"P.S.--Oh, I had almost forgotten about your friend, Dr. McTavish. He might come down with you for a day or two. Do you think he would?"
Kep showed that letter to McTavish, and at the postscript he laughed enough to have exploded a torpedo.
"Might come down? By thunder!" he roared. "I'll come down whether anybody asks me or not. Ha! ha! ha!"
* * * * *
But the idea of a "scrape" with a Russian seemed to tickle the crew.
How clean her decks were kept now, and the great guns worked as smoothly as the chronometer. Every sword was sharpened, every cutlass as well; the best revolvers in the ship were served out. Moreover, ammunition was handy, and torpedoes too, and every day the men were exercised in clearing for action.
"By George! Tom, lad," Stormalong said to a pal, "we're not going to lose our gold, if we knows it."
"No; we'll fight like wild cats. Blowed if I wouldn't rather run along sich, like they did in the brave old times, and board the enemy."
But the Breezy got among the Azores, and one night, when some miles off the island of Flores, something extraordinary happened, which is well worthy of the beginning of another chapter to itself.
CHAPTER XXVII