"You were right, sir," he declared. "She has altered her course, and our paths now converge."
"Which proves that she is one of those d——d Russian volunteer pirates."
"Or else a Japanese cruiser, sir."
"Nonsense! The Jap cruisers have only one mast."
"So they have, sir. I was forgetting that."
"What to do!" growled the captain, and he fell to frowning and cracking his long fingers—his habit when perplexed. He was a short, thick-set man, with a round, red face, keen blue eyes, and strong, square jaws: a typical specimen of the old-time British sailor. Hugh Maclean, on the other hand, was a lean and lank Australian, of evident Scottish ancestry. His long, aquiline nose and high cheek-bones were tightly covered with a parchment-like skin, bronzed almost to the hue of leather. He wore a close-cropped, pointed beard, and the deep-set gray eyes that looked out from under the peak of his seaman's cap twinkled with good health and humor.
"We might alter our course, too, sir," he suggested.
"Ay!" snapped the other, "and get pushed for our pains on to the Teraghlind Reef. We are skirting those rocks more closely than I like already."
"You know best, sir, of course. But I meant that we might slip back toward Manila, and try the other channel after we have given that fellow the go-by."
"What!" snorted the captain, his blue eyes flashing fire, "run from the Russian! I'll be —— first. We haven't a stitch of contraband aboard," he added more calmly a moment later. "He daren't do more than stop and search us."