Evanthia showed her teeth in a brilliant smile and patted the youth's arm.
"My servant you shall be," she chuckled. "No, there is no port called Bairakli, but it is near to a city you and I will find good. Shalt live at Bairakli, Amos! Tck—tck! What a fool I was. Oh! Caro! Oh mein lieber Mann!" And she sang sweetly a few notes of a song.
The young man stared at her in stupefaction.
"Go," she said, pushing him with a characteristic gesture, at once brusque and charming. "You need have no fear. Your fortune is made."
A few minutes past six Captain Rannie climbed the bridge ladder and examined the compass without addressing his chief officer, bending over it with an exaggerated solicitude. Apparently satisfied, he went into the chart room and immediately pushed the ruler from its significant position, pointing into the interior of Asia Minor. There was an indefinable nervous bounce about him which indicated a highly exalted state of mind. He seemed, Mr. Spokesly imagined, to be assuming truculence to cover timidity. He probably knew that his insistence on keeping the course had aroused conjecture, and the ruler, lying as it did on the chart, confirmed the idea. Yet he did not speak. Funking, Mr. Spokesly decided, obstinately remaining close to the dodger and staring straight ahead—towards Asia Minor. If the Old Man thought he was going to get away with it ... he cleared his throat and remarked:
"About time to change the course for Phyros, sir?"
And to his surprise Mr. Spokesly, in the midst of his highly complex cogitations, found himself listening to a jaunty and characteristic monologue which touched upon—among other things—the one rule which Captain Rannie insisted was the sine qua non of a good officer, that he should accept the commander's orders without comments. Otherwise, how could discipline be maintained? As to the course, he, Captain Rannie, would attend to that immediately. And while he appreciated it, of course, there was no real need for Mr. Spokesly to remain on the bridge after he had been relieved.
Mr. Spokesly, still looking ahead, wanted to say sarcastically, "Is that so?" but he was tongue-tied, dumfounded. Here was a man, apparently of straw, who was jauntily inviting him to clear out and mind his own business. He pulled himself together.
"Unless we pick up a Mudros escort somewhere round here," he muttered, turning away.