THE STING OF THE NETTLE
The moment when the Snipe was first sighted from the bridge of the Cobra was immediately after Brant's refusal to put into Plymouth to allow Miss Jimpson to communicate with her "young man." The girl had just turned away to rejoin Violet in the saloon, when her quick ears caught the phrase—
"There's a torpedo craft of sorts away to the nor'-east, and I'm jiggered if I don't think she's chasing us."
The speaker was Bully Cheeseman, who thus passed on his discovery to the captain. The latter took a long survey of the distant destroyer through his telescope, and then, cocking his eye to see if Nettle was within earshot, assented to the mate's statement in a string of imprecations, the pith of which was that the stranger was travelling thirty knots to their twenty.
Which was perfectly true as far as it went, though had he so wished Brant might have added that the Cobra, fast as she was moving through the water, was only going at half her possible speed of forty knots. But he was seized with a malicious desire to raise false hopes on the part of his prisoners, and he wanted Nettle to draw the inference that the war vessel could easily overtake them.
To add to the disappointment of the girl who had flouted him he sent verbal instructions to the engine-room to reduce the speed still further, with the result, as we know, that the Snipe began to rapidly creep up. Nettle, after taking in the situation as she believed it to exist, ran excitedly into the saloon and imparted the glad tidings to Violet.
"The brute refused to call at Plymouth, but we've beat him for all that," she cried. "There's a Navy ship chevying us and catching up like mad. Your friends must have got news through to the admiral at Plymouth, and he's sent that dear dirty little boat after us. We shall soon be all right now, Miss Maynard."
The girl's cheery optimism was infectious, and Violet roused herself from the apathy of despair. "I hope so, dear," she said, leaping up from the couch where she had spent the miserable night. "Shall we go out on deck and watch Brant's discomfiture?"
But Nettle was wise according to her lights. "I think it would be better for you to stay here," she advised. "The captain is such a beast that he might be rude if you showed on deck. He might hide you away somewhere till the danger was past," she added, remembering the ghastly inferno on the lower deck, to which Leslie Chermside had been relegated.
"Then how shall we know what happens?"