Chapter XXI

Another two days had passed, during which the _Nadine_, instead of swirling through the water at twenty knots, had been waddling through it like a lame duck at eight.

Adelaide had professed the utmost wonder and concern at the accident, and Miss Chrysie, who now knew rather more than she did, watched her with unwinking steadiness from the time she came on deck in the morning till the time she retired with her aunt at night. Madame de Bourbon herself was completely in the dark as to everything that was taking place, and simply looked upon the breakdown of the port engine as one of the ordinary accidents of seafaring.

Adelaide had not slept for an hour continuously since she had seen the guns being mounted. That had convinced her that Hardress, whose suspicion she dreaded more than anything else, already suspected something. Williams had kept faith, and had been detected, thanks to the extraordinary precautions that had been taken in the engine-room, precautions which, so her instinct told her, could not possibly have been taken unless some design against the safety of the yacht had been either discovered or very strongly suspected.

Still, as she told herself when she was lying awake in her berth the night after the breakdown, to a certain extent, the plot had succeeded. Williams had done the work he was paid to do, and the _Nadine_ had come down from her greyhound speed to the limping crawl of a wounded hare. The _Vlodoya_ would certainly overtake her now--but, then, those guns!

She knew that the _Vlodoya_ was prepared to fight if necessary, and so was the _Nadine_, and, now that the question of speed had been disposed of, it would be a question of guns. But, after all, guns would not be of much use without men to fire them or officers to direct the operations. Manifestly the time had come for her to play her part in the great game whose prize was to be, for her the man she loved, and for her allies the lordship of earth.

The next day just before lunch she was strolling up and down the deck with Hardress and Lady Olive, talking about all that they were going to do when they got to Halifax, and she had turned the conversation upon Canadian and American hotels and the difference between American and European cooking, when she said:

"Ah, Monsieur le Viscomte, that reminds me. Will you allow me to give you and also your poor men who have been working so hard at the broken engine a little treat?"

"With the greatest of pleasure, my dear marquise," said Hardress. "And what is it to be?"

"Oh, it is nothing very much," replied Adelaide, in her lightest and gayest tone; "it is only that my aunt happened to mention last night that she had found in her secretaire the authentic recipe of a punch--what do you call it?--a punch of wines and liqueurs which they used to drink at the suppers at Versailles and the Trianon in the days of the Grand Monarque. Louis himself drank it, and so did that other unhappy ancestor and his queen----"

"Who," laughed Lady Olive, "is at present reincarnate on board the _Nadine_. I suppose you mean then to make up a punch some night after this recipe; that would be delightful, if we only have the proper ingredients on board."

"Oh, they are very simple," replied Adelaide; "it is certain that you will have them, indeed it seems from the recipe that the excellence of the punch does not depend so much on the variety of the ingredients as the proportions and the skill in making it."

"Very well," said Hardress, "as long as we've got the things on board, that is settled; and both ends of the ship shall drink to-night in the punch _a le Grand Monarque_, to the health of his latest and fairest descendant. M'Niven and his men really have been working like so many niggers at that engine, and they've done splendidly. In fact, Captain Burgess tells me we shall be ready for full speed ahead by daybreak to-morrow."

"Ah," said Adelaide in her soul, "then it is all the more necessary that we should have the punch _a le Grand Monarque_," and she went on aloud, "Well then, Monsieur le Viscomte, that is arranged. If you will tell your steward, your maitre d'hotel, as we call him on French ships, to provide me with the ingredients, I will make it this afternoon, and we will take it after dinner, eh?"

"Yes," said Lady Olive, "and I think, Shafto, under the circumstances, you might invite Captain Burgess and Mr M'Niven to dine with us."

