Just then there was a heavy crash somewhere amidships, followed by a babel of yells that roused the sleeping watch from their berths.
"What's happening now?" asked Fielding. "Can you make out what they are shouting about, Mr. Rutter?"
The American, who was a fairly good Spanish linguist, understood the nature of the yells. For a few seconds he stood chewing the end of a huge cigar.
"I guess they're celebrating someone's nameday," he remarked, calmly. "Let 'em yell. Maybe they'll want their wasted breath before long." Then, taking Fielding aside, he said, in an undertone, "They're trying to lure us out, I reckon. Say the ship's sinking. Guess she's been going down some these twenty-four hours past, and she hasn't gone yet; so sit tight."
Thus, by the coolness of Hiram B. Rutter, the knavish plot of Da Silva fizzled out like a damp squib. Finger on trigger the platoon waited to mow down the hostages as they issued pell-mell through the hatchway; but they waited in vain.
"Ten thousand fiends take them!" exclaimed the pirate captain in his wrath when he saw that treachery failed to accomplish his ends. "There must be a traitor amongst the crew."
Disgusted and foiled, Cervillo retired to his quarters, and spent the rest of the day in sulky isolation. Meanwhile Da Silva, to whom the care of the vessel had been entrusted, kept the cruiser pointing due south at a modest ten knots. He, too, began to realise that, with her diminished speed and rapidly burning oil supply, it was only a question of hours before the _Independencia_ floated idly at the mercy of wind and wave. With the exhaustion of the oil fuel the auxiliary engines would be useless, and the centrifugal pumps would be powerless to check the inrush of water. The pumps worked by manual labour might keep the vessel afloat for twenty-four hours, but Da Silva, who had been mate of a Levant trader, knew only too well how quickly men will tire at the arduous task of manning the pumps.
Another day had almost passed. The sun was on the point of dipping for a few short hours beneath the horizon when the look-out announced, "Sail on the port quarter."
Cervillo and most of the officers made their way up to the bridge. Glasses were brought to bear upon the distant vessel, whose topmasts only were as yet visible from where the pirate captain stood. Was it a British cruiser that by some unfortunate freak of circumstance had penetrated the almost deserted northern ocean?