A Victorious Union by Oliver Optic (most life changing books TXT) 📗

west south-west, and she is exactly south-east of us. We can see that she is sailing very fast; but how fast has not yet been demonstrated. How high should you rate her speed, Mr. Makepeace?"

"I should say, Captain Passford, that she was making eighteen knots an hour. She is kicking up a big fuss about it; and I'll bet a long-nine cigar that she is doing her level best."

"I don't believe she is doing any better than that," added Christy. "Make the course south south-west, Mr. Baskirk."

"South south-west, sir," replied the executive officer.

The course of the ship was changed, and Christy planked the deck from the quarter-deck to the 320 forecastle in order to obtain the best view he could of the relative positions of the St. Regis, the chase, and the two steamers astern of her. The blockade-runner showed no colors; and no flag could have been of any service to her. She appeared still to be very confident that she was in no danger, evidently relying wholly upon her great speed to carry her through to her destination.

The "highflyer," as the second lieutenant called her every time he alluded to the blockade-runner, and the two pursuers, occupied the three angles of a triangle. The latter were both sending needless cannon balls in the direction of the chase, but not one of them came anywhere near her.

On the other hand, the highflyer and the St. Regis formed two angles of another triangle, the third of which was the point where they would come together, if nothing occurred to derange their relative positions. By this time Paul Vapoor had developed all the power of the ship's boilers, and the screw was making more revolutions a minute than her highest record, which was found in a book the former chief engineer had left in his stateroom.

"I don't think that highflyer quite understands 321 the situation, Mr. Baskirk," said the commander, as he observed that she did not vary her course, and stood on to her destination, apparently with perfect confidence.

"I don't think she does, sir," replied the first lieutenant. "She can see the American flag at the peak, and she knows what we are. Doubtless she is making the mistake of believing that all the Federal ships are slow coaches."

"Heave the log, Mr. Baskirk," added Christy, and he walked forward.

It was a matter of angles when it was desirable to come down to a close calculation, and the young commander found his trigonometry very useful, and fortunately not forgotten. With an apparatus for taking ranges he had procured the bearing of the highflyer accurately as soon as the last course was given out, perhaps half an hour before. He took the range again, and found there was a slight difference, which was, however, enough to show that the form of the triangle had been disturbed.

Both ships were headed for the same point, and the sides of the triangle were equal at the first observation. Now the St. Regis's side of the figure was perceptibly shorter than its opposite. This 322 proved to the captain that his ship had gained on the other. The two chasers had been losing on the chase for the last half-hour, and Christy regarded them as out of the game.

There was some appearance of fog in the south-west, and no land could be seen in any direction. For another hour the St. Regis drove ahead furiously on her course, and the highflyer was doing the same. The two steamers, regardless of the speed of either, were necessarily approaching each other as long as they followed the two sides of the triangle. They had come within half a mile the one of the other, when the commander gave the order to beat to quarters. Ten minutes later the frame of the ship shook under the discharge of the big Parrot. The shot went over the chase; but she promptly changed her course to the southward.

323 CHAPTER XXIX THE FIRST PRIZE OF THE ST. REGIS

The shot from the Parrot passed between the funnel and the mainmast of the chase, as judged by the splash of the ball in the water just beyond her. It had come near enough to the mark to wake up the captain of the highflyer. He appeared to believe that the pursuer from the northward had simply cut him off by approaching on the shorter side of the triangle, and that all he had to do was to escape to the southward, evidently satisfied that no steamer in the Federal navy could overhaul him in a fair and square race.

"Now comes the tug of war," said Mr. Baskirk, when the St. Regis had been headed for the chase.

"The game will not last all day," added Christy. "If I owned that highflyer, I should not employ her present captain to sail her for me. He is overloaded with a blind confidence, and he has made a very bad use of his opportunities. If I had been in command of that steamer I should have made 324 her course so as to run away from all three of my pursuers as soon as I made them out. It is six o'clock now, and I should have got far enough into the darkness to give them all the slip, and gone into Wilmington on a new track."

"Her captain appears to trust entirely to his heels, and to look with contempt upon anything like manœuvring," replied the first lieutenant.

"But we must finish him up before the darkness enables him to give us the slip. I have no doubt we could knock her all to pieces with the midship gun in the next fifteen minutes; but if she can make eighteen knots an hour, which we seem to be all agreed that she can do, she will not be a useless addition to the United States Navy, and it would be a pity to smash her up, for she is a good-looking craft. We are gaining two knots an hour on her, and Mr. Vapoor is keeping things warm in the engine and fire rooms."

"That is taking an economical view of the subject," added Mr. Baskirk, laughing at the commander's utilitarian views.

"If we continue to fire into her, we must swing to every shot we send, and that would take so much from our speed," argued Christy. "We are 325 as sure of her as though we already had her in our clutches. There are plenty of officers in the navy who would like to command her when she is altered over into a cruiser."