"Certainly," replied her brother, "that's a capital idea, Olive. We will--in fact, we'll have Mr Vernon, too: he's worked just as hard as anyone else, and it can be arranged for the second officer to take charge of the bridge during dinner. And so, ma'm'selle," he went on, turning to the marquise, "if you will take the trouble, you may brew us two bowls, one for the cabin and a bigger one for the other end of the ship, and the steward shall put the whole of the ship's liquid stores at your disposal."

"Monsieur le Viscomte, I could desire nothing better," she replied, with her most dazzling smile, and more meanings than one.

The subject of the punch was mentioned during lunch, and during the afternoon Miss Chrysie got her father up into the bows, and, after a swift look round to see if anyone was within hearing distance, said:

"Poppa, are you going to take any of that punch to-night?"

"Why, certainly, Chrysie. Why not? What's the matter?"

"It may be matter or no matter," she replied, "but I'm not, and I guess it would be healthier for you not to. I'm more than ever certain that that Frenchwoman is in it. Yes; it's all very well looking like that, poppa, but--you think I hate this woman because she's in love with the viscount. Well, I suppose I do; and there'll most likely be trouble between us sometime soon; but I haven't quite lost all my senses because I happen to be in love with a man that another woman wants to get. Don't you see, we're going to have that punch just a few hours before we get the engines right and that other boat is to catch us?"

"But, great sakes, Chrysie, you don't mean the marquise is going to poison us?"

"It won't be poison," answered Chrysie, very curtly, "because she knows that he'll drink it. I guess some drug's a good deal more likely--something that'll make everybody at both ends of the ship pretty sleepy and stupid when the time for a fight comes around. You see, that's just the natural sequence to the plot to cripple the engine. Anyhow, that's what I think it is."

"Well, if it's as bad as that," said her father, "why not warn the viscount?"

"That wouldn't do much good," she replied, more curtly than before. "You see, I'd have to make a definite accusation against her, and I've nothing to go on except what he'd call mere suspicion and we call logical deduction. I'd give her a tremendous handle against me, especially with him; and if she had any suspicion that I suspected her--why, she might call me down pretty badly by not putting anything in the stuff at all. No, poppa, under the circumstances, we can't do anything except not drink that punch. I'm going to have a headache to-night and stop in my berth. You have some of your gastric trouble and drink hot milk or something of that sort: and if you get a show I think you might, as matters are coming to a head pretty quickly, just give a hint to Captain Burgess and Mr M'Niven to drink as little of that punch as they politely can."

"Well, Chrysie," replied her father, "you've been right so far, but I do hope you're wrong this time. It's a pretty large order, you know, drugging the whole ship's company."

"Yes; and a Frenchwoman with a lot to win is playing a game for pretty big dollars. Of course, there may be nothing in it at all, and I may be quite wrong, but I think this punch of hers has come along at the wrong time, and we can't take any risks. There's one thing, she'll have to drink some of it herself, and that old aunt of hers too. Still, she's pretty useless, and doesn't matter; but if anything does really happen, poppa, you'd better go straight and shake the viscount up. I'll have the steward make some pretty strong coffee to-night for me, and I'll keep it hot and you can give it him; and if the doctor isn't dead, too, with the stuff, get a drop of prussic acid from him. That'll bring him round."

"It strikes me, Chrysie," said her father, looking down admiringly on her flushed and animated face, "as though you're getting ready to run this ship in case of trouble."

"It's just that, poppa," she said, with an impatient little tap of her foot on the deck; "that is, of course, with you. I don't say it's altogether disinterested, because it isn't; but I'd do that and a lot more to keep to windward of that Frenchwoman, and she knows it. You can work your gun and I can work a Maxim, so if there's only the two of us, we can do something with that Russian ship. And now I guess we'd better go to the other end and show how friendly we can be with our enemies."

"Chrysie," said her father, with a very tender note in a voice which could be as hard as the ring of steel, "I don't want you to be a bit different to what you are, but if you'd been a man you'd have been a great one."

"I'd sooner be a good woman and get what I want than be the biggest man on earth," laughed Chrysie. "When a woman gets all she wants she doesn't want to envy big men anything."

