Chapter LVIII: Toward the Fog

“What is it?” asked Stone.

For answer, Bill beckoned him to the table and handed him the glasses.

Somebody else had seen the ship. He heard Hale roar an order, and in a few minutes a rattle and quiver as the anchor of the _Escorial_ was dragged from its bed. The telegraphs were clanging, and presently came the purr of the turbines as the _Escorial_ went slowly astern.

There were signs of activity also on the _Thomas Inland_. She had not been anchored, but was lashed fast to the side of her big companion. As the vessels drew away from one another, the _Thomas Inland_ turned slowly westward, and, with a bubble of foam above her propeller, began to push a bigger distance between herself and the great liner.

A stentorian voice hailed her from the bridge.

“Keep close company, Hackett! I may want to oil.…”

Incautiously Hale showed himself for a second at the head of the ladder. Bill fired, saw the man stagger for a moment, and thought he was hit. He turned a face grinning with rage to the caboose, shook his fist and dived suddenly out of sight.

Nearly half-an-hour passed before the _Escorial_ got under way. Bill was looking at the warships in an agony of apprehension. They did not seem to be moving, and yet he knew they were nearer than when he had first sighted them.

As the _Escorial_ turned, they came into view through the port window, and from the centre ship, which was in fact the _Kent_, a puff of white smoke crawled lazily. With startling distinctness in that silent Arctic sea came the boom of her gun. Something struck the water between the _Thomas Inland_ and the _Escorial_, and sent up a great geyser of spray.

“No, they’re not firing at us,” said Bill, in answer to the girl’s whispered question. “They’re ranging, and maybe their idea is to scare Hale into surrender.”

Gathering speed, the _Escorial_ pounded on, until ahead of them Bill saw what he thought was land, but which proved to be a mass of hummocky ice, backed by an irregular formation of isolated bergs.

“He’ll not dare drive through that,” thought Bill, and the next minute he saw the _Thomas Inland_, which was leading, turn to port.

They were moving towards the warship; Bill wondered why, but now saw that northward there had appeared an almost impenetrable barrier of ice.

“Wireless cabin ahoy!” It was Hale’s megaphone roar. “Send a message to those warships that if they attempt to board the _Escorial_ I will blow up the ship!”

Bill had almost forgotten the function of the cabin, but this reminded him. Leaving the girl in his place, at her urgent request, he began to feel out in the ether for the ships of war, and presently he caught the signals of the American.

“The captain says that if you approach too closely he will blow up the ship.”

“Who is that speaking?” came the answer, and Bill gave particulars about himself and his party. “Is the ship ahead of you the _Thomas Inland_?” was the next question, and he replied in the affirmative.

“Am signalling tanker that if she does not stop shall destroy her,” said the American.

Bill, before all things, was a patriot.

“For heaven’s sake don’t!” he rapped the message furiously. “She is carrying interest on America’s loan to Europe!”

The captain of the American, excellent patriot as he was, had evidently a soul above money. Again that lazy cloud of smoke from the warship’s side, a droning whine that rose to a shriek, and the bridge of the tanker burst into sudden flame, and, when the smoke had cleared away, the ship was out of control, broadside on, and only Harvey Hale’s supreme seamanship averted a collision.

Bill rattled the transmitter key surely.

“Tanker hit amidships. Bridge carried away. There may be fire on board. She is out of control.”

He received a “thank you” from the three warships almost simultaneously. And now one, which proved to be the _Sussex_, was moving ahead of her companions, smoke bellowing from her stacks.

“She’s under forced draught,” said Stone, and dodged just in time.

A bullet ripped through the window and splattered against the iron casting. Bill snatched up his pistol and jumped on to the table, but the sniper was not visible, and had probably taken advantage of Stone’s preoccupation.

Nearer and nearer the warship approached, and, examining her through his glasses, Bill saw that there was no vestige of human life on her decks. She was cleared for action, four long guns swung menacingly towards the liner.

