The midshipman waited quietly for an answer.
“You can count on Wells and me,” Randall returned promptly. “I am in no mood to be introduced to a Japanese prison and a rice diet. If I can shake off the dust of this country nothing less than a Broadway beefsteak will suit me.”
Wells nodded his head and raised a hand in agreement with his companion’s views. Phil’s eyes were on Impey.
“I can’t see why you wanted me to go with you,” Impey said finally, in a petulant voice. “I offered you the yacht and gave you the permit from the Chinese cabinet. Of what further assistance can I be?”
Phil smiled mysteriously.
“I didn’t see the sense of taking only a paper permit when the living permit in the person of the agent for the builders of the ships was available,” he replied pointedly. “However, if you all will agree to obey me implicitly in everything and ask no questions, we shall elude the Japanese. If you don’t agree, then down you go under lock and key in one of the cabins.”
Impey’s lip quivered irritably as he reluctantly gave an assent to Phil’s proposal. His subtle mind was attempting to solve what the midshipmen’s intentions might be. Nothing less, he decided, than to checkmate Captain Inaba and win the Chinese ships for the United States fleet—the course he himself had already outlined.
The “Sylvia” was now tearing through the troubled waters of the bay at almost railroad speed. Her three turbine shafts were revolving at a far greater speed than they ever had before. The Chinese crew in the fire-room were told that their own lives depended upon the outcome of the race—that their old enemies the Japanese were chasing them. Their Oriental minds could not grasp the lack of logic in the warning. They knew that they had been hired for hazardous work, and were being paid a larger salary than they could get anywhere else in the Orient.
“I think we can all safely turn in,” Phil suggested, after O’Neil had returned from a tour of inspection with a report that everything was going finely, and that it was too thick to see more than a mile astern. “If they send a destroyer after us, it can’t overtake us until the morning. It will be a race of wits,” he added, “and not of speed, if a destroyer once gets us in sight, so sleep is what we need to clear our minds.”
The yacht had staterooms for the entire party, and Phil after a short conversation with Captain Bailey, who stuck manfully to the bridge, where he said he would remain all night and would call “all hands” if necessary, lay down in his clothes with a blanket drawn over him and was almost immediately asleep.