wo lines of symbolic letters.

"Quartermaster!" shouted Captain Brandon.

"Ay, ay, sir!" rang out a sailor's voice, and the _Saigon's_ number
raced a Union Jack to the mast-head.

"Well, Mac?" cried the captain, with his hand on the engine-room
signal-bell.

Maclean looked up from the book. "His Imperial Majesty of Russia, by the
commander of the converted cruiser _Nevski_, orders us to stop."

Captain Brandon pressed the lever, and before ten might be counted the
shuddering of the _Saigon's_ screw had ceased.

"What next?" he muttered.

As if in answer, another flag fluttered up the _Nevski's_ halliards.

"He will send a boat," interpreted Maclean.

A short period of fret and fume ensued, then a small steam launch
rounded the _Nevski's_ bows, and sped like a gray-hound across the
intervening space. The _Nevski_ now presented her broadside to the
_Saigon_, and all of her six guns were trained upon the English
steamer's decks. The launch was crammed with men. Captain Brandon
ordered a gangway to be lowered, and although the tars sprang to the
task with great alacrity, it was hardly completed before the launch
touched the _Saigon's_ side. An officer, bedizened with gold lace, and
accompanied by two glittering subordinates, climbed aboard, and Captain
Brandon met him on the main deck. Hugh Maclean, from the bridge,
watched them file into the captain's cabin. Ten minutes later they
emerged, and without waiting a moment the Russians hurried back into the
launch. Captain Brandon's face was purple. He hurriedly mounted to the
bridge, and leaning over the rail cursed the departing launch at the top
of his voice in five different languages.

"What's the trouble, sir?" asked Maclean when his superior appeared at
last to be exhausted.

"They want our coal. C----t them to ---- for all eternity," gasped the
frenzied captain. "And they'll blow us out of the water if we don't
follow them to Tramoieu."

"Where is that?"

"It's a little island off the Cochin coast, a hundred miles from
anywhere, with a harbor. By ---- they'll smart for this!"

"Not they," said Maclean. "That is, if you obey. They'll gut and scuttle
the _Saigon_, and then kill every mother's son of us. Dead men tell no
tales. We'll be posted at Lloyds as a storm loss."

"But what can we do?"

"Full speed ahead, and ram her while she's picking up the launch! Chance
the guns!"

"By ----! I'll do it!" shrieked the captain, and he sprang to the
signal-