“Johnny Kent has lost distance in the last half hour,” muttered the skipper. “His men can’t stand the pace.”
“What does it mean?” implored Nora, and she caught her breath with a sob. “Are they really and truly trying to kill us?”
“Those are the intentions, but the shooting is pretty bad, Miss Forbes. I will bet ye ten to one they do not hit us.”
Unwittingly she moved closer to him. Her hand was upon the rail and he covered it with his hard palm. At the firm, warm contact her fortitude returned. His tremendous vitality was like an electric current. She smiled up at him gratefully, and he said in a big, friendly way, to put her at ease:
“’Tis good to have somebody to hang onto in a tight pinch, isn’t it? Look! There he goes again! A better shot. It struck the water within two hundred yards of us. If he keeps on improvin’ his target practice, I may lose me bet.”
Nora was silent. She could think of nothing to say as she stared at the darkening horizon and the flashes of the cruiser’s guns. The after-glow died, and night marched swiftly across the tropic sea. It curtained the cruiser and obscured the Fearless. Johnny Kent had won in the first act of the drama.
Every light on board the tug was extinguished, and the word was carried below to close the draughts and slacken the fires in order to show no sparks from the funnel. The Fearless swerved sharply from her course and ran straight away from the Cuban coast, heading to the southward across the Caribbean. To follow her was a game of blind-man’s-buff, and Captain O’Shea knew every trick of shaking off pursuit.
Nora had withdrawn her imprisoned hand with a self-conscious little start. Already the episode of the chase seemed unreal, theatrical. It would not have surprised her if the picturesque Cubans had burst into a light-opera chorus. She hastened to tell her aunt the good news, and presently there came staggering up from the lower deck the wreck of Gerald Ten Eyck Van Steen. The merciful night hid his grime and tatters. Leaning against the bulkhead of the tiny passageway, he addressed the invisible ladies in the state-room. His voice was husky and cracked, but, singularly enough, all its petulance had fled.
“It was simply great,” he exclaimed. “We shovelled coal like drunken devils, and between-times they dragged us on deck and turned the hose on us. My word, it was a sporty game, and we won. I am bruises from head to foot, but what’s the odds?”
Nora was instantly contrite. Here was an unexpected hero, whom she had shamefully forgotten.