“Never mind that. Put us alongside the Sea King ahead of that other chap, and I don’t care if you blow the engines up,” was the curt rejoinder.
Tom shrugged his shoulders as he went below, but a few seconds later the dial hand of the patent log crept up a notch.
“Fourteen knots!” exclaimed Jack, with a note of satisfaction, “we’ll beat her out yet.”
All at once, from out of the obscurity, a grim possibility materialized. Rushing straight for the Vagrant came a sharp bow, with a wave of white phosphorescent foam curling away from it on each side as it cleaved the swells.
“Great guns! They’re trying to ram us!” gasped out Jack as he sensed the meaning of this new peril.
He seized up the speaking tube and bellowed down to Tom with all the force of his lungs.
“Back! Back her for our lives!”
Round spun the spokes of the wheel fast as a revolving squirrel’s cage. The Vagrant’s forward way was checked, but not wholly. To Jack’s horror it seemed impossible that the other vessel could fail in her evident object of ramming the smaller craft.
Less than a few score of feet separated them now. He could hear the hiss of the other craft’s cutwater as it rushed down on them.
“Golly to goodness, Marse Jack, dey sink us fo’ sho’,” wailed Jupe, dropping to his knees in terror on the bridge.