The Cruise of the Dry Dock

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"Down! Down! Everybody!" yelled Caradoc, as he waded up the rail,
overthrowing the last of the boarders.

Madden and the defenders fell prone on the deck, and it was not too
soon. The moment the boarding party was definitely repulsed, there broke
out a crashing volley from the long boat, and their bullets played a
ringing tattoo over the ironwork. Then the tug drew steadily away from
their assailants.

The searchlight played over the steamer for several minutes in order to
afford a target for the small boats, but the crew lay close, only
trusting an eye over the sheer strake now and then for a glimpse of the
enemy. Up on the bridge, Leonard could see the steering wheel still
turning of its own accord this way and that as the _Vulcan_
gathered speed.

Presently the searchlight was switched off, leaving the deck in utter
darkness. The cutters had given up the chase. Leonard sat up on deck and
wriggled his sore neck this way and that. He could see nothing now save
the stream of sparks that leaped out of the funnel and flowed aft into
the black sea.

"Men!" cried Caradoc's voice, "is anyone hurt?"

"A few of us 'ave 'oles punched in us, sor!" came a reply.

"All the wounded will report to Captain Black in the main cabin!" called
Smith.

There was a shuffling of feet on deck, as the men passed aft through the
darkness.

At that moment, out of the mother ship there flared another bright light
that wavered about the horizon for a moment and finally settled on the
_Vulcan_. The wounded men dodged below the rail again, but no
bullets came.

This light was not stationary. It crept down through the inky sea toward
the fugitives and grew larger and brighter in their eyes.

"W'ot is that?" cried several apprehensive voices.

Caradoc stood erect by the rail, watching this new development.

"Malone," he called to the man hidden on the bridge, "what speed can
this boat make?"

"Hi've got as 'igh as eighteen knots out of 'er, sir."

"Signal 'full speed ahead' and call down to the firemen for all the
steam we can carry."

"Very well, sir."

Caradoc looked at the light for a minute or two longer and then remarked
to Madden.

"They couldn't have repaired that submarine for several hours longer.
They must have had two."

CHAPTER XIX

CHASED BY A SUBMARINE

Wheezing, coughing, shaking in every plate, vomiting into the sky a
trail of smoke that extended clear to the eastern horizon, the
_Vulcan_ shouldered her way at top speed across the mazy lanes of
the Sargasso. The tug had come a queer crooked path across that sea, and
the lay of her smoke trail down the pearly glow of dawn still marked her
tortuous course.

Not a breath of air stirred, but the speed of the vessel sent a breeze
whipping over the poop of the steamer where a group of battered men
stared fixedly over the long frothing path of the screw. Several of the
group wore bandages, two, unable to stand, sat in steamer chairs, all
had the pale faces of all-night watchers, but every eye in the crowd
scanned with feverish intensity the spangled ocean over which they fled.

The wind snatched at the clothes and bandages of the intent men. Masses
of seaweed swept like gray blurs down the sheer of the tug's wake. Just
beneath them the propeller rushed with watery thunder.

"Yonder she rises!" cried one of the watchers, pointing at two wireless
masts that rose like the fins of a racing shark above the green surface
of the Sargasso.

"Yonder she rises!" repeated a voice amidship, and more faintly still
came the repetition from the bridge, "Yonder she rises--hard a-port!"

A sudden shift of the rudder shook the _Vulcan_ from peak to
keelson. Next moment the tug was speeding squarely across a seaweed
field, and another crook was added to the smoke mark in the sky. The
_Vulcan's_ blunt prow drove through the seaweed at a great rate,
while the clammy mass swung back together not sixty yards behind the
churning screw.

A strange race had developed between the tug and submarine. When both
crafts were on the surface in open water, the submarine had a knot or
two advantage of the _Vulcan_ and could have picked her up in four
or five hours. But early in the night Caradoc had discovered that the
powerful screw of the steamer, designed, as it was, to propel vast
loads, could make the higher speed across the algae beds.

On the other hand, if the submarine dived to escape the drag of the
weed, she again became the faster craft. But, in this instance, when the
submarine dived, the _Vulcan_ would immediately take to the open
lanes and do more than preserve her distance. These constant shifts and
turns explained the ricocheting course that was marked in smoke across
the whitening dawn.

The submarine stood well out of water and skimmed along in the pink
gleam like a long, slender missile. Its flat deck, wireless masts and
conning tower stood etched in black against the morning light. She was
consuming a fairish stretch of open water at a high speed.

