The young Prussian pulled himself up with due regard for his office. Just for a moment his conceit had been a little overborne by the presence of the Prince.
"Yes, Excellency," he said, with a sharp return to his military habit. "It is an imperative order that I conduct, without delay, Herr Leder von Bersac——"
"Ach, so!" exclaimed the Prince, his eyes suddenly flashing and his whole manner absorbing all his recent blandness in a quick-rising heat. "Does the Captain-General think he can give his orders to men under the command of Prince von Hertzwohl? Your Captain-General has yet to learn. And those who serve under him also. My nephew, Herr Leder von Bersac, is under the command of his uncle, and no one else. Your Captain-General knows that as well as I. The regulations of Borga are no concern of mine. But when I visit this pestilential place its manners are. Convey to your Captain-General that the manners of Borga had best be improved. I shall not visit here again until I have seen that they are. You can go back, and tell him that I leave at once, and that Herr Leder von Bersac has no time to comply with any order issued by the military governor of Borga."
The tide of the Prince's anger was too swift for the youthful Prussian's armor of official effrontery. He came near to withering before it. It was only the understanding of Von Salzinger's supreme command in Borga that helped him to weather the storm. He waited one moment to see if anything further was to be said, then, under the stern eyes of the Prince, he saluted and departed, darting up the companionway with hurried steps, and made his way ashore to the telephone station on the landing-stage.
Had he paused to glance about him he might have been surprised that the Prince's threat had been so promptly put into execution. As it was he did not notice even that the gangway followed him ashore, almost immediately in his wake. But these things, however they might have surprised him, were no real concern of his. It was for him to report promptly to the Captain-General, and make matters as safe as he could for himself.
By the time he reached the telephone station the vessel was gliding silently from the landing-stage.
The throb of the powerful engines told Ruxton Farlow all he wished to know. He sighed quietly, and it was the outward expression of the relaxing of his feelings.
He was smiling into the face of the man before him.
"Well?" he said.
But the Prince had become curiously abstracted. His eyes were on the cylinders in an unseeing contemplation. Ruxton watched him thoughtfully after his monosyllabic interrogatory. He was filled with not a little wonder at the alertness of this man's mentality in a moment of crisis. It was an almost confounding realization in the midst of his early impressions of him. For himself he could not see ahead with any degree of certainty. The Prince had committed himself to a dangerous course in defying the German Government's representative in the place, which was the most treasured secret in the Teuton heart. He judged that certain pursuit would follow, or at least armed interference. Even with a power such as the Prince's, at whatever cost, Von Salzinger must enforce obedience to his order, or——