He put the glass to his eye and examined the distant ship; then as he looked he began to whistle.
“Well,” said he, taking the glass from his eye, “I reckon we won’t go through her—she’s a man-o’-war.”
“Whatcha say!” cried Harman, seizing the glass. He looked. Then he said:
“I reckon you’re right; she’s a fightin’ ship sure enough. I guess we’ll let her go this time, our armaments bein’ so unequal; she’s headin’ right for us, and if you ask for my advice I’d advise a shift of helm.”
“Yes,” said Blood, “and don’t you know that the first thing she’d do if we shifted our helm without a reason would be to come smelling round us? Don’t you know that a man-o’-war has no business to do at all but to look after other folk’s businesses? She’s not due to time anywhere; she’s got no cargo to deliver, no owners to grumble at her if she’s a day late. No, her business is to keep her eye out on the watch for shady people like you and me, and of course for the enemy if it’s war time. No, I reckon we’ll keep straight on, but there’s one thing we’ll do, and that is dismantle the spar gun. I reckon a dummy gun would be a difficult thing to explain away, and that, backed by the faces of our chaps and the fact that we haven’t a yard of cable in our tanks and no log except the one I faked up and forgot to keep to date more’n a week ago. Might get us into very serious trouble.”
“Is she a Britisher, do you think?” asked Harman, still ogling the approaching vessel through the glass.
“We’ll soon see,” replied the Captain.
He came down from the bridge, and hustled the fellows round, making them remove the dummy gun and place it down below on the cable deck.
Then he came back on to the bridge.
The stranger had ceased firing up, and had cleared herself of smoke. She was a cruiser right enough, one of the modern, swift, small-tonnage cruisers that can yet sink you with a broadside or cripple you most effectually with a bow chaser and from the distance of four miles.