_ CHAPTER IV. THE POSITION OF THE THREE STEAMERS
The conference in the standing-room of the Maud ended, and all the "Big Four" were in possession of the secret upon the keeping of which the continuation of the delightful excursion voyage depended. They stood on a perfect equality now, and each was as wise as the others. When Louis went forward, Morris went with him; and after the result of the interview had been announced, Scott grasped the hand of the newly initiated, and Felix followed his example.
"I can see that you are all glad to keep me no longer in the dark," said Morris. "You must have been walking on glass all the time for fear that I should break through, and upset your plan to keep me behind the curtain."
"That is so," replied the captain. "We had to shut up tight while you were in the pilot-house; and as Louis is in your watch, I stopped the Maud partly to give him a chance to talk with you, and partly to carry out the manoeuvre agreed upon."
"But I can't see why it was considered necessary to keep me in the dark," added Morris. "Am I supposed to be any more leaky than the rest of you?"
"I don't believe any one thought so," replied Louis. "You remember that at Gallipoli, Flix and I went ashore in one of the two harbors, taking Don with us to talk Turkish, though His Highness and Captain Mazagan did their business in French, which they supposed no one near them could speak or understand; and I happened to be the only one of our party who took in all that was said. When we returned to the Guardian-Mother I told Captain Ringgold all about it, in the presence of Flix. The commander immediately directed us to say not a word about it to any person. Even Captain Scott was kept in the dark till he and I were on the 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 could not have done so."
"But I interfered with you in your command because I understood the situation, and you did not; and Captain Ringgold told me to tell you all there was to be told," Louis explained. "But he was not willing you should be posted, Morris; for he feared that you might unintentionally betray the secret to your mother. We have got along so far without lying, and I believe the commander would throw up the voyage rather than have any of us go beyond simple concealment without falsehood. As he says, 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 biggest lies are sometimes told without the utterance of a vocal word."
"I am satisfied, fellows, and I am sure Captain Ringgold has acted from the highest of motives. Now I should like to know something about the manoeuvre in which you are engaged."
Captain Scott explained it in full. Felix had gone to his station in the bow, to observe the movements of the Guardian-Mother and the Fatime. From there he had gone to the hurricane deck, in order to obtain a better view. After an absence of half an hour he came into the pilot-house again, with his glass under his arm; for it had now become the emblem of his occupation.
"The ship is so far off that I can't tell whether or not she is still rushing things; but I judge by her distance that the engine is making things 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 four knots," replied Felix. "I judge that Captain Mazagan does not feel quite at home."
"You think our movements bother him?" suggested Louis.
"Not the least doubt of that! The ship is going off at sixteen knots an hour, and will soon be hull down, and we are lying here 'like a painted ship 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 Maud has always kept under the wing of the Guardian-Mother," added the captain. "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 wheel over, and fixed his gaze upon the compass in front of him. "You needn't watch the G.-M. very closely, but give me the earliest notice of any change 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 the lookout.
"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?" demanded Felix.
"It spells S-a-h-i-d out here when you mean the port at the entrance of the Suez Canal," replied the captain quietly and with a smile.
"Oh, you have become an Arabian scholar!" exclaimed Felix with a hearty laugh.
"Honestly, Flix, I did not understand what you meant. I have studied up the navigation in this region," continued Captain Scott, as he took from a drawer in the case on which the binnacle stood a small plan of the port in question. "Look at that, Flix, and tell me what the diaeresis over the i in Said is for."
"It means that the two vowels in the word are to be pronounced separately, and I stand corrected," answered Felix promptly.
"I did not mean to correct you; for I make too many blunders myself to pick up another fellow for doing so. I only wanted to explain why I did not understand you. I had got used to pronouncing it Sah-eed, and Sed does not sound much like it, and I did not take in what you meant, and thought you were talking about some port in the island of Cyprus, where we are bound."
"I accept your apology, Captain, and shift all the guilt to my own shoulders. 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 up from 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 up three-quarters of a knot to the westward of the red light at the end of the breakwater."
"That is putting a fine point on it; but I will go on the hurricane deck and see what the Fatty is about," replied Felix.
"You have not rung the speed bell, Captain Scott, since you started the screw," suggested Louis.
"I did not intend to do so yet a while," replied the captain. "I want to know what the Fatty is about, as Felix calls her; and I think we had better translate her heathen name into plain English."
"Flix's name would apply better to Uncle Moses and Dr. Hawkes than to the Moorish steamer."
"We had a girl in our high school who bore that name, though she was a full-blooded New Yorker; but the master always insisted upon putting the accent on the first syllable, declaring that was the right way to pronounce it. I know we have always pronounced the word Fat'-ee-may, and that is where Flix got the foundation for his abbreviation."
"Fatty it is, Captain, if you say so. I wonder what the Fatty is about just now?" added Louis.
"Flix will soon enlighten us on that subject, for he has a wonderfully sharp 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 on the Mediterranean, and let us go it on our own hook, or rather on your own hook; for you are the commander, and all the rest of us have to do is to obey your orders," said Louis; and the little tiff between them had gently and remotely suggested to him that Captain Scott had some purpose in his mind which he would not explain to anybody.
His hint that if he were in command of the Guardian-Mother he would make a hole in the side of the Fatime, pointed to something of this kind, though probably it was nothing more than a vague idea. He had suggested the plan upon which the ship and her consort were then acting, and perhaps it had some possibility of which the commander had not yet dreamed.
"Can you tell me why that steam-yacht of over six hundred tons is crowding on steam, and running away towards Port Said, while we are, by Captain Ringgold's order, headed for Cyprus?" asked the captain.
"Of course I can. He expects by this means to draw off the Fatty, and set her to chasing the Maud, so that the party will not be bothered with any conspiracies while we are going through the canal," replied Louis.
"What then?"
"If the Fatty chases us, the Guardian-Mother will put in an appearance before 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," replied Captain Scott; but he looked just as though something more might be said which he did not care to say.
"But it remains to be shown whether the Fatty will follow the Maud or the ship," added Louis.
"She will not follow the Guardian-Mother," said the navigator very decidedly.
"How do you know, Captain? You speak as positively as though Captain Mazagan had told you precisely what he intended to do."
"Of course he has told me nothing, for I have not seen him. Common-sense is all I have to guide me."
They were about to go into a further discussion of the question when Felix came tumbling down the ladder from the upper deck as though he was in a hurry.
"What has broken now, Flix?" demanded the captain.
"Nothing; but the question is settled," replied the lookoutman, stopping at the front window of the pilot-house, as though he had something important 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 out whether she is moving or not; but she is not sending as much smoke out of 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 report upon 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, as nearly as I can judge," said Felix, who thought he was treated with too much levity over a serious subject. "I couldn't see her compass, but the arrow-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 headed directly for the Maud," replied the captain. "That is precisely what I have been satisfied from the beginning she would do."
"Then Morris may enter on his log-slate that the chase began at 11.15 A.M.," said Louis as he glanced at the clock over the binnacle.
"Not just yet, Morris," replied Captain Scott, who seemed to have no apprehension that the Moor would overhaul the Maud. "Let me have your glass, Flix; and it is your trick at the wheel, Louis."
He took the spy-glass and left the pilot-house. They saw him climb the ladder to the hurricane deck, and it was evident that he intended to take 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," added Louis.
"Yet he will not trust them."
But the captain returned in a few minutes, and reported what steamers were in sight, with the added information that none of them were headed to the north-east; his shipmates could not see the significance of his information. He rang the speed bell, and Morris noted the time on the slate. _