Part 20 (1/2)
It was perhaps as strange a dinner party as ever sat down afloat or ash.o.r.e, and it was rendered doubly strange by the fact that the last time they had all sat together most of them suspected, and some of them knew, that this very conflict, which had ended in spite of all disadvantages so completely in favour of the _Nadine_ and her company, was certain to take place, yet very few references were made to the state of active hostilities which had now been practically proclaimed.
Count Valdemar and Sophie were treated on board the _Nadine_ exactly as they had been at Orrel Court. Lord Orrel and Lady Olive were just as they had been at Cowes, and in the Solent. Hardress, who had taken a somewhat perilously large dose of the fair Adelaide's punch, looked pale and seemed rather sleepy, until he had had two or three gla.s.ses of champagne, and then he seemed to brighten up, and began discussing international politics with a frankness and an intimate knowledge which simply astounded their involuntary guests. So far as the party was concerned, there was now no further need for anything like concealment, and not only were the Storage Works discussed, in their full nature and purpose, but even the advent of the French and Russian expeditions at Boothia Land was antic.i.p.ated with what the Count afterwards described to Sophie as brutally disgusting frankness.
Miss Chrysie, eating her strawberries at dessert as daintily as though her hands had never been within a mile of a Maxim gun, chatted and chaffed just as she had been wont to do at Orrel Court, and the president talked gunnery and machinery with the captain and Mr M'Niven, who had been invited to join the party; and finally, when even the marquise came into dessert on Lady Olive's pressing invitation, all that she heard about her deliberate attempt to drug the whole s.h.i.+p's company was from Lord Orrel, who rose as she entered, and said in just such a tone as he might have used in the drawing-room at Orrel Court:
”My dear marquise, I am delighted to see that you have recovered from the same mysterious indisposition that has affected all of us. I am really afraid that there must have been something wrong with the recipe for the punch _a le Grand Monarque_, or perhaps it was not intended for general use. However, as we are all happily recovered, we need not trouble ourselves any further about that.”
Adelaide entered instantly into the spirit of the comedy that was being played, and she replied:
”Ah, my lord, it is so kind of you not to blame me! Believe me, I am desolated, and have been very nearly killed, and my poor aunt believes too that she is going to die. It is my last performance at punch-making, for I have torn the horrible recipe up and thrown it into the sea.”
”I am rather sorry to hear that, marquise,” said Hardress, looking at her with a cold, steady stare, which at once enraged and infinitely saddened her; for it proved that the empire, which until a few hours ago she had hoped to gain over him, and through him the world, was now only a dream never to be realised. Still, she kept herself under command marvellously, and greeted the count and Sophie just as though the _Nadine_ had been lying off Cowes instead of being lashed to the _Vlodoya_ in mid-Atlantic, with the steam winches rattling and roaring over their heads, emptying the Russian yacht's bunkers into the _Nadine's_ as fast as her own crew and what was left of her enemy's could do it. In short, a most unexpectedly pleasant evening was spent by everybody.
Coffee and cigars and cigarettes were taken up into the smoking-room, which was well to windward of the coal dust. Adelaide went to the piano and played brilliantly. Then she accompanied Sophie in quaint and tenderly-touching Russian folk-songs. Then Miss Chrysie sang c.o.o.n songs and accompanied herself; and Hardress, on her suggestion, made with a wicked humour in her dancing eyes, recite Kipling's ”Rhyme of the Three Sealers” to her own piano accompaniment. They both did it very well, and more than one person in the cosy little smoking-room could have killed them for it.
Nothing occurred to give the count and Sophie or Adelaide and the innocent Madame de Bourbon any idea that they were really prisoners until they retired for the night. Then the chief steward knocked at the count's door and asked if he wanted anything more. Mrs Evans did the same for Sophie and the marquise, and then the doors of the staterooms were locked. They were unlocked again at seven the next morning, and, after baths and early coffee, Hardress invited his guests on to the bridge to watch the end of the _Vlodoya_.
