"And," added the president, "I'll see to the guns. If that's the Vlodoya they're not going to overtake us before we are ready."
CHAPTER XXII
While the captain and the chief engineer were mustering such men as were in any way fit to work the ship, or to help in getting the port engine into running order, Chrysie and her father paid a visit to the staterooms. Hardress and Lord Orrel were both sleeping as deeply as ever and breathing heavily. The president tried to rouse them, without avail. Their pulses were beating regularly, and, apart from their heavy breathing, there was nothing to show that they were not in a healthy sleep; but they were absolutely insensible to any outside influence; and Chrysie found Lady Olive, Adelaide, and Madame de Bourbon in exactly the same condition. Ma'm'selle Felice was in great distress about her two mistresses, but Chrysie cut her lamentations very short by saying:
"You look after your ladies, Felice, and don't worry about anything else; your place is down here, and don't you come on deck, whatever happens. There's a boat coming up that may be the same one you telegraphed to at Cherbourg from Southampton. If it is, you see this?" she went on, taking her revolver out of her pocket. "Yes, that'll do; I don't want any theatricals, but you go to your cabin and stop there. If you're wanted you'll be sent for."
Ma'm'selle Felice shrank away white and trembling, and Miss Chrysie went back on deck to get the Maxims ready for action. She met her father under the bridge, and said:
"I reckon, poppa, they're all pretty dead down there. We'll have to see this thing through on our own hands."
The chief and his men worked like heroes on the shaft, and a good head of steam was by some means kept up, but the other yacht crept rapidly up across the eastern horizon, and by breakfast time it was perfectly plain that she was the Vlodoya. Moreover, both Miss Chrysie and the captain from the bridge had been able to make out with their glasses that she was carrying a Maxim-Nordenfelt gun on her forecastle, and two others which looked like one-pound quick-firers on either side, a little forward of the bridge. She was flying no flags, not even the pennant of the Imperial Yacht Squadron, to which she belonged. The Nadine was flying the Blue Ensign and the pennant of the Royal Yacht Squadron. When the Vlodoya was within about eight miles, heading directly for the Nadine, the president sent down to ask Mr M'Niven how long it would be before the port engine could be used, and the answer came back, "A good hour yet, but everything is going all right."
Just at this moment the captain was overtaken with another fit of sickness and dizziness, and had to go down to his room; and Mr Vernon remained in charge of the bridge with Miss Chrysie, who was walking up and down, with a strange look of almost masculine sternness on her pretty face, and the gleam of a distinctly wicked light in her eyes.
For her the minutes of that hour passed with terrible slowness as she watched the Vlodoya coming up mile after mile, with torrents of smoke pouring out of her funnels. She was evidently steaming every yard she could make. A quarter, half, and three-quarters of an hour passed, and still she kept on, looming up larger and larger astern, and Miss Chrysie looked more and more anxiously at the long gun on deck and the two Maxims on the bridge.
Again a message went down to the engine-room, and the answer came back—"Another twenty minutes." Just then a line of signal flags ran up to the Vlodoya's main truck. The chief officer's glasses instantly went up to his eyes, but after a long look he shook his head and said to the president: