So saying, the skipper started off forwards in the direction of the bridge, while I dived down the engine-room hatchway, reaching the machinery-flat just as the "old man" sounded the gong to put on full speed ahead, the telegraph working quick as if he were in a great hurry!

Ere I could tell my story Stoddart sent an answering blast up the steam pipe to let the skipper know his signal was being attended to; and then, pulling back the lever of the throttle valve, the piston began to go up and down, the cylinder oscillated from side to side and the crank shaft revolved at first slowly, but presently faster and faster until we were now going to the utmost of our pace.

All this while I was yarning away, though I had to shout to the top of my voice in order to overcome the noise of the machinery, as I described all that had occurred.

I did not speak to unheeding ears.

"By Jove, Haldane!" cried Stoddart, who was a man of action if ever there was one. "The cylinder is all right again and will bear any pressure now, and I tell you what it is, the old barquey shall steam along in pursuit of those demons faster than she ever went in her life since she was launched and engined!"

"I am with you there, old fellow," said Grummet, our third engineer, hastening towards the stoke-hold. "I'll go down and see the firemen and stir them up and put some more oilers to work in the screw well, to lubricate the shaft so as to prevent the bearings from overheating."

"That's your sort, my hearty," said Stoddart. "So you can return on deck, Haldane, and tell the skipper and Mr Stokes that everything shall be done down here by us to overhaul your 'ghost-ship.'"

He laughed as he uttered this little piece of chaff at my expense, the story being now the common property of everybody on board, and I laughed, too, as I ran up the hatchway with my clothes nearly dry again, even drying in the short s.p.a.ce of time I had been in the hot atmosphere below, although, goodness knows, they had been wet enough when I had gone down, having had no time or opportunity to shift them after my dip overboard when taking the line to the drifting boat.

On reaching the main deck I met Spokeshave.

He was coming out from the saloon, and from his puffy face and corpulent appearance generally, he looked as if he had been making a haul on the steward's pantry, although he had not long had his dinner and it was a good way off tea time.

"Hullo!" he cried out on seeing me. "I say, that chap O'Neil is having a fine go of it playing at doctoring. He has got a lot of ugly long knives and saws laid out on the cuddy table and I think he's going to cut off the chap's leg!"

"Which chap do you mean?" I asked; "not the colonel?"

"Aye," said he. "The chap with the moustache and long hair, like Hamlet, you know!"

"My good chap," said I, "you seem to know a good deal about other chaps, or think you do, but I never heard before of Hamlet having a moustache like a life-guardsman! Irving doesn't wear one when he takes the part, if I recollect right, my joker. You think yourself mighty knowing!"

"Quite so," replied Master Spokeshave, using his favourite phrase as usual. "But you don't call Irving Shakespeare, Haldane, do ye?"

"I don't know anything of the matter, old boy. I am not so well informed as you are concerning the dramatic world, Spokeshave. I know you're a regular authority or 'toffer,' if you like, on the subject.

Don't you think, however, you're a bit hard on poor Irving, who, I've no doubt, would take a word of advice from you if you spoke kindly to him and without that cruel sarcasm which you're apt to use?"

The little beggar actually sn.i.g.g.e.red over this, being of the opinion that I was paying a just tribute to his histrionic ac.u.men and judgement in things theatrical, on which he prided himself on account of his having appeared once behind the footlights in a theatre in Liverpool, as a "super," I believe, and in a part where he had nothing to say!

"Quite so, Haldane; quite so," chuckled Spokeshave, as pleased as Punch at the imaginary compliment. "_I do_ believe I could teach Irving a thing or two if I had the mind to!"

"Yes, you donkey, if you _had_ the mind to," said I witheringly, by giving an emphasis he did not mean to his own words. "'Very like a whale,' as our old friend Polonius says in the play, the real _Hamlet_, I mean, my boy, not your version of it. 'Very like a whale,' indeed!"

"I'm sure, Mr Haldane," he answered loftily, c.o.c.king his long nose in the air with a supercilious sniff, "I don't know what ye mean."

"And I've no time to waste telling you now," returned I.

At that moment we emerged on the open deck from under the back of the p.o.o.p, where we had been losing our time and talking nonsense; and, looking towards the bridge forward, I saw Colonel Vereker, the very person about whom we had been speaking, standing by the side of the skipper.

"O, Lor', Spokeshave, what a crammer!" I cried. "You said not a moment ago that Garry O'Neil was about to cut off the colonel's leg, while there he is standing there, all right!"

"I didn't say he had cut it off yet," he retorted; "I said he was going to cut it off. O'Neil told me so himself."

"Then," said I, "instead of cutting off the poor colonel's leg, he was only 'pulling your leg,' my joker!"

The cross-grained little beggar, however, did not seem to quite understand the term I employed thus in joke, though it was used at sea to express the fact of "taking a rise" out of any one, and a common enough saying.

"I'm not the only fellow who tells crammers," he grimly muttered. "How about that yarn of yours of the blessed 'ghost-ship' you saw the other night, I'd like to know. I believe, too, that the colonel, as you call him, is only an impostor and that the skipper is going on just such a wild-goose chase after this ship of his, which he says was captured by pirates, as he did that Friday hunting your _Flying Dutchman_! wasting our time with your idiotic story. Pirates and n.i.g.g.e.rs, indeed! Why, this chap, I'll bet, is a n.i.g.g.e.r himself, and more of a pirate than any one we'll come across if we steam from here to the North Pole. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, d.i.c.k Haldane; you and your confounded 'ghost- ship' together! Such utter humbug and nonsense, and thinking you take people in with such yarns in these days!"

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

FULL SPEED AHEAD.

I was so indignant at what the spiteful little brute said that I incontinently turned on my heel and left him without another word, going forwards towards the bridge to give the skipper Stoddart's message.

Here, the sight of Colonel Vereker's grand figure--one that would be remarkable anywhere, towering above the rail and almost herculean in its ma.s.sive proportions, coupled with the sad look in his n.o.ble face, and which reminded me somehow or other of one of the pictures of the old Cavaliers of the Stuart days, made me resent the more the baseless imputation of his being an imposter.

The idea of such a thing being possible could only have occurred to an ign.o.ble mind like that of Spokeshave; for one single glance at the distinguished-looking gentleman's speaking countenance, with its finely- chiselled features and lofty open brow, would have satisfied any unprejudiced person that his was a nature incompatible with deceit and meanness, even in the most remote degree.

"Well, young Haldane!" exclaimed old Mr Stokes, whom I found with Captain Applegarth and the colonel when I reached the wheel-house.

"What do those smart chaps of mine down below say, hey, my boy?"

His face beamed as he spoke and he looked as if he would have liked to have rubbed his hands together in his old way when he felt particularly jolly, but unfortunately his crippled arm, which was still in a sling, prevented that!

"Oh, that's all right, sir," I replied in an equally cheery tone, the old chief's genial address making me forget at once my anger at Spokeshave's contemptible nonsense. "Mr Stoddart directed me to tell the cap'en that he may go on ahead as usual, as he likes, for everything has been made taut and secure below and there need be no fear of another mishap. He says he intends driving the engines as they were never driven before, and he has put every fireman and oiler in the stoke-hold on the job."

"Bravo!" cried the skipper, sounding the gong again and yelling down the voice-tube that led below like one possessed. "Fire up, below there, and let her rip!"

"Dear, dear," panted Mr Stokes, whose fears for his engines, which he regarded with the affection which a young mother might bestow on her first baby, began to overcome his interest in the chase after the black pirates. "I hope you and Stoddart, between you, won't be rash, cap'en.

I hope--I do hope you won't!"

"Nonsense, Stokes, you old croker; just you shut up!" said the skipper.

"Keep her steady, east-nor'-east, helmsman! Now, my dear colonel, at last we really are after those infernal rascals in earnest; and, sir, between you and me and the binnacle, we'll be up to them before long before nightfall, I'll wager!"

"I hope to heaven we will, Senor Applegarth," replied the other sadly, but eagerly. "But, alas! the ocean is wide, and we may miss the ship.

I cannot bear to think of it!"

"Oh, but we won't miss her!" said the skipper confidently, and he was the last man to give up hope. "Take my davy for that, sir. She must be within a radius of from twenty to thirty miles of our present bearings on the chart, somewhere here away to the eastwards, sir; and if we make a long leg to leeward and then bear up to the north'ard and west'ard again, we'll overhaul her--I'm sure of it--yes, sure of it, in no time.

Look, colonel, look how we're going now. By George, ain't that a bow wave for you, sir, and just see our wake astern!"

The old barquey was certainly steaming ahead at a great rate, the sea coming up before her in a high ridge that nearly topped the fo'c's'le, and welling under her counter on either hand in undulating furrows that spread out beneath her stern in the form of a broad arrow, widening their distance apart as she moved onward, while the s.p.a.ce between was frosted as if with silver by the white foam churned up by the ever- whirling propeller blades, beating the water with their rhythmical iteration, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump!

There was no "racing" of the screw now, for Neptune was in one of his quiet moods and there were no big rollers to surmount, or deep wave valleys to descend into; consequently the old barquey had no excuse for giving way to any gambolling propensities in the water of pitching and tossing, steaming away on an even keel and using every inch of power of her engines, with not an ounce to waste in the way of mis-spent force!

And so on we went, tearing through the water, a blue sky overhead unflecked by a single cloud, a blue sea around that sparkled in sunshine and reflected harmonies of azure and gold, save where the bright fresh western breeze rippled its surface with laughing wavelets that chuckled as they splashed the spray into each other's faces, or where we pa.s.sed a stray sc.r.a.p of gulf-weed with its long yellow filaments spread out like fingers vainly clutching at the wavelets, as if imploring them to be still, or where again the dense black smoke from our funnels made a canopy in the sky athwart our track, obscuring the shimmering surface of the deep with a grim path of shadow that checked the mirth of the lisping young wavelets and even awed the sunshine when it came in closer contact anon, as the wind waved it this way and that at its will.

"Hi, bo'sun!" shouted out the skipper presently, after carrying on like this for a goodish spell, the deck working beneath our feet and the _Star of the North_ seeming to be flying through water and air alike by a series of leaps and bounds, quivering down to her very kelson with the sustained motion and the ever-driving impulse of her masterful engines spurring her onward. "How is she going now, eh?"

Old Masters was away aft on the p.o.o.p hauling in the patent log, which had been hove over the side on our beginning the run, and the next minute, as soon as he was able to look at the index of the instrument, he answered the skipper's question.