"Have a nip?" he hospitably inquired.
Maclean nodded, and half filled a glass.
"Thank you, sir. Queer thing's happened," he observed, as he wiped his lips. "The Russian——"
"I know," interrupted the captain. "I've been watching her through the port. She's the Saigon's twin-sister ship, that was the Saragossa which old Kep sold to Baron Dabchowski six months ago. Much good it would have done us to run. She has the heels of us. Old Kep had just put new triple-expansion engines into her before she changed hands. But they've killed the look of her, converting her into a cruiser. She's nothing but a floating scrap-heap now."
"But she has six guns," observed Maclean. "Don't you think you'd better come up, sir? She is almost near enough to signal."
"Well, well," said the captain, and putting away the whisky bottle, he led the way to the bridge.
Some half-dozen miles away, steaming at an angle to meet the Saigon at a destined point, there plowed through the sea a large iron steamer of about three thousand tons' burden. She exactly resembled the Saigon in all main points of build, and except for the fact that two guns were mounted fore and aft on her main deck above the line of steel bulwarks, and that her masts were fitted with small fighting tops, she might very well have passed for an ordinary merchantman.
For twenty minutes or thereabouts the two officers watched her in silence, taking turn about with the binoculars; then, quite suddenly, the vessel, now less than two miles distant, luffed and fell slightly away from her course.
"She is going to speak," said Captain Brandon, who held the glasses. "Look out!"
Maclean smiled at the caution; but next instant a bright flash quivered from the other vessel's side, and involuntarily he ducked his head, for something flew dipping and shrieking over the Saigon. In the following second there was heard the clap of the distant cannon and the splash of a shell striking the sea close at hand. Invisible hands unfolded and shook out three balls of bunting at the truck of the war-ship's signal boom. They fluttered for awhile, and then spread out to the breeze. The arms of Russia surmounted two lines of symbolic letters.