"As God hears me, sir——"
"Shut up!" cried Maclean, "your voice hurts my ears."
Nevertheless, when all was ready, Maclean commanded Sievers to stock the boats with water and provisions, and to throw some fifty swords and bayonets aboard. Then began the debarkation. Using the officer who could speak English as his mouthpiece, Maclean commanded the crew of the Nevski to file out one by one from the forecastle, and slide down a rope over the vessel's bows into the waiting boats. They numbered one hundred and thirty-three all told, but not a man offered to resist, and within an hour the last boat had sheered off, carrying with its hale company the still unconscious bodies of the Russian captain and the officer of the watch. Maclean's next business was to bury the dead, which done, he searched the ship. He made two discoveries: He found in the captain's cabin a chest containing no less than fifteen thousand golden rubles; and locked away in one of the disused bathrooms astern, inhumanly disposed of in a tub, the silent form of Captain Brandon. But the tough little bulldog of an Englishman was by no means dead, and when some three days later the ghost of what had been the Nevski steamed out of the bay of Tramoieu, he was already so far recovered from the terrible blow that had laid him low, but which had, nevertheless, failed to shatter his hard skull, as to be engaged in a confused but constant effort to remember. On the following morning he insisted upon getting up, and was helped afterward by a steward to the bridge.
Maclean greeted him with a genial smile.
"Well done, sir," he cried heartily. "Glad to see you up again and looking so fit. The old Saigon has been as dull as a coffin-ship without you."
Captain Brandon nodded, frowned, and glanced around him. A carpenter close by was busily at work painting S.S. Saigon upon a row of virgin-white life buoys. The captain wondered and glanced up at the masts. They were just ordinary masts in the sense that they had no fighting tops, but they gleamed with wet paint. He frowned again, and, wondering more and more, looked forward. There was not the slightest trace of a cannon to be seen—but the deck in one place had a canvas covering. He began to crack his fingers, his old habit, but a moment later he abruptly turned and faced the mate.
"Maclean," said he.
The eyes of the two men met.
"This is not the Saigon, Maclean," said Captain Brandon.
"You'll see it in iron letters on her bows, sir, if you look."