"The fools! They've set her afire!"
"No, sir, it's the oil!" Breathlessly the steward explained the Skipper's plan of attack. Before he had finished, the flare of light widened into a broad stream, lighting all the fog redly. With it sounded renewed yells—shrill piercing yells.
Then, off to one side, broke forth a crackle of rifles. That was the boat of the Missus, cleverly pumping bullets at the Jap ship from a wide angle. Through this burst a volume of hoarse shouts, followed almost at once by a single terrific detonation—the thunderous shock of which sent the Pelican reeling and shuddering. The green-striped jar had exploded.
After that one bursting, rending, shattering crash, a swift darkness ensued. Through this blackness pierced fragmentary glimmers as the scattered and far-flung oil blazed up here and there, only fitfully to perish again.
"Good heavens!" exclaimed Dennis, awed and astounded. "Old Pontifex got more than he bargained for in that bomb, or I miss my guess!"
The Pelican was already past the scene of the explosion. What had happened there in the fog, could not be told. Whether the enemy ship had been shattered, or whether the whaleboats had themselves caught the force of the explosion, could not be discovered. All was silence and darkness from that quarter. But from far astern, lifted a chorus of faintly quavering yells as the marooned Japs on the island discovered the loss of their boats. Save for this, all was hushed and still.
"Well, steward," said Dennis in the silence. "Let's get that grub. I need it."
"Yes, sir," responded the steward meekly.
And the Pelican drifted out upon the tide, swinging and heaving gently to the slow swells that rocked up through the fog. It was an hour later that the first breath of air came—the wind which, as sailors say, always comes after death.