The World Masters by George Griffith

Within ten days of the sinking of the _Vlodoya_ Europe was electrified by the news, published far and wide through the English and Continental press, of what amounted to a pitched battle between two armed private yachts in mid-Atlantic. As may well be imagined, the strange narrative of the officers and sailors of the _Vlodoya_ lost nothing either in the telling to the interviewers or in the reproduction in the newspapers.

The boats' crews had been picked up, about thirty-six hours after the sinking of the Russian yacht, by a French liner, which took them to le Havre. The officers had taken the greatest precautions to prevent the men from speaking too freely, but it was no use. There were two journalists, one an Englishman and the other an American, on board the boat, and they agreed to divide the sensation between themselves and their two countries. Both were in the service of wealthy journals, and they bribed as freely as they did unscrupulously, with the result that, in addition to the general gossip of the ship, which was more or less accurate, they each possessed a fairly comprehensive narrative of what had happened on the high seas between the _Nadine_ and the _Vlodoya_, both of which were speeding over the wires to America and Canada within half-an-hour of the liner's arrival at le Havre.