"UP aloft, one of you!" shouted Marchant. "See if the swine's in sight."
The Alerte was pitching as she faced the long Atlantic swell after crossing the bar in pursuit of the Bronx City. A few—a very few—of the crew were sober; the majority were befuddled in the transition stage between drunkenness and sobriety; while four or five, helplessly intoxicated, lay rolling in the scuppers.
One of the hands, pot-valiant, made an attempt to go aloft. Before he had ascended half a dozen ratlines he slipped. Luckily for him, the Alerte was at the limit of her roll. Instead of dropping into the sea he slithered helplessly round the aftershroud and subsided heavily upon the gunner. The pair fell in a heap on deck. The drunken seaman, none the worse for his involuntary descent, sat up and looked around as if seeking applause. Marchant staggered to his feet, his right shoulder dislocated.
Pengelly, from the bridge, saw the incident. It cheered him considerably, for with Marchant rendered hors de combat he was able to reassert his lax authority on the undisciplined crew.
A seaman, less drunk than his predecessor, went aloft. Before he reached the cross-trees he shouted, "There she lies—a point on our port bow.
"Sure she's the Bronx City?" inquired Pengelly anxiously.
"Do you call me a liar?" shouted the lookout man in reply. "If I says she's the Bronx, then she is. That's all about it."
With the oil-engines running "all out," the Alerte stood in pursuit of the fugitive. A couple of hours enabled her to gain on the Bronx City to such an extent that the latter was barely six miles ahead. At that rate, another hour and a half would enable the pirate submarine to overhaul her prey.
Although Pengelly had no liking for Marchant, he was forced to admit that the gunner's proposal to abandon the Alerte and take the Bronx City over to some obscure South American port was a sound one. The question of fuel largely influenced his decision. The Alerte's tanks were seriously depleted; the Bronx City's coal bunkers were three-quarters full. It was on that account that Pengelly refrained from opening fire upon the Yankee vessel, otherwise he could have ended the chase half an hour ago.
At intervals, Pengelly raised his binoculars and watched the chase. It was on one of these occasions that he noticed a faint blur of smoke on the horizon at less than a degree to the left of the Bronx City.