"Well, this steamer with all the gold on board sailed just as soon as it could; and the very next day our London bankers got a telegram from Paris from the head of a detective bureau there to tell them that no less than three vessels were fitting out in the biggest kind of hurry to go after that slow merchant steamer with the millions on board!"
Mrs. Cliff and Willy uttered a simultaneous cry of horror. "Do you mean they're pirates, and are going to steal the gold?" cried Mrs. Cliff.
"Of course they are!" continued Burke. "And I don't wonder at it! Why, I don't believe such a cargo of gold ever left a port since the beginning of the world! For such a thing as that is enough to tempt anybody with the smallest streak of rascal blood in him and who could get hold of a ship!
"Well, these three vessels were fitting out hard as they could,—two in France, at Toulon and Marseilles, and one in Genoa; and although the detectives were almost positive what their business was, they were not sure that they could get proof enough to stop them. If the Dunkery Beacon had been going on a straight voyage, even to Rio Janeiro, she might have got away from them, but, you see, she was goin' to touch at Jamaica!
"And now, now,—this very minute,—that slow old steamer and those three pirates are on the Atlantic Ocean together! Why, it makes your blood creep to think of it!"
"Indeed it does! It's awful!" cried Mrs. Cliff. "And what are the London people going to do?"
"They're not going to do anything so far as I know!" said Burke. "If they could get through with the red-tape business necessary to send any sort of a cruiser or war-vessel after the Dunkery Beacon to protect her,—and I'm not sure that they could do it at all,—it would be a precious long time before such a vessel would leave the English Channel! But I don't think that they'll try anything of the sort; all I know is, that the London people sent a cable message to Captain Horn. I suppose that they thought he ought to know what was likely to happen, considerin' that he was the head man in the whole business!"
"And what did the Captain do?" cried Mrs. Cliff. "What could he do?"
"I don't know," answered Burke. "I expect he did everything that could be done in the way of sending messages; and among other things, he sent that telegram, about a thousand words more or less, to Shirley. He might have telegraphed to me, perhaps, but he didn't know my address, as I was wandering around. But Shirley, you know, is a fixture in his shipyard;—and so he sent it to him!"
"I haven't a doubt," said Mrs. Cliff, "that he would have telegraphed to you if he had known where you were!"