Ramon Porfirio intercepted the message. Had time permitted he would have turned in pursuit of the tramp and sent her to the bottom; but urgent affairs compelled him to carry on under every ounce of forced draught.
Meanwhile the Armadale, doing thirty-three knots to the Malfilio's twenty-two, was rapidly standing in pursuit of the pirate cruiser. Night fell, without the sighting of the latter. The Commodore, inwardly perturbed, showed no trace on his bronzed features of the doubts that assailed his mind. It was quite easy, in spite of the numerical superiority of the squadron, for the pirate cruiser to be lost in the vast expanse of the moonless ocean.
About one bell of the Middle Watch the masthead light of a steamer was reported, bearing 105°. A little later on her red light and then the green were visible.
Thinking it advisable to dispense with wireless during the rest of the night, the Commodore gave orders for the on-coming vessel to be communicated with by means of a masthead flashing lamp.
In reply to the request for her name the stranger Morsed: "KJVT—AUBX—APVE", which, by reference to the Mercantile Shipping Register and the International Code, revealed her to be the S.S. Lanzorate of San Francisco, bound from Olympia, U.S.A., for Batavia.
The Armadale then repeated her general wireless message, and asked if the Lanzorate had seen anything of the pirate ship Malfilio, to which the vessel replied that she had seen a two-funnelled craft answering the description proceeding south by east just before sunset. A hasty reference to the chart proved conclusively that either Captain Stott or the skipper of the Lanzorate had engaged in the pleasurable pastime of talking through his hat. By no possibility could the pirate cruiser travel from one position to the other in even twice the time stated.
Meanwhile the Lanzorate was passing about two miles astern of the Armadale. The former was brilliantly illuminated. Every scuttle and every window of her deck-houses was lit up; while the Armadale was now in total darkness.
"We'll have a look at that hooker," said the Commodore to the Navigating Lieutenant. "Take us to within a couple of cables of her—broad on her port beam."
A warning to the searchlight men to stand by was followed by instructions to the 9.2-guns' crews to load with armour-piercing shells with delayed action fuses. The quick-firers and machine-guns were to be trained on the stranger's bridge.
Describing a wide turning circle the Armadale closed on the stranger's port beam, which was the last thing her skipper would have expected. When the Armadale's masthead signal lamp flashed, the cruiser bore one point on to the former's starboard bow, so the sudden apparition of a huge warship on her port beam was to say the least most disconcerting.