ome. One evening calamity descended upon her from the island
of Pygang-Watai, and she fled, while her crew jeered at a fat
black-and-brown gunboat puffing far behind. They knew to the last
revolution the capacity of every boat, on those seas, that they were
anxious to avoid. A British ship with a good conscience does not, as
a rule, flee from the man-of-war of a foreign Power, and it is also
considered a breach of etiquette to stop and search British ships at
sea. These things the skipper of the Haliotis did not pause to prove,
but held on at an inspiriting eleven knots an hour till nightfall. One
thing only he overlooked.

The Power that kept an expensive steam-patrol moving up and down those
waters (they had dodged the two regular ships of the station with
an ease that bred contempt) had newly brought up a third and a
fourteen-knot boat with a clean bottom to help the work; and that was
why the Haliotis, driving hard from the east to the west, found herself
at daylight in such a position that she could not help seeing an
arrangement of four flags, a mile and a half behind, which read: "Heave
to, or take the consequences!"

She had her choice, and she took it. The end came when, presuming on her
lighter draught, she tried to draw away northward over a friendly shoal.
The shell that arrived by way of the Chief Engineer's cabin was some
five inches in diameter, with a practice, not a bursting, charge. It had
been intended to cross her bows, and that was why it knocked the
framed portrait of the Chief Engineer's wife--and she was a very pretty
girl--on to the floor, splintered his wash-hand stand, crossed the
alleyway into the engine-room, and striking on a grating, dropped
directly in front of the forward engine, where it burst, neatly
fracturing both the bolts that held the connecting-rod to the forward
crank.

What follows is worth consideration. The forward engine had no more
work to do. Its released piston-rod, therefore, drove up fiercely, with
nothing to check it, and started most of the nuts of the cylinder-cover.
It came down again, the full weight of the steam behind it, and the foot
of the disconnected connecting-rod, useless as the leg of a man with
a sprained ankle, flung out to the right and struck the starboard, or
right-hand, cast-iron supporting-column of the forward engine, cracking
it clean through about six inches above the base, and wedging the
upper portion outwards three inches towards the ship's