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Neither thou, nor Tematau, nor the people of this village, nor I, shall come to any harm from the German fighting-ship. For when it comes thou and I, and Tematau, and Tepi, who know of the blood let out this day upon the floor of thy house, will be far away.

Though a good fighting-ship, she carried only sixty-three tons of coal, anthracite; for that alone we then used to burn. The amount seems too absurd for belief, and it constituted a very serious embarrassment on such duty as that of the South Carolina and Georgia coasts.

Like all our vessels at that time, she was of wood. Owing to her build, she had for her tonnage very light draught and heavy battery, and so was a capital fighting-ship in still, shoal waters; but in a seaway she rolled so rapidly as to be a wretched gun platform. Her first lieutenant assured me that in heavy weather a glass of water could not get off the table.

But he shook his head. He gave the cargo-ship detailed orders, receiving its space-boat and what food it had been able to bring. He sent it off to meet his fleet at Glamis. He stayed in orbit around the fourth planet to wait for a Mekinese fighting-ship. He began, too, to make long-range plans. Part Three

It slanted from its headlong lift, and curved away and darted for emptiness at its maximum acceleration. A second missile from the fighting-ship missed. The cargo-ship dwindled, and dwindled, and now the Isis appeared to take deliberate measurements of the distance and acceleration of its target.

And when the captain of the fighting-ship questioneth, and sayeth to the people, 'Where is my countryman? the people will shake their heads and say, 'We know not. He and his wife, and the Englishman, and Tepi, and Tematau, and the witch woman Niâbon have gone. They have sailed away to beyond the rim of the sea and the sky we know not whither."

We have no longer an endeavour to adapt the fleet to its multifarious duties by multiplying a comparatively weak nature of fighting-ship, which could act in the line and yet be had in sufficient numbers to protect commerce, but which was not well fitted for either service.

But if this unobstructedness in an American fighting-ship be, at all hazards, so desirable, why not imitate the Turks? In the Turkish navy they have no mess-chests; the sailors roll their mess things up in a rug, and thrust them under a gun. Nor do they have any hammocks; they sleep anywhere about the decks in their gregoes.

"Because, Simi, thou and I and others shall be far away from here when the man's countrymen come in the fighting-ship." "I wish to Heaven we were far away at this moment," I said impatiently. "I am sick to death of the place, and don't want to find myself a prisoner on board a German man-of-war on suspicion of being concerned in Krause's death."