During the night she had been completely stripped of everything that could be useful to her captor. Every pound of coal was taken out of her bunkers. The two little quick-firers had been transferred with all their ammunition to the _Nadine_. Her four boats, amply provisioned and watered, were comfortably filled with such of her officers and crew as Chrysie's Maxim volley had left alive. There was a southward breeze, and in forty-eight hours at the outside they were certain to be picked up, either by a liner or a cargo boat, and plenty of money had been given them to pay their pa.s.sages either to Europe or America.
When they had hoisted their sails and began to bear away towards the steamer-track, the _Nadine_ cast off from the _Vlodoya_, her screws began to revolve, and the president got his gun loaded.
”I reckon we might have a little gun practice, and see how far this pea-shooter really will carry,” he said, looking up at the bridge, with a smile in which neither Sophie nor her father found very much humour. ”Will you make it five miles, captain?”
The captain rang for full speed.
The _Nadine_ sprang forward with a readiness which showed how utterly futile the plot to cripple her had been, and in a few minutes the motionless hull of the _Vlodoya_ was a white speck on the water. Then she stopped and swung round. The president adjusted his automatic sights, waited till she rose on the swell, and let go. There was a hiss and a whizz, and then, where the speck was a bright flash blazed out. Two more sh.e.l.ls followed in quick succession, and as the last flash blazed out, Count Valdemar took his gla.s.ses down from his eyes and looked at Hardress, and said, with a touch of bitterness in his tone:
”She has gone! That is a wonderful gun, viscount.”
”Yes,” replied Hardress, dryly. ”That is a twelve-pounder. We have some hundred-pounders at the works, as well as a new weapon which may interest your excellency very much. It destroys without striking. If the French and Russian North Polar Expedition should chance to pay us a visit, you may perhaps see them both in action.”
”And now, president,” he went on, ”I suppose we may as well shape our course for Boothia Land.”
”There is nothing more to wait for that I know of, viscount,” he replied. And so the _Nadine's_ head was swung round to the north-west, her engines were put to their full power, and so she began her voyage to that desolate spot of earth which was soon to become the seat of the world-empire.
CHAPTER XXIV
Within ten days of the sinking of the _Vlodoya_ Europe was electrified by the news, published far and wide through the English and Continental press, of what amounted to a pitched battle between two armed private yachts in mid-Atlantic. As may well be imagined, the strange narrative of the officers and sailors of the _Vlodoya_ lost nothing either in the telling to the interviewers or in the reproduction in the newspapers.
The boats' crews had been picked up, about thirty-six hours after the sinking of the Russian yacht, by a French liner, which took them to le Havre. The officers had taken the greatest precautions to prevent the men from speaking too freely, but it was no use. There were two journalists, one an Englishman and the other an American, on board the boat, and they agreed to divide the sensation between themselves and their two countries. Both were in the service of wealthy journals, and they bribed as freely as they did unscrupulously, with the result that, in addition to the general gossip of the s.h.i.+p, which was more or less accurate, they each possessed a fairly comprehensive narrative of what had happened on the high seas between the _Nadine_ and the _Vlodoya_, both of which were speeding over the wires to America and Canada within half-an-hour of the liner's arrival at le Havre.
But the Englishman did even better than this, for he practically kidnapped the third engineer of the _Vlodoya_, who could speak very good French, chartered a special steamer to Southampton, pumped him absolutely dry on the pa.s.sage, and turned up at midnight at the office of his paper with a column and a half of vividly-written description of the most sensational event that had taken place on the high seas since the affair of the _Trent_ during the American war.
The presses were stopped, the matter was set up with lightning speed, and by the next morning that journalist had achieved the biggest scoop of the twentieth century. The news agencies immediately wired extracts all over the Continent, and meanwhile the news had been leaking out through other sources in France, for pa.s.sengers will talk, and the captain was bound to make his formal report as to the picking up of the castaways; wherefore, within twenty-four hours the whole Continental press was teeming with interviews, more or less authentic, leading articles, and notes on the subject of this astounding occurrence. Two Russian newspapers published a few meagre details, and were promptly suppressed.
The _Globe_, in a leader on what it termed the ”astonis.h.i.+ng intelligence published by a morning contemporary,” put the matter very concisely, and with its usual clearness and insight into foreign affairs.