“Oh, Captain—oh, Sir Reginald!” she exclaimed, the tears starting to her eyes, “if you can but compass that I will for ever bless and pray for you all!” And, springing to her feet, the poor girl retreated precipitately to her cabin to conceal her emotion.
“The next question that arises,” remarked Sir Reginald, discreetly ignoring the young lady’s hurried retreat, “is: At what time ought we to start in pursuit of the convict-ship?”
He seemed to address this question to the professor, who shrugged his shoulders expressively as he replied—
“That is for our friend Mildmay to say; he will know better than any of the rest of us what will be the most favourable hour at which to overtake her.”
Thus appealed to, Mildmay replied—
“Oh, I should say about daylight; call it half-past six to-morrow morning. That will necessitate our starting from here at—um! Before I can determine that I must see which way the wind is, and at what strength it is blowing. I will have a look round on deck after dinner, and let you all know.”
Accordingly, as soon as Lady Olivia had retired from the table, Mildmay rose from his seat, went on deck, and returned in about five minutes with the information that a bitterly keen, northerly wind was blowing at a strength of about twenty miles an hour.
“That,” he remarked, “is a dead fair wind for us, and will enable us to progress at the rate of one hundred and forty miles an hour over the ground, if we proceed at full speed, and we shall therefore—Stop a moment; I must work this out on paper.”
He drew an envelope from his pocket and proceeded to make a few rapid calculations upon it.
“Yes,” he resumed at length, as he ran over his figures a second time, “that is right. If we start at midnight we shall—assuming the wind to hold all the way as it is now—overtake the convict-ship about half-past six o’clock to-morrow morning at a point, say, one hundred and sixty-five miles south of Odessa, which is practically halfway across the Black Sea. The time and place are both suitable, and I do not think that we can do better.”