CHAPTER XII.
THE ARMED CRUISER.
The next morning, when Jack and Bill turned out, there was quite a flutter among the passengers. A large ship had been sighted in the distance, coming rapidly westward. As she drew nearer it could be seen that she was a monster craft of four immense funnels painted a sombre black without colored bands to relieve the effect. Her upper works were a dull brown and her hull, black.
Speculation was rife concerning her identity, but it soon became noised about that the craft was the Ruritania of the Anglican Line, which had, apparently, been converted into an auxiliary cruiser by the English Government on the outbreak of the war. The sight of guns mounted on her fore and aft decks confirmed this.
On she came, a fine, grim spectacle in her dull paint. An absorbed shipload watched her, leaning over the rails as she drew abreast.
“Lie to!”
The signals fluttered from her halliards and the same order was flashed by wireless.
For the second time the St. Mark’s engines revolved more and more slowly. The two big vessels lay opposite each other on the swells, nodding solemnly. Before long a boat came bobbing over the seas from the Ruritania.
“Now’s your chance to give that fellow Earwig up,” declared Raynor to Jack, as, leaning in the door of the wireless room, they watched the scene.
“Somehow it seems to me that would be a shabby trick,” said Jack, after a moment’s thought. “I’ll confess, though, that when the Ruritania hove in sight such a thought came into my mind. But—oh, well, I guess we’ll let him get by this time.”
“Maybe you’ll be sorry for it later on,” said Raynor, little guessing that those words were prophetic. There was to come a time when Jack was to bitterly regret having let Radwig escape capture by the British.