"Couldn't be better, poppa! I reckon they're pretty tired by this. Suppose Mr Vernon gives her full speed again, and we go along and have a talk with Ma'm'selle Sophie and the count. Shouldn't wonder if they knew by now that we've raised their bluff, and are ready to see them for all they've got." The president re-charged his gun, and then, leaning his back up against the bridge, said: "Well, yes, Chrysie, I think we can see them now, if Mr Vernon will give us full speed ahead for a few minutes." The chief officer nodded, and pulled the handle of the telegraph over. The answering tinkle came back from the engine-room, in which the chief had retired after he had given his message, and the _Nadine_ again sprang forward towards the crippled vessel that was now her prey. She described another magnificent curve, and as she rushed up alongside the Russian yacht at a distance of about two hundred yards, Miss Chrysie sat herself down on a camp-stool behind the Maxim, and sent half-a-dozen shots rattling through the rigging of the _Vlodoya_. Then, as the _Nadine_ swung in closer, she depressed the barrel of the gun on to the bridge, on which she could now recognise the count and his daughter, and sang out, in a clear soprano: "Hands up, please, or I'll shoot. My dear Countess Sophie, I never expected this of you." Countess Sophie looked at her father, and bit a Russian curse in two between her tightly-clenched teeth, and said to her father who was standing beside her on the bridge: "She has failed--she and the engineer too--and these accursed Americans have done it, I suppose. They have broken our propellers and disabled our gun. What are we to do? It is exasperating, just when we thought that everything was going so well. What has happened to Adelaide?--has she turned traitor too? Surely that would be impossible." "Impossible or not, my dear Sophie," replied the count, "there is now no choice between sinking and surrender. You see, that gun, one of these diabolical American inventions, I have no doubt, would sink us like a shot, and then----" "And then we shall have to surrender, I suppose," said Sophie. "But it is still possible that I shall have a chance to shoot that American girl before this little international comedy is played out, and if I do----" "Hands up, please, everyone on board, or I _will_ shoot this time," came in clear tones across about fifty yards of water. Sophie looked round and saw Miss Chrysie looking along the sights of the Maxim, with her hand on the spring. Her face was hard set, and her eyes were burning. There was no mistaking her intention. In another moment a storm of bullets would be raining along the decks of the _Vlodoya_. "We are beaten, papa, for the present," she said, as she got up from her chair, and put her hands over her head. The count looked at the grinning muzzle of the Maxim and did the same.