nes, and the fugitive was running away at ten knots
an hour faster than the little war-vessel could follow.

From behind the wind-screen on the bridge the evil face of the captain
peered down at the girl he had mocked with false hopes. Miss Jimpson was
engaged in a dumb-show demonstration of her requirements to her lover,
whose stalwart figure as he conversed with his officers in the
conning-house of the _Snipe_ seemed to be growing momentarily smaller.
Her gestures did not conform to the correct motions as laid down in the
gunnery drill-book, but they conveyed a fair impression of what she
wanted.

Brant's sinister face was creased in a malignant grin. "Go it, my
vixen," he jeered down from his eyrie. "Living statues ain't in it with
you for showing off the female figure in the wrong pose. But you can
spare your antics, for they'll never dare fire on us without orders, and
them I'll lay a whale to a herring they haven't got."

Nettle bit her ripe red lip to keep back the retort that surged up. It
was no time for wasting breath in futile insults, when something had to
be done, and done quickly, if the tragedy implied by the escape of the
_Cobra_ was not to be consummated. But, if the _Snipe_ would not use her
guns or torpedoes, how was she, with the pluck of the devil but only the
experience of a draper's girl, to enable a slower ship to catch a faster
one? If only she had a man to help her, with knowledge equal to her
determination.

And then, suddenly, it flashed across her brain that there was such a
man on board if only she could get to him unobserved. Chermside, chained
in the black hole on the lower deck, had risked life once already in
Violet Maynard's cause, and would doubtless do so again, were he granted
the opportunity. Or if that were not possible he might tell her what to
do.

Deciding for the present not to harrow Violet with news of the altered
situation, she spent a grudged five minutes in lulling suspicion by
sauntering about the upper deck. The crew were too interested in the
game their captain was playing with the destroyer to pay any attention
to her movements, and, watching Brant out of the tail of her eye, she at
last slipped down the companion stairs on to the main deck. In another
minute she had clambered down the ladder into the obscurity of the lower
deck, and so safely reached the den where Leslie was confined.

Revived by the water she had given him on her last visit, he was
suffering