“I'll let her have it,” Captain Emil Bechtel concluded; and he passed the word to get ready.
A minute later Cappy Ricks, smoking his after-dinner cigar on the bridge of the Narcissus with her skipper and Mike Murphy, pointed far off the port bow.
“There's a shark or a swordfish, or something, breaching,” he said. “I can see his wake.”
Mike Murphy took a casual glance in the direction Cappy was pointing, while the master of the Narcissus reached for his marine glasses and lazily put them to his eyes.
“Shark be damned!” yelled Murphy. “It's a torpedo or I'm a Chinaman! Hard-a-starboard!”
He leaped for the engine-room telegraph and jammed it over to Full Speed Astern; then dashed into the pilot house and commenced a furious ringing of the ship's bell, summoning the crew to boat drill, the while his anxious eye marked the swift progress of the white streak coming toward them. What wind there was happened fortunately to be on the vessel's port counter, and as the helmsman spun the wheel the big vessel fell off quickly and easily, while the rumble of her shaft, suddenly reversed, fairly shook the ship. To Cappy Ricks it seemed that the vessel must be brought up standing, like one of the broncos he had seen ridden with a Spanish bit; but a big ship under full headway is not stopped very abruptly, and the Narcissus swept on, turning as she went in order to offer as little target as possible to the torpedo.
“Will we make it, Mike?” Cappy Ricks queried in a very small, awed voice.
Mike Murphy turned and found his owner at his elbow.
“I hope it hits her forward,” he replied. “That motor cruiser is cradled aft and we might save it. They never hailed us—ah-h-h, missed!”
The torpedo flew by, missing the big blunt bow by less than three feet.