Part 26 (1/2)

”About that,” smiled Armitage.

”But what a risk! You must steam through a perfect hail of bullets, with chances of striking with your torpedo largely against you. And even if you do strike you are liable to pay the price with your lives.

Am I not right?”

”These pirates of the flotilla,” laughed Jack, ”do not think of the price. They 're in the Navy to think of other things.”

”And is that the spirit of the American Navy?”

”Of course,” Armitage looked at her curiously. ”Why not?”

Anne laughed and shrugged her shoulders.

”Oh, I don't know. I know something of the British and French Navies, but patriotism--the sort of spirit you speak of--has always appeared to me such an abstract thing as regards America. It's because, I suppose, I have never known anything about it, because I have been more or less of an expatriate all my life.”

Jack had been watching a display of Ardois lights from the _Jefferson's_ mast. He turned away, but spoke over his shoulder.

”Don't be that, Miss Wellington, for you have proved to me that a girl or a child, reared as you have been, can be American in every instinct and action. I had never believed that.”

He hurried away to the bridge rail and Anne's arm turned red under the impress of Sara's fingers.

In compliance with the _Jefferson's_ signals, the engines of the flotilla began to throb and the boats turned to the eastward.

A cry came from the _D'Estang's_ lookout. Anne and Sara leaned forward and saw that a blundering sailing vessel--her dark sails a blotch against the sky, her hull invisible--was careening just ahead. She had no lights, and curses on the heads of coastwise skippers who take risks and place other vessels in jeopardy merely to save oil, swept through the flotilla like ether waves.

Armitage let a good Anglo-Saxon objurgation slip from his tongue as he turned toward the yeoman.

”Half speed!”

”Half speed, sir,” answered the yeoman as he tugged at the engine room telegraph.

All eyes were now on the schooner. How was she heading? A group of seamen stood beside Armitage and Johnson on the bridge, trying to ascertain that important point. A flash of lightning gave a momentary glance of greasy sails bulged to port.

”She 's on the starboard tack, crossing the flotilla!”

”All right.” There was relief in Jack's voice as he called for full speed ahead.

”It's no fun to ram a merchantman, with all the law you get into,” said the signal quartermaster, standing near the young women. ”And if they hit you, good-bye.”

But the schooner had a knowing captain. He had no intention of trying to cross all those sharp bows. He quickly tacked between the _D'Estang_ and _Barclay_ and pa.s.sed the rest of the boats astern.

Slowly the boats were loafing along now.

At ten-thirty the Jefferson winked her signals at the rest of the flotilla.

”Put out all lights.”

As the young women glanced over the sea the truck lights died responsively. Then the green and red starboard and port lamps and lights in wardroom and galley went out and men hurried along the deck placing tarpaulins over the engine room gratings. Only the binnacle lights remained and these were m.u.f.fled with just a crack for the helmsman to peer through.

A great blackness settled over the waters. To Anne, always an impressionable girl, it was as though all life had suddenly been obliterated from the face of them. Her hand tightened its grasp on Sara's fingers, for as the vessel plunged along there was a palpable impression that the flotilla, now hurrying forward in viewless haste, was pitched for the supreme test. Off to the seaward signal lights from the parent s.h.i.+p _Racine_, having on board the officer in charge of the Navy's mobile defences--which is to say, torpedo boats--had flared and died. The battles.h.i.+ps were approaching.