“Oh, I’m not thinking of that row of ours,” wearily muttered Van Steen. “It’s of no consequence now. I’m not such a howling cad as to consider myself in any way. What do you propose to do with Miss Forbes and Miss Hollister? I have kept my mouth shut all day, waiting for the great Captain Mike O’Shea to do what would have occurred to any man with his wits about him.”
“May I ask what it is that ye would call so plain to see?” patiently queried the shipmaster.
“Signal to the cruiser that you have in your company three persons who were picked up from their yacht. Or you could have sent us off on the life-raft, and given me a chance to explain matters to the commander and show him my credentials. I don’t want to be a quitter, you know, but really this is none of my affair, and my first duty is to get these ladies home in safety.”
“I grant ye that,” slowly replied O’Shea. “And I think no less of you for wishing to leave us to stew in our own juice. You have behaved very well, barring the one flare-up with me. Now I will explain why what ye suggest is not so easy. The cruiser would pay no heed to signals about you. ’Twould be looked at as some kind of a trick. Can ye not realize that the master of the navy vessel yonder is wild with rage to exterminate me and the rest of the Fearless company? He sees red, man. As for sending ye on the life-raft, it means that several of me own men must go with you to handle the lubberly thing. And they would be dragged aboard the cruiser and held there. I was willing to go meself, but I could not navigate the raft so short-handed. And I hoped the luck might turn before night.”
Van Steen had lost his hostile expression. He regretted his hasty words of condemnation. The intonations of O’Shea’s voice strangely moved him. And the sailor’s face, no longer bold and reckless, held a certain quality of gentleness, one might almost call it sweetness.
“Oh, confound it!” cried Van Steen. “You put me in the wrong, as usual. And I’m damned if I can feel square in trying to quit you and leaving you to take your medicine. I am one of the crowd, don’t you see, and proud of it. They are a bully sort.”
“I have never been crowded into such a tight corner,” said O’Shea with a smile, “but ’tis the way of life that when a man is young and strong, and used to long chances, he thinks he will not be tripped. This is my affair, not yours, so trouble yourself no more.”
“What do you propose to do, Captain O’Shea? You have made up your mind, I can see that.”
“The cruiser will be in a mood to hold communication with us now. ’Twould have been useless to try it this morning. But they have discovered that ’tis not easy to smoke us out of our hole.”
Presently he unrolled a bundle of signal-flags saved from the Fearless, and selected those he wished to use. Knotting them together, he hoisted the string on the spar beneath the American ensign. The commander of the cruiser read the message requesting that a boat be sent ashore in order to discuss terms of surrender. He was in no mood to discuss terms of any kind, but it appeared necessary to parley with these unspeakable scoundrels on the key. Perhaps they realized the hopelessness of their obstinacy and their spirit was broken.