Ma'm'selle Felice shrank away white and trembling, and Miss Chrysie went back on deck to get the Maxims ready for action. She met her father under the bridge, and said: "I reckon, poppa, they're all pretty dead down there. We'll have to see this thing through on our own hands." The chief and his men worked like heroes on the shaft, and a good head of steam was by some means kept up, but the other yacht crept rapidly up across the eastern horizon, and by breakfast time it was perfectly plain that she was the _Vlodoya_. Moreover, both Miss Chrysie and the captain from the bridge had been able to make out with their glasses that she was carrying a Maxim-Nordenfelt gun on her forecastle, and two others which looked like one-pound quick-firers on either side, a little forward of the bridge. She was flying no flags, not even the pennant of the Imperial Yacht Squadron, to which she belonged. The _Nadine_ was flying the Blue Ensign and the pennant of the Royal Yacht Squadron. When the _Vlodoya_ was within about eight miles, heading directly for the _Nadine_, the president sent down to ask Mr M'Niven how long it would be before the port engine could be used, and the answer came back, "A good hour yet, but everything is going all right." Just at this moment the captain was overtaken with another fit of sickness and dizziness, and had to go down to his room; and Mr Vernon remained in charge of the bridge with Miss Chrysie, who was walking up and down, with a strange look of almost masculine sternness on her pretty face, and the gleam of a distinctly wicked light in her eyes. For her the minutes of that hour passed with terrible slowness as she watched the _Vlodoya_ coming up mile after mile, with torrents of smoke pouring out of her funnels. She was evidently steaming every yard she could make. A quarter, half, and three-quarters of an hour passed, and still she kept on, looming up larger and larger astern, and Miss Chrysie looked more and more anxiously at the long gun on deck and the two Maxims on the bridge. Again a message went down to the engine-room, and the answer came back--"Another twenty minutes." Just then a line of signal flags ran up to the _Vlodoya's_ main truck. The chief officer's glasses instantly went up to his eyes, but after a long look he shook his head and said to the president: "That's no regular signal, Mr Vandel; it's evidently a private one, arranged beforehand, I should say." "Then we won't answer it," said the president, "and we'll see what he'll do next. I guess, if he's what we think him, he'll have to declare himself right away." They hadn't very long to wait, for about five minutes afterwards a puff of smoke rose from the _Vlodoya's_ forecastle, and a seven-pound shell came screaming and whistling across the water. It was the first time that Miss Chrysie had ever been shot at, but she took it without a shiver. The chief officer begged her to go below at once. But she only shut her teeth tighter, and said: