Back came Osceola’s hand, yanking the handle and at the same time Bill banked the plane in a sharp left turn. Osceola descried an object darting seaward beneath them. He glimpsed it strike the water and a geyser shot upward in front of the racing liner. Then as the Flying Fish came about and landed, he saw that the Orleans was slowing down. By the time their own craft was moored to a sea anchor, the liner’s propellers no longer turned and she lay like a “painted ship upon a painted ocean.”
Both lads stripped off their headgear as the Baron walked into the cockpit.
“I am about to board the Orleans,” he stated in that overbearing tone that was so irritating to Osceola. “You young gentlemen will accompany me. We leave directly. Once aboard, it will be your duty to make note of the quantity of gasoline and lubricating oils carried by the liner and render a report to me. I shall probably be found in the First Class dining salon, where passengers will be interviewed. Come now, it is time we were off.”
When Bill and Osceola came out on deck they saw that a three-inch gun had been brought topside and was trained on the Orleans. Signals had evidently passed between the Flying Fish and the liner, which lay motionless a few hundred yards off their port quarter. Even as the boarding party, armed to the teeth, stepped into a small launch, a gangway was let down from the side of the leviathan.
The journey across took but a very few minutes. Bill had only time to note that the Orleans no longer flew her colors and that the decks were still crowded with passengers, when the seaman in the bow of their launch caught the grating at the bottom of the steep flight of steps with his boathook.
The Baron immediately sprang onto the grating and, followed by another officer, Bill, Osceola and four seamen bearing rifles, mounted the gangway. The launch in the meantime hastened back toward the Flying Fish to pick up another load of men.
An indignant officer, whose uniform proclaimed him to be the ship’s captain, met them as they stepped on deck.
“This is an outrage!” he thundered, addressing the Baron. “By what right do you threaten my ship and board her?”
Von Hiemskirk smiled cynically at the scowling captain, and bowed, including the row of ship’s officers and men who stood close behind him, in his salutation.
“You make a mistake, Captain,” he replied affably, “when you say ‘my ship.’ Allow me to inform you that she is no longer yours—but mine—by right of conquest!”