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 now from little more than the discomfort of cramped limbs, and was able to follow intelligently the breathless story which the girl poured out to him. At the conclusion he groaned at his own impotence. "If I was only free I might find a way of stopping the ship," he said. "Do you think if you could get tools you could draw the staple to which the chain is fastened?" Nettle stood on tiptoe, and, after a careful scrutiny in the half light, was compelled to admit that the task, even with the aid of tools, would be beyond her powers. The staple, which was really a heavy iron ring, was firmly driven into the oak bulk-head, and without mechanical leverage would remain immovable. "But what should you have done supposing you were loose?" she asked. "Find a pistol and shoot Brant and the mate? I am afraid I should miss them, or I'd have a try myself."