tongue obeyed his will. His voice, although broken and
unsteady, was almost as strong as usual, and Radna's face immediately
brightened as she heard it. A smile soon chased away her anxious
look, and she said cheerily--

"Ah, come! you're not killed after all. You are still on board the
_Ariel_, and what has happened is this as far as I can see. In your
hurry to return the shot from the Russian flagship you fired your
guns at too close range, and the shock of the explosion stunned you.
In fact, we thought for the moment you had blown the _Ariel_ up too,
for she shook so that we all fell down; then her engines stopped, and
she almost fell into the water before they could be started again."

"Is she all right now? Where's the Russian fleet, and what happened
to the flagship? I must get on deck," exclaimed Mazanoff, sitting up
on the seat. As he did so he put his hand to his head and said: "I
feel a bit shaky still. What's that--brandy you've got there? Get me
some champagne, and put the brandy into it. I shall be all right when
I've had a good drink. Now I think of it, I wonder that explosion
didn't blow us to bits. You haven't told me what became of the
flagship," he continued, as Radna came back with a small bottle of
champagne and uncorked it.

"Well, the flagship is at the bottom of the German Ocean. When
Petroff told me that you had fallen dead, as he said, on deck, I ran
up in defiance of your orders and saw the battleship just going down.
The shells had blown the middle of her right out, and a cloud of
steam and smoke and fire was rising out of a great ragged space where
the funnels had been. Before I got you down here she broke right in
two and went down."

"That serves that blackguard Prabylov right for saying we forged the
Tsar's letter, and firing on a flag of truce. Poor Volnow's dead, I
suppose?"

"Oh yes," replied Radna sadly. "He was shot almost to pieces by the
volley from the machine gun. The deck saloon is riddled with bullets,
and the decks badly torn up, but fortunately the hull and propellers
are almost uninjured. But come, drink this, then you can go up and
see for yourself."

So saying she handed him a tumbler of champagne well dashed with
brandy. He drank it down at a gulp, like the Russian that he was, and
said as he put the glass down--

"That's better. I feel a new man. Now give me a kiss, _batiushka_,
and I'll be off."

When he reached the deck he found the _Ariel_ ascending towards