“Gentlemen,” I said, “the Diamond Ship is some hundred odd miles from us as we lie, and Joan Fordibras and the Jew are aboard her. Captain Larry, will you give the necessary orders? and, Timothy, for God’s sake, send me up a whisky-and-soda and the longest cigar on the yacht. I am going to think, man—I am going to think.”
So I turned upon my heel and left him. The men’s cheers resounded through the ship as I entered my cabin. Ah! the brave fellows. Toward what harbour had they turned the yacht’s head so resolutely? Might it not be to a haven of death, to a grave in that placid ocean upon which we now raced as though Eldorado lay beyond our dim horizon?
I knew not, indeed. For upon me also the fever of pursuit had again laid its burning hand, and though death stood at our helm, no voice of life might call me back.
CHAPTER XXI.
A PILLAR OF LIGHT.
“White Wings” Dares a Venture.
Merry, our little cockney cook—the aproned humbug pretends to be a Frenchman—swore that night by the shade of Carême that if ever he made a ragoût à la truffe à Perigord again for a master who dined off whisky-and-soda and a cigar, “’e ’oped he would be ’ung on a pot-’ook.” I solaced the good fellow by ordering supper at eleven o’clock, and inviting both Larry and Benson, our engineer, to my table. Needless to say that we had but one topic of conversation. Hardly were the glasses filled when I began to put my laconic questions, and wrote upon the slip of note at my side the answers to them.
“For how many days have you coal, Mr. Benson?”
“That depends how far and how fast you steam, sir.”
“Suppose that we are lying drifting here in these calms. There is no great consumption of coal then?”