"She's game for a long chase," observed Hogan, gently shifting a wounded
arm in its sling.

Leonard Madden replied without removing his eyes from the rushing boat,
"She has to be. All of Germany's naval plans depend on her destroying
us."

"It does--and, faith, may Oi ask why?"

"If we get to Antigua and report this to the British admiralty, how long
would this Sargasso reshipping arrangement last?"

"Right you are there, Misther Madden," agreed Hogan at once. "We'd woipe
'em out, wouldn't we? We'll make it, too. If we stood off th' little
didapper all night, you know we can all day."

Madden considered the fleet little vessel. "No, I rather think she will
capture us."

"And how's that?"

"The Sargasso doesn't extend indefinitely. In fact we are nearing the
southern limit. Have you taken a look forward?"

"No, I haven't," said Hogan, taking vague alarm at Madden's tone.
"What's wrong?"

"I don't see many more big seaweed fields ahead. If she gets us in open
water----"

"Why bad luck to it! Bad luck to it, Oi say!" cried Hogan as the wind
whistled about him; "running us out o' the bushes loike a swamp rabbit."

Just then the submarine veered off her straight course somewhat to
extend her open water run for two or three miles up the edge of the
field. A length view showed her to be a delicate looking craft. Her
sharp prow cut the water with hardly a ripple, in sharp contrast to the
_Vulcan_, which shouldered up a waterfall as she lunged forward.

Suddenly, and rather unexpectedly, the submarine porpoised. There was a
swash of foam, and she was gone.

The men on the poop stepped around to the side of the tug and stared
anxiously southward. Bits of flotsam mottled the blue expanse, but it
really appeared as if the saving drift weed were thinning to nothing.
Hogan glanced back over the way he had come.

"Sure it'll be a fair field and no favor, sweet Peggy O'Neal!" he hummed
nonchalantly under his breath.

At that moment a violent shaking went over the _Vulcan_, and the
short boat swung her prow about with tug-like promptness. It was as if
the stout little craft had swung around on her heel.

"Faith and would ye shake a man's arrum off!" shouted Hogan at nobody in
particular. "And are ye going back to meet the friendly little wasp?"

That was exactly what Caradoc was doing. He had swung the _Vulcan_
about in less than a hundred yard circle and was plowing straight back
the way they had come.

The crowd on the poop held their breath at the daring maneuver. Tug and
submarine were now rushing at each other full tilt, only one ran under
water, the other on the surface. Suppose the submarine should thrust up
a periscope for an instant--a cough of the torpedo tube and the
_Vulcan_ would be blown to scrap iron.

The men on the poop ran forward, staring with frightened eyes over the
gray-green soggy field through which the _Vulcan_ ripped her way.

It seemed fantastic to think that somewhere under that lifeless weed
human beings spun swiftly along, freighted with the most terrific engine
of destruction. What strange warfare! Who could have fancied that when
savages began to use clubs to maul each other it would end in this
diabolical refinement! Weapons, weapons, weapons--the history of man's
undying savagery working under new forms of civilization! The war
submarine--what a monstrous offspring of genius!

The sun rose like a white-hot ball in the brazen sky and the men held to
the rails, mouths open, and stared ahead into the safe open water,
expecting every moment for the _Vulcan_ to spatter skyward in a
volcano of fire and steel.

The boat itself rattled along with that insensibility of mechanism that
sometimes astounds an apprehensive man. Twenty minutes later, she turned
into the open lane, and was rushing westward again at full steam.

An immense relief spread over the crew. Galton, who stood on the bridge
at the wheel beside Caradoc, blew out a long breath and wiped the sweat
from his face, Farnol Greer began a windy whistling of "Winona, Sweet
Indian Maid." Madden felt as if a weight had been lifted off his brain.
Hogan was humming a tune. But all eyes turned anxiously seaward, to see
where the submarine would "blow."

Ten minutes later, a distant ripple in the water caught their watchful
eyes and the wireless masts popped up, on the opposite side of the great
weed field, four or five miles distant.

A spontaneous cheering broke out on the _Vulcan's_ decks.

"Double crossed! Double crossed!" bellowed Hogan.

"Back track! We put one over! Hurrah for Cap'n Smith!" they shouted
above the pounding of the engines.

