"No, sir," said the president, looking up from his gun: "not till we've the legs on her. When Mr M'Niven——"
At this moment the chief came up on to the bridge, black and grimed from head to foot.
"All right, Mr Vernon, you can go full steam ahead now. We've got every bit of grit out, and she'll work as easy as ever she did."
"Then," said the president, "I reckon that's about all that we want. Full steam ahead, if you please, Mr Vernon; you can let her go both engines."
The chief officer pulled the telegraph handle over to full speed. The next moment two columns of boiling foam leapt out from under the Nadine's counters as she sprang forward from eight knots to sixteen, and then to twenty. Almost at the same instant the Maxim-Nordenfeldt from the Vlodoya forecastle spoke again, and a seven-pound shell, aimed low this time, came hurtling across the water, and missed the Nadine's stern by about ten yards.
"I reckon that means business," said the president. "Full speed ahead, if you please, Mr Vernon, and hard aport."
The Nadine made a splendid swerve through an arc of about a hundred and eighty degrees, and then began the naval duel, on the issue of which the future course of human history was to depend.
The Vlodoya fired three more shots in as many minutes, but they went wide, for she was steaming nearly seventeen knots and the Nadine twenty. Then as the Nadine swung round so that her bow pointed towards the Vlodoya, the president signed to the two men who were working the gun, a wheel was whirled round, and the muzzle swung slowly until he put his hand up and said:
"Stop her, if you please, Mr Vernon, and screw her round as hard as you can."
The engine telegraph rang, a sharp shudder ran through the fabric of the Nadine, the water which had been swirling astern mounted up ahead as her engines backed, and her bow came up, till the president raised his hand again to stop her. At the same moment another shell from the Vlodoya whistled over the deck at an elevation of only a few feet. In fact, it passed so near to Miss Chrysie that she involuntarily put her hand up to keep her hat on her head. Clifford Vandel saw it. He didn't say anything, but he set his teeth, squinted along the sights of his gun, and touched a button in the breech. Five seconds later a mountain of boiling foam rose up under the stern of the Vlodoya. She stopped like a stricken animal, and lay motionless on the water, lurching slowly down by the stern.