Beneath them the deck of the _Escorial_ quivered and trembled. She, too, was working up to her top speed, and the water curved in two high waves from her bows. The ticker was chattering furiously. Bill took up the receiver and listened.

“Is there any danger that captain of the _Escorial_ will carry out threat to sink vessel?”

Bill thought for a moment, and tapped “Yes.”

“What fuel has she on board?”

“Very little.”

A long silence, and then the _Sussex_ spoke again.

“Will keep you close order. If necessary shall hole _Escorial_ forrard,” was the cold-blooded suggestion.

“And they’ll enjoy doing it!” groaned Bill.

The _Sussex_ was running on a parallel course, edging closer and closer to the liner. Again the _Sussex_ became inquisitive.

“May I blow away bridge?”

Bill did not wait for the message to finish before he tapped an emphatic “No.” The bridge was dangerously near to the wireless cabin, and to him there was only one passenger on the _Escorial_, and that was Betty.

“Lord Lowbridge prisoner in chart-house,” he added, glad to find an excuse.

There was a blur of grey on the horizon ahead--fog! Harvey Hale had seen that patch and was racing towards it with his heart in his mouth. They had long since left the _Thomas Inland_ astern, and, looking back, he could see she was being boarded.

“Keep her nose to that fog. Maybe it will be twenty miles thick and we’ll dodge these brass-bound.…”

Whatever plans he had made were subjected to a slight alteration. He heard Bill’s voice yelling from the radio house.

“The captain of the _Sussex_ orders you to take a southerly course. If you enter the fog-bank he will ‘close’ you.”

Harvey Hale looked round at the warship. Despite his own speed, she was keeping level with him, probably going a little faster, but he had to economise fuel. He could not hope to reach the fog before the “closing” occurred, which meant that she would be steaming within a dozen yards of him, and the one danger he feared at that moment was the advent of a boarding party.

Nor was the _Sussex_ the only danger; the American war vessel was also running under forced draught and was overhauling him on his starboard side. Sandwiched between those two grey devils of the sea, there was no hope of escape. If the Yankee “closed” there would be ungentle work.

He made another calculation; the fog was five miles ahead, but less distant on his starboard side, for he had unconsciously dipped into a bay, or else the fog had formed whilst he was on the run.

Suddenly the _Escorial_ heeled over, and, turning sharp to port, ran across the bows of the American vessel, which was now so near that, to avoid the risk of a collision, her captain had to turn hard to port, incidentally masking, in the most effective manner, both the objective and the guns of the _Sussex_. Before the ship could straighten out, the _Escorial_ had gained a mile. The fog had come out to meet them, a thin, tenuous mist, that thickened with every yard they travelled, until the bridge was no longer visible.

“This is where trouble is coming,” said Bill.

It came in an unexpected fashion. He was in the midst of receiving a message from the warships when the instrument went dead.

“They’ve sent a man up the mast to cut the aerial. I wonder they hadn’t thought of it before,” said Bill.

It had been cold before, but now it became intense, and this sudden drop in the thermometer was a serious matter. The fog and the fall in temperature could only mean the proximity of an iceberg of unusual size; and when he heard the engine bell clang he knew that Harvey Hale had also recognised the danger, and was slowing down. What direction they were taking it was impossible to discover. Nothing was more certain than that the big man would try to double back on his pursuers. He had gauged the depth of the fog, and must know that there was less danger on the northward track than to the south or west, for he had seen the open sea where the fog now was.

For the moment Holbrook was most concerned with the danger to his own little party. Harvey Hale would take full advantage of the fog-bank, and he was not left long in doubt as to this. The crash of a battering-ram on the door told him that the end was very near. The second blow gave the attackers their entry. Bill shot down the first and second men, but before he could fire again, he was borne down by the rush of unsavoury bodies, and fell, struggling, on the floor of the cabin.