"You are quite right, Captain Passford; and there are some of them on the deck of the St. Regis at this moment," said the first lieutenant, laughing.

"Heave the log, Mr. Baskirk," said the captain.

The report from the master, who attended to this duty, was soon reported to the executive officer, who transmitted it to the commander.

"Rising twenty knots, sir," said he.

"That will do," replied Christy. "That is enough to enable us to overhaul the chase within half an hour."

Within fifteen minutes it could be seen that the St. Regis was rapidly gaining on the Raven, for the latter was near enough now to enable the pursuers to read the name on her stern, and the captain of the highflyer could not help realizing that he had not the slightest chance to escape. The chaser was within the eighth of a mile of her, and the result was only a matter of minutes.

"She has stopped her screw, sir!" reported the 326 third lieutenant in the waist, passing the word from the second lieutenant on the forecastle.

"She has stopped her screw, Captain," repeated Mr. Baskirk.

"That means mischief," replied Christy, as he directed his gaze to the Raven.

"She is getting out two boats on her port side!" shouted Mr. Makepeace from the top-gallant forecastle; and the report was repeated till it reached the commander, though he had heard it before it was officially communicated to him. "That means more mischief."

"Ready to stop and back her!" he cried through the speaking-tube to the chief engineer.

"All ready, sir," replied Paul.

"Some of these blockade-runners are desperate characters, and that captain intends either to burn or sink his ship," continued Christy, with a trifle of excitement in his manner, though he looked as dignified as a college professor in the presence of his class.

The St. Regis was still rushing with unabated speed towards her prey, and a minute or two more would decide whether or not she was to be a prize or a blazing hulk on the broad ocean.

327 "Lay him aboard on the port side, Mr. Baskirk!"

"The two boats are there, Captain, as you can see," replied the executive officer.

"Board on the port side, Mr. Baskirk!" repeated the commander very decidedly, and somewhat sharply; and at the same time he rang one bell on the gong to slow down the engine. "Board on the port side, Mr. Baskirk!" he repeated again. "Mr. Drake, have the steam pump and long hose ready to extinguish fire!"

Whether the captain of the Raven had ordered his men to scuttle the steamer, or to fire her in several places, Christy could not know; and he did not much care, for he was ready to meet either emergency. The St. Regis was bearing down on her victim with a reduced speed. The men forward and in the waist were all ready with the grappling irons to fasten to her, and the boarders were all prepared to leap upon her deck, though no fighting was expected.

The bow of the St. Regis was near the stem of the Raven, and Christy rang one bell to stop her, and then two to back her. Then he sprang upon the starboard rail of the ship where he could observe his men as they boarded the other steamer.

328 "What are you about, sir?" yelled a man on the quarter-deck of the Raven, who appeared to be the captain of the vessel, in a rude voice. "Don't you see that you are crushing my two boats and the men in them?"

"I did not order the boats or the men there," replied Christy calmly, and in a gentle tone, for the captain of the blockade-runner was not ten feet from him.

"I did," added the captain of the prize, for such she really was by this time.

"Then you are responsible for them," said the commander of the St. Regis.

"Do you mean to murder them?" gasped the other captain furiously.

"If they are killed you have sent them to their death!"

But the commander had no time to argue the matter with the irate captain. He had rung three bells, and the ship was backing at full speed. The momentum had not been sufficiently checked to stop her, and the two boats were crushed to splinters. The seamen who were in them saw what was coming, and they seized the ropes which had been dropped to them by the boarders on the rail 329 at the command of the captain, who did not wish them to be sacrificed to the madness of their commander, and they climbed to the chains of the Federal ship with the aid of the boarders.

"Lay her aboard!" shouted Christy as soon as the headway of the ship had been checked, and the grappling irons had been made fast.

The willing and active seamen poured from the rails to the deck of the prize, their officers leading the way. The main hatch had been removed and a light smoke was coming up through the opening. The hose from the steam pump of the ship had been drawn on board, and the master was in charge of it. At the command of the officers the men leaped below at all the openings in the deck, and it was found that she had been fired in half a dozen places.

In most of them the combustibles had only been lighted a few moments before, and they had not become well-kindled. Except at the main hatch, the men extinguished the flames with their hands and feet, and a stream from the hose put out the one amidships. The hoseman shut off the water, and the ship's company of the St. Regis were in full possession of the prize.

330 "Anything more to be done, Captain Bristler?" asked the mate, as he approached the commander.

"Nothing more can be done, Mr. Victor," replied the captain, who appeared to be overwhelmed with wrath at the unexpected termination of his voyage. "It is too late to scuttle her, and that vampire of a Yankee has smashed both of our boats into kindling wood. We did not begin the end soon enough."

But the beginning had evidently ended sooner than had been expected, and the Raven was the prize of