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At best he could make only a rough estimate, less accurate than a professional cruiser's would be, but sufficient to satisfy him. In a week he was reasonably certain that the most liberal estimate left less than half the quantity of merchantable timber for which he had paid good money. The fir, as a British Columbia logging chance, was all but negligible.
Almost at the same moment I saw the flagship, which had been moored in the air close to the entrance and floating only three or four feet above the ground, pushing its way through the gigantic doorway from the ante-room, with its great disintegrators pointed upon the crowd like the muzzles of a cruiser's guns.
Then, as she passed the Blanco Encalada, the guns roared out their salute, and a tempest of cheers burst out on board the flagship as her crew recognised who it was that was standing on the cruiser's bridge; and Jim could see the glances of astonishment and the questioning looks writ large upon the faces of his recent companions.
But though a stern chase is proverbially a long chase, the splendid sailing qualities of the Alabama soon made themselves felt, and within three hours after her helm was put up, she was within a few hundred yards of the stranger, who now hove to at the first summons from the cruiser's bow-guns.
Another twisted its tail and crushed it. A bomb hit sea bottom a quarter-mile away. More bombs exploded still nearer, in close contact with the giant hull. A two-ton bomb clanked into contact with its metal plating and burst. The cruiser's duty-officer, cowering, thrust over the emergency-lever which would put the ship through pre-recorded commands faster than orders could be spoken.
He said over the ship's speakers, "Everything going well so far. Prize crew, take the cargo-ship. Keep the crew aboard. Then report." Ten men poured out of the grounded light cruiser's starboard port and trotted on the double toward the other ship aground. The weapons on Bors's ship did not bear upon it. The sun shone. Clouds drifted tranquilly across the sky.
So, after waiting a little to allow the cruiser's fires to get low, we knocked the pin out of the shackle of the chain on deck, and easing the cable down into the water, went ahead with one engine and astern with the other, to turn our vessel round head to seaward.
"We will hold-on to the last, while he must begin to take in soon, or the squall will come upon him too fast for a light-handed vessel." "'Tis a cruiser's advantage! And yet the rogue shows no signs of lowering a single cloth!" "We will look to our own spars;" said Ludlow, turning to the lieutenant of the watch. "Call the people up, Sir, and see all ready, for yonder cloud."
He got quite incensed with a small, blunt-nosed schooner which insisted on crossing the Adventurer's course just as they were passing Fort Hamilton. Steve had to slow down rather hurriedly to avoid a collision and Perry viewed the two occupants of the schooner's deck with a scowl as they lazed across the cruiser's bows. "Cheeky beggars," he muttered.
On the British Columbia coast a timber cruiser's report comes in the same category as a bank statement or a chartered accountant's audit of books; that is to say, it is unquestionable, an authentic statement of fact.
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