Everyone but Caradoc wore the fixed exultant grin of the man who outwits
his rival. The submarine had been thoroughly outgeneraled. North and
west of the _Vulcan_ lay the whole Sargasso for an endless chase.
The diving boat had lost the great advantage of having the steamer
cornered.

As the crew whistled and sang the _Vulcan_ kicked a frothy course
down the long westward lane. To every one's surprise, the submarine did
not dive immediately, but straightened herself on the other side of the
seaweed field on a course parallel with her quarry.

Madden climbed up on the bridge and found a pair of binoculars in the
chart room. He took these outside and trained them on the little vessel.
Apparently the submarine intended to remain at the surface for some
time, for she had opened her hatches and an officer had come out on the
slender deck, and stood looking at the _Vulcan_ through a
telescope.

At the distance, Madden could see the fellow plainly, and even the inky
shadow he threw on the deck. The officer perused the tug for several
minutes, then allowed his glass to wander around the horizon.

"They've come up for air," observed Caradoc, who had approached his
friend from behind. "I believe we'd best stop that. Good air is a luxury
with those fellows." He turned to Galton, who was steering. "Swing her
into the northwest, my man."

The tug answered to her helm with a quiver, and in twenty minutes more
was nosing her way again through the ooze of weed. The German officer
calmly completed his survey, folded his telescope, then disappeared down
the hatch. A few minutes later the submarine dived and the ocean lay
empty in the burning sunshine.

From below came the clanging of Gaskin's gong announcing dinner. It was
odd how the little details of life went calmly on even when life itself
was threatened with extinction. As Madden went below to his meal, he met
Malone who came from below, looking as black as an Ethiopian. The mate
had been directing the firing in this extreme necessity.

The two fell in together as they walked to the wash room.

"I daresay those fellows wish they had sunk the _Vulcan_ when they
had her," observed the American.

"They needed 'er theirselves," explained the mate in a matter-of-fact
way. "Those German cruisers 'ave captured a whole flotilla of prizes
lately, and they needed th' tug to 'andle 'em for 'em."

"And they didn't need the _Minnie B_?"

"Oh, no, not at all."

"Why didn't they sink her at once?"

"Her cap'n told me she carried more copper than one submarine could
reship, so they 'ad to wait for another, as they didn't want to throw no
copper away."

Madden nodded. "It was the second submarine I saw on the night she
foundered." He began smiling when he thought what a bewildering mystery
the vessel had been, and how very simple was the explanation.

By this time Caradoc had joined the two men, hoping to snatch a sandwich
and a cup of coffee before he was needed again.

"Have we plenty of coal, mate?"

"Bunkers are 'arf full, sir."

"What's she turning over now?"

"Six, seventy-five to th' minute, sir." There was a pause, then Malone
asked, "Is there any 'opes of _them_ running out o' fuel?"

"Not likely; they make the trip to Hamburg, you know."

They were just turning into the smelly galley, when a startled voice
sang out forward:

"Sail ahoy!"

This stopped the trio instantly.

"Where away?" called Caradoc.

"Dead ahead, sor!"

All three turned and went running back updeck. When they regained the
bridge, Madden stared in the direction indicated. At first the western
horizon looked empty, then along its level line his eye caught two tiny
marks against the brilliant sky. As it was too small for his naked eyes,
he resorted to the binoculars once more. Caradoc was doing the same
thing.

"W'ot is it, sir?" inquired Malone anxiously.

When he had focused his glasses, Madden made out two fighting
tops--steel baskets circling steel masts, thrust up menacingly over
the slope of the world.

"W'ot is it, sir?" repeated Malone uneasily.

Just then Madden's eye caught the flag at the peak, as it fluttered
under the drive of the distant ship. It was the black cross on the white
ground, with the dark upper left quarter of the German navy.

Caradoc took down his glass at the same time.

"They've been using the wireless," he stated evenly, "to run us in a
_cul de sac_. I might have known German cruisers were close
around." He looked steadily at the distant fighting tops, then turned to
Galton.

"Steer due north, quartermaster."

After a moment, he said to Malone:

"When you go below, send me up coffee and a biscuit."

CHAPTER XX

THE LONE CHANCE

Rushing up the slope of the world in a battle line that covered a wide
sector of the southwestern horizon, steamed four German battle cruisers.
They were four sea eagles dashing at a little water beetle of a tug--the
hammer of Thor swinging forward to crush an insect. The submarine had
signaled by wireless the whole German South Atlantic fleet to destroy
the tug.

