“Welcome aboard the Baroda, Sir Reginald,” exclaimed the skipper, in a bluff, hearty manner, offering his hand to the man whom he remembered having heard so named when Mildmay had hailed the ship an hour or so before; “welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Permit me to introduce myself. I am Captain Prescott, and this is Mr Mumford, my chief officer. Perhaps you will have the kindness to introduce me to your friends?”
The ceremony of introduction having been duly performed, the tiffin-bell rang, and everybody at once filed below into the liner’s grand saloon. Meanwhile the throb of the engines betrayed the fact that the great ship was once more under way. The saloon was a very spacious and handsome apartment, elaborately decorated with paintings on the panels between the ports, and with a double row of columns running fore and aft as supporters to the great stained-glass skylight overhead. And although the ship was but a degree or two north of the equator, the place was quite comfortably cool, for wind-catchers were fitted into each of the ports, and created a pleasant little breeze by the mere movement of the ship through the air; and this was further added to by the presence of large, handsome, lace-draped punkahs waving to and fro above each table.
The guests were, of course, assigned seats to right and left of the skipper, and the conversation soon became general and animated. The captain of the liner started it by remarking—
“That is a very extraordinary-looking craft of yours, Sir Reginald; and small, too, for cruising so far afield, isn’t she?”
“Well, she is not quite so small as she looks,” answered Sir Reginald. “The greater part of her bulk is below water; hence it is difficult for one to get a fair idea of her size. As a matter of fact, she is six hundred feet long and sixty feet extreme diameter; her hull is cylindrical in shape. Her outside dimensions, therefore, exceed those of this craft, and she is, I should say, about the same tonnage.”
“By Jove!” exclaimed the skipper, “I had no idea that she was anything like that size. I noticed when you first came alongside that she is modelled like a cigar. I remember seeing some years ago a somewhat similar craft cruising in the Solent. She belonged, I believe, to an American. We used to call her ‘the cigar-ship.’ I fancy she was only a very partial success—at least, in the matter of speed. How does your ship answer in that respect? You seem able to keep pace with us fairly well.”
“Yes,” said Sir Reginald, with a twinkle of amusement in his eye; “oh yes. And upon occasion I dare say we could squeeze an extra knot or so out of her. But, to change the subject, if you have no objection, I should very much like to hear the full story of your adventure of this morning.”
“Well,” observed the skipper, “after all, I don’t know that there is very much to tell. My own opinion is that the whole affair originated in the ill-advised publicity that is usually given to the fact when a ship is about to sail with an unusually large consignment of gold in her safe. Thus, for a full week before we sailed the Melbourne papers were daily proclaiming the news that we were to take home five hundred thousand pounds’ worth of gold; and people used to come down and stare at us by the hour, as though we were a curiosity. I don’t like that sort of thing at all, and I think the papers ought not to make public such matters; for honest men are not very particularly interested to know how much gold a ship is going to sail with; but such stories must be a frightful temptation to rogues, and in these days, when roguery has become almost a science, there is no knowing what the publication of such information may lead to.
“Well, it happened that during this particular time there was a cruiser belonging to a certain Power lying at anchor in the bay—I’m not going to tell you her name or nationality, because it may be that my suspicions of her are unjust—but, anyway, she was as like that craft that you destroyed this morning—by the way, I suppose it was you, and not an accident aboard, as my chief officer maintains? Yes. I was certain of it. Well, as I was saying, this craft was lying there pretty nearly all the time that this talk was going on in the papers about the enormous consignment of gold that we were taking, and several of her people kept coming aboard of us at different times, under the pretence of showing their great friendliness for the British nation, and so on. Well, of course we were as civil as we could be to them, never suspecting anything, you know, especially as they scarcely ever referred to the matter of gold—except once, I remember, one of them asked me if all these statements in the newspapers were true, and like a fool I answered that they were.
“Well, this cruiser that I’m talking about sailed two days before ourselves, the news being that she was bound for the east coast of Africa; and I thought no more about her until this morning when, upon turning out, it was reported to me that there was something coming up astern and overhauling us.