"Don't know, Jenny," he replied to his wife. "We're just following a couple of crooks who've got slick away in that two-funnelled boat yonder, and we mean to keep in touch with them till they land. That's all."
"Then we're leaving Algiers!" exclaimed the younger girl regretfully.
"Looks like it, Sadie," was his reply. "The police have requested our aid, an' we can't very well refuse it." Then turning to me he exclaimed, "Say, I wonder where they're making for?"
"They are the most elusive pair of thieves in Europe," I replied. "They are certain to get away if we do not exercise the greatest caution."
The ladies grew most excited, and as the vessel began at last to move through the water, the chief officer shouting at her men, the girl whose name was Sadie, a smart, rather good-looking little person, though typically American, exclaimed to me, as she fixed her grey eyes on the fleeing vessel--
"Do you think they are faster than we are?"
"I fear so," was my reply. "But your father has promised to do his best."
"What crime is alleged against the men?" inquired Mrs. Veale, in a high-pitched, nasal tone.
"Murder," replied Fournier, in French, understanding English, but never speaking it.
"Murder!" all three ladies echoed in unison. "How exciting!"
And exciting that chase proved. Old Mr. Veale entered thoroughly into the spirit of the adventure. With Fournier, I took off my coat and, descending to the engine-room, assisted to stoke, we having put to sea short-handed, three men being ashore. Amateur stoking, of course, is not conducive to speed, but Veale himself, his coat also off, and perspiring freely, directed our efforts.
Still our speed was not up to what it should have been. Therefore the owner of the yacht went along to the storeroom, and dragging out sides of cured bacon, chopped them up, and with the pieces fed the furnaces, until we got up sufficient steam-pressure, and were moving through the calm, sun-lit waters at the maximum speed the fine yacht had attained on her trials.
As the golden sun sank away in the direction of Gibraltar, the fugitive vessel held on her course to the north-east, straight to where the nightclouds were rising upon the horizon. Far away we could see the long line of black smoke lying out behind her upon the glassy sea. And though we had every ounce of pressure in our boilers, yet with heart-sinking we watched her slowly but very surely, getting further and further away from us, growing smaller as each half-hour passed.