"What's the trouble, sir?" asked Maclean when his superior appeared at last to be exhausted.
"They want our coal. C----t them to ---- for all eternity," gasped the frenzied captain. "And they'll blow us out of the water if we don't follow them to Tramoieu."
"It's a little island off the Cochin coast, a hundred miles from anywhere, with a harbor. By ---- they'll smart for this!"
"Not they," said Maclean. "That is, if you obey. They'll gut and scuttle the _Saigon_, and then kill every mother's son of us. Dead men tell no tales. We'll be posted at Lloyds as a storm loss."
"Full speed ahead, and ram her while she's picking up the launch! Chance the guns!"
"By ----! I'll do it!" shrieked the captain, and he sprang to the signal-bell. But even as he grasped the lever with his hand, he paused.
"What now?" demanded the mate, his face tense with passion. "Hurry's the word, sir. Hurry!"
The captain, however, turned and looked him in the eye. "You've counseled me to murder--wholesale murder, Maclean. Avast there, man! Keep your mouth shut. This is my bridge, and I'll not hear another word from you."
The mate bit his lips and shrugged his shoulders. His eyes were blazing with contempt and rage, but he kept his self-control, and was rewarded by a dozen sympathetic glances from those of the crew grouped upon the deck who had heard the controversy. From that moment he was their idol. The second mate, too, who was standing by the wheel, turned and nodded to him as he passed.
The captain, who missed nothing of this by-play, felt himself to have been absolutely isolated. But he was a strong man, and he knew that he acted rightly. Five minutes later four thunderous reports rang out, and shells splashed the sea on all sides of the _Saigon_. Then the machine-guns began to speak, and a perfect storm of bullets tore through the vessel's rigging, some directed so low that they pierced the top rim of the funnel smoke-stack. The display lasted sixty seconds. When it was over, a very sheepish looking lot of men arose from the recumbent attitudes they had assumed. Of the whole ship's company on deck, Captain Brandon, Hugh Maclean, and the chief engineer had alone remained standing.
There was a new flag at the _Nevski's_ truck. "Follow at full speed!" it commanded. The _Saigon_ instantly obeyed. Before night fell, the moon rose, three-quarters full. It lighted the procession into dawn. Sunrise brought them to a rock-bound coast, and so nicely had the _Nevski's_ navigator steered, that the first headland circumvented made room for the revelation of a little bay. It was enclosed on three sides with gray hills, and across the mouth was stretched a broken line of hungry-looking surf-crowned reefs. The _Nevski_ steamed boldly through the first opening, and dropped her anchor in smooth water three-quarters of a mile beyond. The _Saigon_, currishly obedient to the Russian's signals, followed suit, bringing up within a biscuit cast of her consort and captor. An hour later Hugh Maclean, the engineer, and the lesser officers and thirty-two men of the _Saigon's_ company and some two score of Russian sailors were working like slaves transferring, under the supervision of a strong guard, the _Saigon's_ coal and cargo into the _Nevski's_ boats.