This, as Wahr now began to suspect only too well, was an impossible commission. But with his well-known sycophancy he said, “So you shall, sire.”
All the admiral answered was: “And then we’ll try for the soup-spring and have something to eat—where do you suppose it is?—and put new ends on the ship—” forgetting that there was nothing more in sight now than there had been for a long time.
However, while Wahr was manœuvring the ship, in her crippled condition, to bring her broadside to the little craft, the clipping went on at stern and bow until the water began to enter in a disquieting stream. Ruhet ransacked for the fiftieth time a locker on deck about the mizzen-mast for some cake which had once been there. The ship would not come about. Wahr had nearly decided to become sufficiently humble, in the absence of Nicht, to go on his knees and confess his first failure to the admiral, and then his apparent wisdom but real ignorance, when, to his surprise and delight, the little craft, seeming to apprehend his intention, put herself exactly in the best position for the broadside.
“My luck never deserts me,” muttered Wahr, “even in such a dinked”—he loved to do and say the things his master did—“distressful time as this. I’ll sink her yet. Now,” he cried to Weiss Nicht, so that the admiral might hear, “I have made everything ready for you. Get your broadside off!”
“And, on your life, don’t miss her!” added Ruhet.
The impudent Weiss Nicht knew Wahr well enough to be ready, and, on the instant, the broadside roared.
When the smoke cleared, the green craft had disappeared.
“By my uncle’s—”
No one will ever know what wisdom the admiral would have uttered; for, at that moment, the little thing reappeared, as Weiss Nicht had anticipated, on the other side of the ship, and he had made ready for her in order to affront Nicht Wahr.
“The starboard broadside!” he cried impudently, without waiting for Nicht Wahr’s order. “Fire!”