During the night she had been completely stripped of everything that could be useful to her captor. Every pound of coal was taken out of her bunkers. The two little quick-firers had been transferred with all their ammunition to the Nadine. Her four boats, amply provisioned and watered, were comfortably filled with such of her officers and crew as Chrysie's Maxim volley had left alive. There was a southward breeze, and in forty-eight hours at the outside they were certain to be picked up, either by a liner or a cargo boat, and plenty of money had been given them to pay their passages either to Europe or America. When they had hoisted their sails and began to bear away towards the steamer-track, the Nadine cast off from the Vlodoya, her screws began to revolve, and the president got his gun loaded.
"I reckon we might have a little gun practice, and see how far this pea-shooter really will carry," he said, looking up at the bridge, with a smile in which neither Sophie nor her father found very much humour. "Will you make it five miles, captain?"
The captain rang for full speed.
The Nadine sprang forward with a readiness which showed how utterly futile the plot to cripple her had been, and in a few minutes the motionless hull of the Vlodoya was a white speck on the water. Then she stopped and swung round. The president adjusted his automatic sights, waited till she rose on the swell, and let go. There was a hiss and a whizz, and then, where the speck was a bright flash blazed out. Two more shells followed in quick succession, and as the last flash blazed out, Count Valdemar took his glasses down from his eyes and looked at Hardress, and said, with a touch of bitterness in his tone:
"She has gone! That is a wonderful gun, viscount."
"Yes," replied Hardress, dryly. "That is a twelve-pounder. We have some hundred-pounders at the works, as well as a new weapon which may interest your excellency very much. It destroys without striking. If the French and Russian North Polar Expedition should chance to pay us a visit, you may perhaps see them both in action."
"And now, president," he went on, "I suppose we may as well shape our course for Boothia Land."
"There is nothing more to wait for that I know of, viscount," he replied. And so the Nadine's head was swung round to the north-west, her engines were put to their full power, and so she began her voyage to that desolate spot of earth which was soon to become the seat of the world-empire.
CHAPTER XXIV
Within ten days of the sinking of the Vlodoya Europe was electrified by the news, published far and wide through the English and Continental press, of what amounted to a pitched battle between two armed private yachts in mid-Atlantic. As may well be imagined, the strange narrative of the officers and sailors of the Vlodoya lost nothing either in the telling to the interviewers or in the reproduction in the newspapers.