Page:Under three flags; a story of mystery (IA underthreeflagss00tayliala).pdf/184

 Another puff of white, followed a few seconds later by the report; and this time the watchers on the yacht can see the flash of the gun.

Only two miles distant now, and the Spanish warship, apparently convinced that the American understands and designs to obey the peremptory summons to heave to, has slowed her engines until the cruiser has barely headway on the long swells.

Calmly pacing the bridge, as if a thousand miles separated the vessels—nearly equal in size, but how dissimilar in destructive power!—Capt. Beals has not indicated a slowing of the yacht's engines, although the bow of the Semiramis points at the steep side of the Spaniard, directly amidship.

Not half a dozen lengths away!

The officers and men on the man-of-war are clearly visible to those on the yacht. The captain and his subalterns are grouped on the quarterdeck, the marines amidship, the blue-jackets crowding the rail and adjacent rigging. The cruiser is stationary on the water.

But with no sensible diminution of speed the Semiramis bears upon the Spaniard, the white foam dashing high on either side of her bow. Capt. Beals is fingering the electric buttons that regulate the speed and course of the yacht.

The Spanish captain nearly drops his speaking trumpet. What is El Americano thinking of? He cannot stop in five times his own length at such a frightful speed! Is he mad? Ah! Dios! Caramba! And a dozen more Castilian expletives poured forth in a torrent of astonishment, rage and chagrin.

For with a sudden turn to the windward that causes the yacht to careen until her white sides below the water line gleam for an instant in the sunlight, with an accession of speed that sends her forward as a whip would a nervous horse, the Semiramis darts by the stern of the Spanish man-of-war, the smoke from her furnaces enveloping for a moment the cruiser's afterdeck.

Two minutes later she is a mile astern of the warship, her long white trail sparkling in the sunlight, and the