"And," added Sophie, as the two prisoners of war passed into the charge of their respective custodians, "I must say that to me it is as mysterious as it is charming. If the conditions had been reversed, I should certainly have shot you."
"It wouldn't have been quite fair," replied Miss Chrysie, sweetly. "You see I had a gun, and you hadn't."
She watched them disappear down the companion way to the saloon, then she put her hands up to her eyes, groped her way half-blindly to a long wicker chair, dropped into it and incontinently fainted.
Just then the chief, washed, shaved, new-clad and thoroughly contented with the really splendid piece of work that had been done on one of his beloved engines, came on deck, looking as though nothing very particular had happened. He saw instantly what was the matter.
"The lassie has a wonderful nerve," he said to himself. "Ay, what a man she'd have made! But she's only a lassie after all, and we'd better get her below. I'll just take her down to Mrs Evans without troubling the president. He's got plenty to think about. Yes; Vernon's on the bridge, and he'll see to things."
Then he picked her up in his arms and carried her down to her own cabin and laid her in her berth, and gave her into the charge of the stewardess. Then he went up to the captain's room, and found him just recovering consciousness.
"What's the matter, M'Niven?" he said. "That infernal punch last night seems to have poisoned me. I seem to have been having nightmare after nightmare, with guns firing and——"
"That's all right, captain," replied the Scotsman; "if you'd taken less of that infernal punch and more honest whisky, as I did, you wouldn't have such an awful head on you as I suppose you have. Still, there's nothing much to trouble about. We've got the engine to rights again; we've met the Russian yacht, and fought her, and beaten her. Mr Vandel smashed her up with his gun, and Miss Vandel—a wonderful girl that, sir, a wonderful girl—she sat at her Maxim as if it had been a sewing-machine, and seemed to think no more of shots than stitches, and then, woman-like, she fainted, and I've just taken her below and handed her over to Mrs Evans.
"And now, captain, don't you think that a wee peg would do you good? Mr Vernon's on the bridge, the president's holding up the Russians with his gun, and the engines are working all right, but half the crew and all the company are still something like dead, with that Frenchwoman's drugs, whatever they were."
Captain Burgess took the chief engineer's hint, and a stiff brandy and soda. Then he dressed and went on deck, and had a brief conversation with the president, after which he took charge of the operations of clearing all the coal and stores out of the Vlodoya before she was sent to the bottom.