Page:The Iron Pirate 1905.djvu/144

130 for some remark from me; yet, fearing to be heard, I only looked at him, and in that look he read all.

"Mark," he said, "it's time to go; we'll be the next when that ship's at the bottom."

"My God!" I answered, "he can't do such a thing as that. If I thought so, I would stand by here at the risk of a thousand lives——"

"That's wild talk. What can we do? He would shiver us up with one of his machine guns—and, besides, we have Mary on board."

Indeed, she stood by us as we spoke, very pale and quiet, looking where the two ships lay motionless, the boat from the one now at the very side of the black steamer, whose name, the Ocean King, we could plainly read. She had, unnoticed by us, seen the work of the last shell, which splintered the groaning vessel, and made her reel upon the water, and Mary's instinct told her that we stood where danger was.

"Don't you think you're better below, Mary?" asked Roderick; but she had her old answer——

"Not until you go; and why should I make any difference? I overheard what you said. Am I to stand between you and those men's lives?"

She clung to my arm as she spoke, and her boldness gave us new courage.

"I am for standing by to the end," said I; "if we save one soul, it's an English work to do, anyway."