And with that they went aft and subsided into deck-chairs in a sort of irregular circle, in which Lord Orrel was fast asleep, Madame de Bourbon rapidly subsiding, and the marquise and Lady Olive making a pretence of reading with drooping eyelids.

The punch _a le Grand Monarque_ was a great success that evening after dinner. It was delicious; and every one regretted that the president's attack of gastritis and Miss Chrysie's headache prevented them from sharing in its delights.

The marquise brewed a little pot of her aunt's special Russian tea for them, which the president declined with many apologies, and which Miss Chrysie, after accepting a cup from the hands of Felice, emptied out of the port-hole as soon as her ladyship's lady had left the cabin.

Captain Burgess and the chief had taken the president's hint almost as though they expected it, and the Scotsman had said significantly:

"I'm obliged to you, Mr Vandel, though I hope there's nothing in your suspicions; still, this is no time for us to be drinking foreign mixed drinks when I've got to keep my eyes open, looking, as you may say, out of both sides of my head. A drop of good old Scotch whisky is as good nourishment as a man can need. What I'm thinking about is the men. We can't forbid them to take it without either insulting his lordship or telling him all the suspicions, which, you say, can't be told him."

"No," added the captain; "but I'll see they have a pretty good shaking up at four o'clock, and the cook shall have plenty of strong coffee ready in case of accidents."

But for all that, the accident happened, almost, if not quite as well as the originator of it could have hoped. By eleven o'clock everyone who had drunk even a single glass of the marquise's punch, including herself and Madame de Bourbon, were dead asleep. Even the captain and the chief engineer, who had taken somewhat drastic measures to counteract the possible effects, did not wake until daybreak, and even then, strong as they were, they were both mentally and physically incapable for the time being of attending to the work of the ship. The sailors and engine-room hands, who had indulged rather more freely, were all sleeping like logs when the watch was called at four in the morning, and nothing could wake them until Mr Vernon, the chief officer, who never under any circumstances drank anything stronger than coffee, and who therefore escaped the general paralysis, with the help of the president and the two quartermasters, who had been forbidden to touch anything in the way of liquor during the night, brought them up on deck and turned the hose on them. This revived the majority of them sufficiently to enable them to drink a copious allowance of strong coffee, after which they were very ill, and then much better.

The captain and the chief engineer were then carried to bathrooms and treated in somewhat the same fashion, after which they were taken back to their rooms and given a good stiff brandy-and-soda.

"Ay, man!" said the chief engineer, as he began to get back his grip on things, "whatever was in that stuff it was deadly. No more of your foreign drinks for me. After that, good Scotch whisky is going to be good enough for me. It's a mercy she didn't poison the whole ship's crew. Captain, if there's any of the men anything like fit for duty you might give them a good strong tot, and let's get to work on that shaft. There's just the bearings and the thrust-blocks to adjust and oil, and then we'll be ready for full speed ahead in three hours."

"I'm afraid that would be a bit too late, sir," said Miss Chrysie, who had been sweeping the eastern horizon with her glasses. "Look yonder," she went on; "there's a steamer down yonder steaming for all she's worth, and I reckon she's a lot more likely to be the _Vlodoya_ than an east-bound liner."

The chief took the glasses she offered him, and had a long look at the cloud of smoke that was rising from the ship.

"I'm afraid you're right, miss," he said, handing the glasses back. "That's no liner; she's not half big enough; she's a yacht. Still, her stern chase is a long one, even if we are like a seal with one flipper, and we may be ready for her even yet."

"I think we shall be able to dodge him, Miss Vandel," said the captain, who had just come out of his room, still looking pale and somewhat dazed. "Put every possible hand on to the shaft, M'Niven. Steam's up, and we can start the moment you're ready."

"And," added the president, "I'll see to the guns. If that's the _Vlodoya_ they're not going to overtake us before we are ready."