IV Knock Wood
At that moment a deep and terrible bass voice boomed all about them, asking, “Tonans ahoy?”
Ruhet nearly fell to the deck. Then he looked about at the men grouped near, in displeasure.
“Who was that?” he demanded. “Let there be no more of it. You all know the state of my nerves. Insomnia is awful on the nerv—”
Again came the voice: “You ignored our signals. Unless you give assurance to the contrary, we will regard you as pirates and take you.”
By this time there was no doubt that the voice came from the little boat a mile away.
“Well, what is it?” asked Ruhet, of his wise man. “It cannot be a human voice.”
“It is a machine,” said Nicht Wahr. “I heard of it at Byzantium.”
(He always spoke of Byzantium when he didn’t know.)
“It is English,” said Weiss Nicht.
“And what is that?” asked Ruhet.
“A language,” answered Nicht Wahr, pompously. “Spoken by a machine.”
“What does it say?”
“It says ‘Good morning,’ excellency,” answered Nicht Wahr, “and ‘How do you do?’”
“It says ‘Surrender or I’ll shoot,’” said Weiss Nicht, gruffly. “I understand English.”
Wahr sulked magnificently.
Ruhet believed Nicht.
“Ha, ha, ha!” he laughed. “That’s a good joke. Keep it up. Tell ’em to surrender first and set the example. Give ’em the port broadside. By my mother’s lost gold tooth, a good joke—give ’em the whole side.”
The broadside was fired and immediately something clipped away the Tonans’s figurehead.
“Now, who did that?” roared Ruhet. “Nicht, bring the gunner here who was so careless as that, and, by my father’s smoke-pipe, I’ll teach him a lesson.”
But alarm now seized upon Ruhet, and he forgot the figurehead. The little craft was seen to be sinking.
“Wahr,” he cried, “you are an infernal blunderer. You have let them hit that little thing, and she is going down. Man a boat and get the youngsters out of her, you land lunkers!”
Before this could be done the boat had entirely disappeared.
“It was Nicht,” said Wahr.
“Never mind now,” said Ruhet, “it’s too late. She’s gone and we’ve lost a fine toy and some children through your thickheadedness. Stand by to pick up the floaters.”
But, almost immediately, from the starboard quarter, came the voice they had heard before.
“Tonans ahoy! Have you got enough?”
“Well, by the currycomb—” began Ruhet, “how did this ship turn clean about without my noticing it? Look here, Wahr, do you see that hump on her?”
Nicht Wahr said that he did.
“Well, by the crackle of the galley fire, I believe that’s a tin gun in there! It’s a toy warship. Aha, ha, ha!”
“One gun,” laughed the happy Wahr, with his admiral. “What luck!”
“Knock wood!” cried Ruhet, who was superstitious. They did this.
“Have—you—got—enough?” cried the great voice.
“What’s he saying, Wahr?” asked Ruhet.
But Wahr hastened below to order the boat to pick up the children (so as not to show the admiral how little he knew) and delayed his return, so that no one—not even Nicht—could tell him.
“No matter,” said Ruhet, “give her the starboard broadside. And be sure that you don’t hit her. I don’t want her spoiled. Give her fits! Skeer her so terribly that she’ll come up like a little man and shake hands with us. Then we’ll have her. And don’t be too dinked polite!” And the great admiral poked his elbow into the ribs of his great gunner and laughed. “My, but I am hungry!” he went on. “She may have a little luncheon aboard. Enough for one.”
Wahr, just arrived on deck, haughtily gave Nicht the already given order to fire. But the impertinent, though accurate, Nicht said, “Our guns are not carrying that far, excellency,” ignoring Wahr for his superior.
“What?” cried Ruhet, “you rump of a sacred cow! There is not a gun on this ship that will not shoot half a mile and kill at that, Wahr!”
“Precisely, sire,” said Wahr, odiously.
“Excellency, you must take my word or his,” cried the hot Nicht. “You cannot take both. One of us don’t know.”
“Take your choice,” said Wahr to him.
“The little ship is precisely a mile away,” said Nicht. “I have a good eye.”
“Then,” snarled the cunning Wahr, “if that be true, your majesty”—he would call the admiral such things sometimes as if by mistake when he was about to ask for something—or wanted to puff his superior up with pride—“your majesty will be certain to accomplish what you wish—the skeering and not the destruction of the plaything.”
“By the curry—Fire—we are leaving her behind!”
The thirty-six guns spoke at the same moment with a noise which seemed to rend earth and sky—such was the practice of the gunners of the Tonans under the accurate and admirable Weiss Nicht.
“Now, then,” cried the Wise One, leaping to the bulwarks, “we will see whether I am right—or Nicht.”