Only in the face of this demonstration did Madden realize that a great
German naval stratagem hinged upon the fate of the little English boat.
The slow, clumsy little _Vulcan_ would decide the fate of millions
of dollars worth of English shipping. The little vessel was freighted
with huge consequences.

At first glimpse of the battle line, the _Vulcan_ had sheered
about, and now rushed northward, stringing her black smoke flat behind
her. Up from the south, the submarine followed on the surface, although
she could not make as good time through the weed as did the
_Vulcan_. However, the burden of destroying the English craft had
been transferred to the cruisers that came rushing forward at at least
twenty-five knots an hour.

As Madden stood on the bridge in the skirling wind, the little
_Vulcan_, the seaweed drifts and the cruisers reminded him of
nothing so much as a rabbit flying across cotton rows in front of four
greyhounds; only here there were no friendly briar patches or fence
corners in which to double or hide. Never had the Sargasso appeared so
vast, so empty, so brilliant, so hot.

"Any chance?" he shouted to Caradoc above the rumble of machinery and
the whistling of the wind.

"There's always a chance! They might foul in these weeds!" he nodded
aft.

"Improbable."

"Lloyds would hardly insure us," admitted the commander dryly.

At that moment, as if to lend point to the remark, came a sharp clap of
thunder off their port bow. Madden whirled quickly. A ball of white
smoke, the size of a balloon, drifted up in the air a quarter of a mile
distant.

The American stared at the smoke quite wonderstruck, then looked around
at the distant ships that had not yet topped the horizon.

"Did they shoot this far?"

"A request to heave to."

"Are you going to do it?"

At the bursting of the shell, the men on deck came walking aft to the
superstructure, with the apprehensive gait of men getting under shelter
from blasting operations.

Caradoc leaned over the rail of the bridge. "Greer!" he shouted, "go to
the flag locker, get out a union jack and show our colors on the peak!"

The men pulled up at this, and half a dozen men, two or three of them
crippled, hurried to carry out the order. In a few minutes they came
running back on deck with the flag. They tangled the sheets after the
manner of landsmen, but finally the red pennant traveled skyward. There
was a brief hoarse cheering from the cockneys.

The flag was scarcely at the peak, when above the throb and rumble of
the machinery, Madden's ear caught a queer droning noise, and a moment
later came a deafening crash about two hundred yards to the starboard.
The water beneath it was beaten to a foam, while another balloon of
smoke slowly expanded and thinned in the breathless air. A long time
after the bursting of the shell, Leonard heard the grumble of the cannon
that had fired it."

"Now, lads," shouted Caradoc, "go below and bring up some rockets!"

The men set off with a will, but Madden viewed the situation without any
thrill of patriotism to gild a death under the union jack. The cruisers
were slowly coming into full view. Through his glasses he could now see
their turrets and the black gun ports.

"What's the idea, Smith? You can't fight with rockets?"

"Some English vessel may see us," answered Caradoc shortly.

Madden was still more astonished. "What good would that do?" he called
above the wind. "She'd be captured, too."

"Certainly," agreed the Englishman brusquely, "but if she had a
wireless, she might report the situation to the Admiralty before they
sank us."

Madden removed his binoculars and stared at his friend. "Are you staking
your life on as long a chance as _that_?"

"My boy," said Smith, in an oddly matured tone, "when the safety of
one's country is at stake, one man's life doesn't amount to
_that_!" he snapped his fingers. "If there's a point to be gained,
you accept any chance automatically--or no chance at all."

The American returned no answer, but there flashed into his mind the
legend of the Tyrian who beached his galley in order to save the secret
of Cornwall. Caradoc's narrative was oddly prophetic of the fate of the
_Vulcan_. And Madden wondered with a quirk of grim humor if there
were a foreigner aboard that Tyrian's galley, and what _he_ thought
about the sacrifice.

There was another jagged report as a shell burst just aft the tug, then
a missile of some thousands of pounds shrieked through the air just
above the stumpy masts and filled the sky with fire and thunder a
hundred yards ahead.

Out of the cabin came the rocket bearers, quite over their fright by
now, and acting with the nervous steadiness which acute danger brings.
One of the sailors from the regular crew of the tug moved along the
rail, mounting the fire signals one after the other for shooting.
Immediately behind him came Hogan, using his one good hand to fish
matches from his watch pocket and light the fuses.

