If hares ever chased ducks this business might be compared to a lame duck being chased by a hare. The Minerva could steam ten miles to the Penguin’s five and over; her guns even now could have sunk the Penguin with ease, though they might not have made very good shooting, owing to the haze; that elusive, delusive haze.
“Below there,” cried the Captain through the engine-room speaking tube. “Shake yourself up, MacBean! Whack the engines up—give us fifteen or burst! What’s the matter? We’re being chased by that British cruiser, and it’s the penitentiary for the lot of us if we’re caught—that’s all.”
He turned, and at that moment the Minerva spoke.
A plume of smoke showed at her bow, there came a shrill, long-drawn “whoo-oooo” like a hysterical woman “going off” somewhere in the sky, then a jet of spume and a lather of foam in the sea two cable lengths to port.
It was a practice shell, and it left the water and made another plume a mile and a half ahead and yet another a mile beyond that.
It was her first and last useful word, for now the haze had her, destroying her for war purposes as efficiently as a bursting shell in her magazine.
The haze had also taken the Penguin; everything seemed clear all around, but all distant things had nearly vanished.
Another shell came whooing and whining from the spectred Minerva before the white Pacific fog blotted her out.
A faint wind was bringing it, less a wind than a travelling chillness, a fall of temperature, moving from east to west.
The Captain, having given his instructions to the helmsman, left the bridge, and went down below.