It was an unnecessary remark, wholly uncalled for. Smith flushed under his tan and pallor. He had seldom been spoken to like that. He would have to stand it; but he would hunt a new ship as soon as he came ashore again. It was bad enough to be treated like a boy; but to be talked to that way before the men made it impossible, absolutely impossible. It meant the end of discipline at once. A man would retail it, more would repeat it, and—then—Smith turned away from the bridge rail in utter disgust. He was furious.
"Blast the ship!" he muttered, as he turned away and gazed aft. His interest was over, entirely over. He would not have heard a gun fired at that moment, so furious was the passion at the unmerited insolence from his commander.
And then, as if to give insult to injury, Brownson called down the tube:
"Full speed ahead—give her all she'll do—I'm tired of loafing around here all the morning." Then he rang up the telegraph, and the sudden vibrations told of a giant let loose below.
The Admiral started ahead slowly. She was a giant liner, a ship of eight hundred feet in length. It took some moments to get headway upon that vast hull. But she started, and in a few minutes the snoring of the bow wave told of a tearing speed. She was doing twenty-two and a half knots an hour, or more than twenty-five miles, the speed of a train of cars.
The under steward came up the bridge steps with the coffee. Smith took his cup and drank it greedily, almost savagely. He was much hurt. His feelings had been roughly handled. Yet he had not even answered the captain back. He took his place at the bridge rail and gazed straight ahead into the gray mist. He saw nothing, felt nothing, but the pain of his insult.
"Let him run the ship to hell and back," he said to himself.
There was a puff of colder air than usual. A chill as of death itself came floating over the silent ocean. A man on lookout stood staring straight into the mist ahead, and then sang out:
"Something right ahead, sir," he yelled in a voice that carried like the roar of a gun.
Brownson just seized the lever shutting the compartments, swung it, jammed it hard over, and screamed: