A Traitor's Wooing

by Headon Hill

The necessary orders were given, and, the rumour spreading through the ship that some unorthodox adventure was afoot, the crew achieved a record in getting under weigh. In less than twenty minutes from the time of Reggie coming aboard the Snipe was steaming down past Drake's Island on to the broad bosom of Plymouth Sound, and so to the open sea. There were still three hours to daylight, and Reggie's intention was to utilize them in reaching the spot where his judgment told him he would stand the best chance of intercepting the runaway.

The break of dawn found the destroyer patrolling the sea some ten miles south-west of the great lighthouse, in the comparatively lonely stretch of water that lies between the track of vessels making for Plymouth and the route of those whose destination is further to the eastward. In the immediate vicinity were only a few trawlers finishing the harvest of the night, but away to the north and south faint smears of vapour on the skyline showed the main lines of the Channel traffic.

And then, suddenly, from his place in the miniature conning-tower Reggie saw a great blur of black smoke crossing the southern edge of the vacuum he had selected for his hunting-ground. His binoculars flew to his eyes, and intuitively he knew that, though he had been right in his main conjecture, he had made a slight miscalculation of distance. The cause of the smoke-blur, magnified by his powerful lenses into a graceful steamer running southward at a high rate of speed, was neither a man-of-war or a liner, but a huge yacht—just such a one as would have been selected for a long ocean voyage. And a cry of chagrin escaped him as he perceived that he had not taken the Snipe far enough out to stop her. She had in fact already passed him, and was now between him and the mouth of the Channel, thus being nearer to the open door of the trap he would have closed than he was.

"What's her speed?" he asked, passing the glasses to his second-lieutenant. "I put it at about twenty-five."

The other, after a careful scrutiny of the receding vessel, gave it as his opinion that twenty knots was nearer the mark. Anyway, bar fog, the Snipe, with her thirty-knot engines, ought to be able to catch her in something under five hours.

"Yes, if she is doing her best now," said Reggie doubtfully. "She may be keeping a bit up her sleeve for an emergency. But we'll shove this old hooker along at her top notch anyhow."

So, with disrespect, do the boys to whom the nation entrusts its mosquito fleet speak of the little spitfires they love—a disrespect which they would swiftly and haughtily resent if it was evinced by any but themselves.

A word to the man at the wheel caused the Snipe's ugly snout to swing round for her quarry, and then the engine-room gong clanged its sharp command, "Full speed ahead." Reggie, with his eyes glued to his glasses, watched like a cat for any increase of speed or suggestive manœuvre on the part of the chase, but she held on her way as if supremely indifferent to, or unconscious of, the fact that she was being pursued by the destroyer.

"She's slowing down a trifle, isn't she, sir?" Parsons called up to his chief after the pursuit had lasted twenty minutes or so. "That doesn't look as if she had a guilty conscience."

Reggie was of the same opinion on both points. The yacht certainly was not travelling so fast as when first sighted, and her slackened speed suggested that her commander had no reason for showing his heels to a navy ship—was, perhaps, moved by curiosity to learn why the spiteful little man-of-war was tearing after him. Whatever the cause might be the result was that in less than an hour the Snipe's lean black hull was within a mile of the yacht, and that objects on the deck of the latter were plainly distinguishable by the aid of Reggie's binoculars.