by Oliver Optic
CHAPTER IV
THE POSITION OF THE THREE STEAMERS
The conference in the standing-room of the Maud ended, and all the "BigFour" were in possession of the secret upon the keeping of which thecontinuation of the delightful excursion voyage depended. They stood ona perfect equality now, and each was as wise as the others. When Louiswent forward, Morris went with him; and after the result of theinterview had been announced, Scott grasped the hand of the newlyinitiated, and Felix followed his example.
"I can see that you are all glad to keep me no longer in the dark," saidMorris. "You must have been walking on glass all the time for fear thatI should break through, and upset your plan to keep me behind thecurtain."
"That is so," replied the captain. "We had to shut up tight while youwere in the pilot-house; and as Louis is in your watch, I stopped theMaud partly to give him a chance to talk with you, and partly to carryout the manoeuvre agreed upon."
"But I can't see why it was considered necessary to keep me in thedark," added Morris. "Am I supposed to be any more leaky than the restof you?"
"I don't believe any one thought so," replied Louis. "You remember thatat Gallipoli, Flix and I went ashore in one of the two harbors, takingDon with us to talk Turkish, though His Highness and Captain Mazagan didtheir business in French, which they supposed no one near them couldspeak or understand; and I happened to be the only one of our party whotook in all that was said. When we returned to the Guardian-Mother Itold Captain Ringgold all about it, in the presence of Flix. Thecommander immediately directed us to say not a word about it to anyperson. Even Captain Scott was kept in the dark till he and I were onthe verge of a quarrel in Pournea Bay."
"That is putting it a little too strong, Louis," interposed the captain."I should not have quarrelled with you under any circumstances; I couldnot have done so."
"But I interfered with you in your command because I understood thesituation, and you did not; and Captain Ringgold told me to tell you allthere was to be told," Louis explained. "But he was not willing youshould be posted, Morris; for he feared that you might unintentionallybetray the secret to your mother. We have got along so far withoutlying, and I believe the commander would throw up the voyage rather thanhave any of us go beyond simple concealment without falsehood. As hesays, we are acting a lie, though we are doing it for the health,comfort, and happiness of those we love the best on earth. The biggestlies are sometimes told without the utterance of a vocal word."
"I am satisfied, fellows, and I am sure Captain Ringgold has acted fromthe highest of motives. Now I should like to know something about themanoeuvre in which you are engaged."
Captain Scott explained it in full. Felix had gone to his station in thebow, to observe the movements of the Guardian-Mother and the Fatime.From there he had gone to the hurricane deck, in order to obtain abetter view. After an absence of half an hour he came into thepilot-house again, with his glass under his arm; for it had now becomethe emblem of his occupation.
"The ship is so far off that I can't tell whether or not she is stillrushing things; but I judge by her distance that the engine is makingthings lively in the fire-room," said he.
"How about the Fatime?" asked the captain. "I can still see her."
"The Fatty is sodjering."
"What do you mean by that, Flix?"
"She is wasting her time, and appears to be making not more than fourknots," replied Felix. "I judge that Captain Mazagan does not feel quiteat home."
"You think our movements bother him?" suggested Louis.
"Not the least doubt of that! The ship is going off at sixteen knots anhour, and will soon be hull down, and we are lying here 'like a paintedship upon a painted ocean.'"
"Coleridge!" exclaimed Morris, amused to hear Felix quote from a poem.
"In other words, he can't make out what we are driving at; for the Maudhas always kept under the wing of the Guardian-Mother," added thecaptain. "But it is about time to give him something to think of."
As he spoke, Captain Scott rang the gong in the engine-room to go ahead,and the screw began to turn again.
"Now keep your weather eye open tight, Flix!" and he threw the wheelover, and fixed his gaze upon the compass in front of him. "You needn'twatch the G.-M. very closely, but give me the earliest notice of anychange in the course of the pirate; for I can hardly make her out now."
"How far is it from here to Port Said?" asked the lookoutman.
"To where? I don't know where Port Sed is," replied the captain,pronouncing the word as Felix did.
"You don't know where the entrance to the Suez Canal is!" exclaimed thelookout.
"That is what you mean, is it?"
"Of course it is; and that is what I said," protested Felix.
"You said Port Sed."
"I know it; if S-a-i-d don't spell Sed, what does it spell?" demandedFelix.
"It spells S-a-h-i-d out here when you mean the port at the entrance ofthe Suez Canal," replied the captain quietly and with a smile.
"Oh, you have become an Arabian scholar!" exclaimed Felix with a heartylaugh.
"Honestly, Flix, I did not understand what you meant. I have studied upthe navigation in this region," continued Captain Scott, as he took froma drawer in the case on which the binnacle stood a small plan of theport in question. "Look at that, Flix, and tell me what the diaeresisover the i in Said is for."
"It means that the two vowels in the word are to be pronouncedseparately, and I stand corrected," answered Felix promptly.
"I did not mean to correct you; for I make too many blunders myself topick up another fellow for doing so. I only wanted to explain why I didnot understand you. I had got used to pronouncing it Sah-eed, and Seddoes not sound much like it, and I did not take in what you meant, andthought you were talking about some port in the island of Cyprus, wherewe are bound."
"I accept your apology, Captain, and shift all the guilt to my ownshoulders. Now may I ask how far it is from here to Port Sah-eed?"replied Felix very good-naturedly.
"It is 101.76 miles, by which, of course, I mean knots. I figured it upfrom a point north of Rosetta," added the navigator.
"Won't you throw off the fraction?"
"No; if you run one hundred and one miles only, you will fetch upthree-quarters of a knot to the westward of the red light at the end ofthe breakwater."
"That is putting a fine point on it; but I will go on the hurricane deckand see what the Fatty is about," replied Felix.
"You have not rung the speed bell, Captain Scott, since you started thescrew," suggested Louis.
"I did not intend to do so yet a while," replied the captain. "I want toknow what the Fatty is about, as Felix calls her; and I think we hadbetter translate her heathen name into plain English."
"Flix's name would apply better to Uncle Moses and Dr. Hawkes than tothe Moorish steamer."
"We had a girl in our high school who bore that name, though she was afull-blooded New Yorker; but the master always insisted upon putting theaccent on the first syllable, declaring that was the right way topronounce it. I know we have always pronounced the word Fat'-ee-may, andthat is where Flix got the foundation for his abbreviation."
"Fatty it is, Captain, if you say so. I wonder what the Fatty is aboutjust now?" added Louis.
"Flix will soon enlighten us on that subject, for he has a wonderfullysharp pair of eyes."
"Do you really believe we shall get over to Cyprus, Captain Scott?"asked Louis, looking sharply into the eyes of the navigator.
"Why should we not?"
"Because I don't believe Captain Ringgold intends to turn us loose onthe Mediterranean, and let us go it on our own hook, or rather on yourown hook; for you are the commander, and all the rest of us have to dois to obey your orders," said Louis; and the little tiff between themhad gently and remotely suggested to him that Captain Scott had somepurpose in his mind which he would not explain to anybody.
His hint that if he were in command of the Guardian-Mother he would makea h
ole in the side of the Fatime, pointed to something of this kind,though probably it was nothing more than a vague idea. He had suggestedthe plan upon which the ship and her consort were then acting, andperhaps it had some possibility of which the commander had not yetdreamed.
"Can you tell me why that steam-yacht of over six hundred tons iscrowding on steam, and running away towards Port Said, while we are, byCaptain Ringgold's order, headed for Cyprus?" asked the captain.
"Of course I can. He expects by this means to draw off the Fatty, andset her to chasing the Maud, so that the party will not be bothered withany conspiracies while we are going through the canal," replied Louis.
"What then?"
"If the Fatty chases us, the Guardian-Mother will put in an appearancebefore any harm comes to the Maud, or to any one on board of her."
"Precisely so; that is the way the business is laid out," repliedCaptain Scott; but he looked just as though something more might be saidwhich he did not care to say.
"But it remains to be shown whether the Fatty will follow the Maud orthe ship," added Louis.
"She will not follow the Guardian-Mother," said the navigator verydecidedly.
"How do you know, Captain? You speak as positively as though CaptainMazagan had told you precisely what he intended to do."
"Of course he has told me nothing, for I have not seen him. Common-senseis all I have to guide me."
They were about to go into a further discussion of the question whenFelix came tumbling down the ladder from the upper deck as though he wasin a hurry.
"What has broken now, Flix?" demanded the captain.
"Nothing; but the question is settled," replied the lookoutman, stoppingat the front window of the pilot-house, as though he had somethingimportant to say. "The ship looks like a punctuation mark on the sea,and"--
"Is it a full stop?" asked Captain Scott.
"I don't know; but I think not. She is so far off that I can't make outwhether she is moving or not; but she is not sending as much smoke outof her funnel as she was."
"Then your news is a little indefinite."
"As indefinite as a broken barometer. But I did not come down to reportupon the ship alone," added the lookoutman.
"Give out the text, and go on with the sermon."
"The text is in the back part of Jonah, where Job swallowed the whale.The Fatty has come about and is now under a full head of steam, asnearly as I can judge," said Felix, who thought he was treated with toomuch levity over a serious subject. "I couldn't see her compass, but thearrow-head is directly under the mark, according to my figuring of it."
"Don't be too nautical, Flix; but I suppose you mean that she is headeddirectly for the Maud," replied the captain. "That is precisely what Ihave been satisfied from the beginning she would do."
"Then Morris may enter on his log-slate that the chase began at 11.15A.M.," said Louis as he glanced at the clock over the binnacle.
"Not just yet, Morris," replied Captain Scott, who seemed to have noapprehension that the Moor would overhaul the Maud. "Let me have yourglass, Flix; and it is your trick at the wheel, Louis."
He took the spy-glass and left the pilot-house. They saw him climb theladder to the hurricane deck, and it was evident that he intended totake a look for himself.
"He does not accept my report," said Felix with a laugh.
"But he said just now that you had wonderfully sharp eyes, Flix," addedLouis.
"Yet he will not trust them."
But the captain returned in a few minutes, and reported what steamerswere in sight, with the added information that none of them were headedto the north-east; his shipmates could not see the significance of hisinformation. He rang the speed bell, and Morris noted the time on theslate.