"I headed the steamer to the east. Then came that shot through the galley. The Fatimé was coming about in order to bring her port gun to bear upon us. She could not well avoid hitting us if she had tried to do so, we were so near. If the ball went through the engine or the boiler, both of which were exposed to the fire, that would have been the last of us. Half of us might have been scalded to death; or, at the best, Mazagan might have knocked the Maud all to pieces at his leisure after he had disabled the vessel."
"Precisely so."
"I might have hoisted a white rag, and surrendered, permitting the pirate to take you on board his steamer; but if I had done that, I could never have held up my head again, and I could never have looked my recording angel in the face to tell him I had let the pirate take Louis Belgrave out of the Maud."
"It would not have ended in just the way you have pictured it, Captain Scott," added Louis with a smile. "I think enough of the ship's company would have stood by me to enable me to make an effectual resistance, and Mazagan might have got a bullet through his left breast instead of through his right shoulder."
"Every fellow would have stood by you, my dear fellow, as long as you stood yourself," replied the captain. "If Mazagan had disabled the Maud, he could have retired out of reach of our rifle balls, and knocked a hole through the vessel with his guns, and sunk her. Then he would have had nothing to do but to pick up his millionaire, and ransom him with double the sum he demanded in Cairo."
"Perhaps you are right, Captain Scott; but I think we need not discuss what might have been. We know what is; and this is the problem with which we have to deal."
"Bluntly, Louis, I desire to ask you whether you approve or disapprove what I have done as the captain of the Maud?" continued Scott rather nervously for him.
"I wholly and heartily approve of what you have done!" protested Louis with emphatic earnestness, and without an instant's hesitation.
"My dear Louis, give me your hand!" exclaimed Scott, springing to his feet; they clasped hands in front of the wheel, and the captain seemed disposed to extend it to an embrace. "You have removed all my doubts and anxiety by what you said and the manner in which you said it. If you approve my action, I believe the commander will do the same."
"While I do not accept your view of what might have followed if you had done otherwise, I believe you did the best thing that could be done. If the end had not come just as you say, it would have amounted to the same thing. Let us leave the subject now, and come back to the question you asked me when I came in. What shall be done next?" said Louis.