"What does it all mean?"
"It means," said Brett, "that if the Blue-Bell has another yard of speed in her engines we shall need it all. It perhaps will make no material difference in the long run, but as a mere matter of pride I should like to reach Palermo before Gros Jean. If I remember rightly, Palermo is six hours from Messina by rail. Can we do it?"
"Mac" was again consulted. Of course he would not commit himself.
"We will try damned ha-r-rd," he said.
And with this emphatic resolve the Blue-Bell sped onwards through the sunlit sea until, late in the evening, the Ganges was hull down on her quarter.
Macpherson came on deck to take a last look at the P. and O.
"It will be a gr-reat race," he announced, "and I may have to kill a stoker. But——"
Then he dived below again.
So rapidly did the Blue-Bell speed over the inland sea that as night fell over the face of the waters on the second day out from Marseilles the look-out forrard announced "a light on the starboard bow," and Daubeney, after scrutinizing it through his binoculars and consulting a chart, announced it to be the occulting light on Cape San Vito.