VI Who Broke Ruhet’s Leg?
This, as Wahr now began to suspect only too well, was an impossible commission. But with his well-known sycophancy he said, “So you shall, sire.”
All the admiral answered was: “And then we’ll try for the soup-spring and have something to eat—where do you suppose it is?—and put new ends on the ship—” forgetting that there was nothing more in sight now than there had been for a long time.
However, while Wahr was manœuvring the ship, in her crippled condition, to bring her broadside to the little craft, the clipping went on at stern and bow until the water began to enter in a disquieting stream. Ruhet ransacked for the fiftieth time a locker on deck about the mizzen-mast for some cake which had once been there. The ship would not come about. Wahr had nearly decided to become sufficiently humble, in the absence of Nicht, to go on his knees and confess his first failure to the admiral, and then his apparent wisdom but real ignorance, when, to his surprise and delight, the little craft, seeming to apprehend his intention, put herself exactly in the best position for the broadside.
“My luck never deserts me,” muttered Wahr, “even in such a dinked”—he loved to do and say the things his master did—“distressful time as this. I’ll sink her yet. Now,” he cried to Weiss Nicht, so that the admiral might hear, “I have made everything ready for you. Get your broadside off!”
“And, on your life, don’t miss her!” added Ruhet.
The impudent Weiss Nicht knew Wahr well enough to be ready, and, on the instant, the broadside roared.
When the smoke cleared, the green craft had disappeared.
“By my uncle’s—”
No one will ever know what wisdom the admiral would have uttered; for, at that moment, the little thing reappeared, as Weiss Nicht had anticipated, on the other side of the ship, and he had made ready for her in order to affront Nicht Wahr.
“The starboard broadside!” he cried impudently, without waiting for Nicht Wahr’s order. “Fire!”
With the accuracy of all their practice this one went as the rest had gone—harmlessly into the sea. The boat had dived once more. And Nicht had seen her do it!
This was Weiss Nicht’s final test. It had been conceived and executed magnificently and scientifically, and it had failed. He went on deck, and with powder-blackened face made the following report: “Sire, it cannot be done. And the sooner we get out of the vicinity of that machine, the more of this ship will be left. I saw it dive!”
But at that moment he noticed that he was speaking to Wahr and not Ruhet.
“Where is the admiral, sir?” he asked.
“I thought you were he,” said Wahr, with the evidence of guilt in his face.
“And I thought you were he,” cried the gunner’s mate, bravely.
“Where can he be?” said both.
Both were answered immediately by a groan from the middle of the ship—which sounded profane.
They found Ruhet there with a broken leg.
“Who broke my leg?” demanded Ruhet, savagely.
“Not I,” said Wahr.
“Nor me,” said Nicht.
At that moment Wahr picked up the tell-tale object of their unhappy admiral’s undoing.
“It is one of our own balls,” he said, with an odious glance toward Weiss Nicht. “Here is the name—Tonans.”
“Oh, you villain!” cried Ruhet, shaking his fist at the unhappy gunner’s mate. “You shall be hanged at the yard-arm for this. You were always mutinous, anyway.”
But at that moment, as is the custom of mankind, curiosity overcame pain in Hier Ruhet, admiral, of the Iupiter Tonans.
“How did he get it here, Wahr?”
For a moment—just a moment—Wahr was stalled.
“Sire,” he temporized, “I have been thinking—”
“Well, stop it and tell me how he got it here. That is what I want of you. Not reflections. Weren’t you looking?”
“Sire,” said Wahr, hastily, before he had time to form a real hypothesis, “the poor man fired two broadsides in quick succession. An unfortunate mistake of Weiss Nicht—due to his impudence in not awaiting my order to fire. Undoubtedly one of the cannons was underloaded, and its ball travelled so slowly that the ball from an overloaded cannon of the second broadside overtook it—”
“By my mother’s nightcap!” cried Ruhet, in disdain. “Hah!”
“Then it must have collided with one of the balls from the other—er—ship—”
Hier Ruhet actually laughed Wahr to scorn.
“That may have happened,” said Nicht. “Our balls travel slowly.”
The clipping at bow and stern suddenly recommenced.
“She’s at work again!” cried a sailor, in panic.
Indeed, panic was now rife all through the ship.
“Lift me up,” said Ruhet; “I will study this magic at close quarters if I die for it. Be calm, men! You still have Hier Ruhet!”
They lifted him up.
“Men, how did she get there?” asked the admiral now of the common, ignorant sailors who came, terrified, and grouped themselves about him as their protector.
One of them said that she had jumped over them.
Another said that she had dived under them.
Yet others contended that she had wings—that she had fins—that she was not a ship, but an apparition.
Now, again, suddenly, the little boat began to sink.
“Now I shall see,” said the wounded commander, doubtingly. “Perhaps, after all, we have punctured her below the water line, and she is a goner. If they call for help, have the boats ready. Have them ready, anyhow. The fact is, we need a bit of help ourselves.”
“And,” ventured Nicht Wahr, dreamily, in an evil way he had, when he had been too much crossed, “they may have needles and thread.”
“Nicht Wahr,” said the commander, in ignorance of his irony, “do you know that I think that little thing is made of tin—perhaps several sheets nailed together?”
“Precisely, sire,” said Wahr.
“Tin will sink,” said the impudent Weiss Nicht, again on deck.
“And,” went on Ruhet, ignoring the interruption, “the ball that broke my leg might have bounced against it and returned to this ship.”
“Undoubtedly, sire,” said the odious Wahr, with a triumphant leer at Weiss Nicht, “your great and original mind has reached the correct solution of our trouble, while we of lesser understanding foundered in seas of doubt and—”
“Impossible,” cried Weiss Nicht, impudent to the last. “I can prove that the trajectory—”
“What?” cried the commander of the Tonans. “This is no time for big words—or—or narrow jealousies. My leg is broke.”