ccupation.

"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