariadne: ‘Proceed independently at best speed’.”
Knight was startled because Smith had not spoken a word that day. But Smith again caught the interchange of glances between Garrick and Aitkyne. There was only one gunboat, only just escaped from internment, unarmed. He could be sending Ariadne away in panic flight while the Germans laughed at the success of their bluff.
“Ariadne acknowledges, sir.”
“Very good.”
“And Elizabeth Bell signals: ‘Am making best speed’.”
He was only too well aware of it. “Acknowledge.” Another man might have contrived a humorous reply but he did not feel humorous.
Ariadne’s smoke thickened and she swung out to starboard and surged past the tramp and on towards the distant coast.
“Masthead! Smoke bearing red one-seven-oh! Astern of the gunboat!”
The hail was whipped away on the wind. Smith turned slowly to face aft. They waited, all of them on the bridge and he could see the rest of his officers grouped on the after bridge with glasses and telescopes.
“Masthead! Looks like a four-funnel ship!”
Garrick bawled up, tight-nerved, outraged, “What the hell d’ye mean? Looks like?”
“She’s near bows-on, sir, an’ the smoke what she’s making —”
Garrick fumed.
Then the look-out bawled again, aggrievedly sure now, “She’s a four-funnel ship!”
There was the end of doubt. A four-funnel ship meant a warship was closing on the gunboat. No doubt at all now. Smith thought that somehow they had got the word from Malaguay of the course he had taken out to sea and they had spread out in a wide, sweeping line with the gunboat taking the inshore station. The other cruiser would be ten miles farther out over the horizon and would take time to come up, so it would be one-to-one for that length of time. One-to-one. But she had a broadside of six big guns to Thunders two and an edge in speed. Once he stopped to fight he would never escape.
“Masthead! Two four-funnel ships!”
His head jerked back to stare up at the look-out then his eyes came slowly down. The other cruiser must also have been closing on the gunboat, possibly the squadron concentrating for the night or to run into Guaya. Whatever the reason, Thunder faced impossible odds.
He found he was staring at Garrick and that the First Lieutenant was grinning like an overgrown schoolboy. Aitkyne smiled broadly. And Knight. All his officers seemed delighted, and then he realised it was for him, because he had been right. Wolf and Kondor. He caught a glimpse of young Wakely, flushed with excitement and laughing. The elder officers were hardly more serious. Garrick said, “God knows who they’re chasing in the Indian Ocean.” He guffawed. There were few hours of daylight left but Smith thought they could all be dead by sunset.
He turned from them and climbed slowly, steadily to the fore-top, the big glasses bumping on his chest. There was no hurry. The cruisers would not go away. He stood in the fore-top holding on against the wild sweep of the mast as it swung like an erratic metronome. He lifted the glasses, aware of Garrick behind him.
He saw them coming up under the smoke, a great deal of smoke, they were steaming for all they were worth. Bows on and superimposed as they were he could not distinguish their silhouettes, but he knew them. He lowered the glasses fractionally until the bucketing gunboat lurched into focus. Only nine hundred tons and with barely ten knots of speed, Leopard only carried a pair of four-inch guns. Except for them, with her flush deck she might be taken for a rich man’s yacht. Yet she had sighted them, had pointed the finger. Without her he might have got away.
He let the glasses fall against his chest. Garrick held the silhouette book. He frowned at it. “I’ll lay odds they are Wolf and Kondor.”
“I know.” Smith started down. He had seen more than enough. He was pursued by an enormously superior force but Thunder plodded on at a leaden eight knots while the pursuit roared down on her at more than twice that speed. The reason, of course, was the Elizabeth Bell, rusty and dirty and shabby. She hung around his neck like an albatross. In half-an-hour or less …
He could abandon the Elizabeth Bell.
Looked at coldly and logically it was the obvious course but he knew he could not do it. The sun was going down, it was already in his eyes as he turned aft again to stare at his fate rushing down on him, his nightmare come to appalling life. The sun was going down but it would not set soon enough to save them.
Very well, then. “Number One!”
“Sir?” The reply was jerked out of Garrick. The jubilation on the bridge had turned to a façade that could not hide the tension that was a palpable thing and Garrick was not immune.
Only Smith felt cold. “I will want steam for full speed, and I want every man fed. There’s time for a quick bite, say twenty minutes.”
Garrick ran from the bridge and Smith started to follow him but paused by Aitkyne to say casually, “I’ll be in my cabin, pilot. If there is any change in the situation no doubt you will let me know.” He took the silhouette book from Aitkyne and made his way to his cabin in leisurely fashion.
Boat-deck and upper-deck were crowded by the watch below, the eyes of all of them astern. One or two of them saw him stroll by and nudged each other, grinned. He was a cool one! But once in his cabin, alone, he opened the silhouette book and stared at it. That was not necessary. Now he could have drawn the silhouette faithfully from memory.