The first rocket lit with a sputter, for a moment its fiery blowing
filled the deck with smoke, then it darted skyward, with a tremendous
swis-s-sh! Up, in a long black column it went, into the very heart of
the hot brazen sky, then it exploded with a faint pop, and a black head
of smoke expanded at a prodigious height. In the midst of the
smoke-filled deck, Hogan was applying his match to another. So as the
tug plowed forward, tall slender pillars of smoke, crowned with swelling
palm-like heads, arose to dizzy heights out of her path.

By this time huge shells were bursting about the _Vulcan_ with
crashing monotony. Sometimes the dodging little vessel ran through the
pungent gases of the shells that were sent to destroy her. Now and then
the giant missiles exploded under water and sent furious waterspouts
leaping over her decks. Something touched the top of her steel mainmast
and snapped it off as if it were a straw. A few minutes later the crew
had cleared the union jack from the wreckage and had it flaunting
defiantly from the forepeak.

It was an odd defiance, a tugboat's challenge to a German battle line.
The nibbling of a mouse once set a lion free. Here was a mouse
endeavoring to net a whole herd of lions.

The cruisers did not overhaul the little vessel as rapidly as Madden had
anticipated. The _Vulcan_ skurried through the seaweed fields,
dodging this way and that in order to take advantage of every lane of
open water, but the unwieldy battleships could not accept small
advantages, and were forced to plow straight ahead, through weed or wave
as it came.

Thus the cruisers still fired at extreme range, and the tug escaped
destruction as a gnat might jiggle between raindrops and survive a
summer's shower.

Amid steady crashes, Madden awaited stoically for the shot that would
erase the _Vulcan_ from the face of the sea. There came another
splintering shock; the upper half of the foremast made a curious jump,
and came down with its rigging and plunged overboard in the rushing
water. The obstruction instantly choked down the tug's speed. Every man
in the crew seized axe, saw, anything, and rushed forward in a fury of
impatience, hacking, chopping, sawing, working through the wreckage and
cutting the ropes with jackknives, in an effort to clear the tug of
debris. After an intolerable while, the last ratlines snapped like
pistol shots, the whizzing end of a rope struck a sailor and laid him
out as if clubbed, then the foremast fell away and the _Vulcan_
rushed forward again.

"Look ahead, Madden!" shouted Caradoc in the uproar. "We've got to run
among thicker fields than these!"

By this time the tug's rockets were spent and the German cruisers were
rushing down a line of gigantic smoke-palms that were planted by the
little vessel.

"You might as well surrender," called the American coolly. "You won't
find a merchantman if you go in thicker fields--you know that."

"Surrender!" bawled Smith. "Do you think they shall have this tug to
haul their prizes? Let 'em sink us, and then pick us up in boats! Look
ahead!"

The American turned his binoculars obediently and scanned the west and
north. His eyes traversed skein after skein of the brilliant colorful
patternings, but he was unable to find a very closely netted region. He
was about to announce his discovery to Caradoc when his lense focussed
on another grim menace almost dead ahead.

He stared at it with a curious dropping of hopes that he had not
suspected were in his breast.

What he saw was another fighting top. That pertinacious submarine had
apparently surrounded the elusive _Vulcan_ with German fighting
ships.

Leonard removed his field glasses and stood for a full minute filled
with a keen frustration. The splitting din about him roared on
uninterruptedly, and yet somehow he had been hoping the _Vulcan_
would escape.

"What do you make of it?" bawled Smith, who had been watching the
submarine, which was once more drawing dangerously close.

"We can't go in this direction, Smith!" shouted Leonard hopelessly.
"There are more ships in that direction."

"Warships?" demanded Caradoc swinging his spyglass around.

"Yes, fighting tops!"

Both lads focused in the new direction.

"Those Germans do everything thoroughly," shouted Leonard, "even to
sinking a tug!"

But instead of despairing, Caradoc, after a single glance, rushed over
to the speaking tube to the boilers. He blew the whistle shrilly, then
folded it back and screamed down.

"Malone! Malone! Malone!"

"Very well, sir!" came back the muffled voice through the pipe.

"Give her all steam possible! Blow her up! Speed her, man, speed her!"

"Very well, sir!" returned the same voice.

"Caradoc! Caradoc! Are you insane!" bawled Leonard. "Do you imagine you
can outrun two squadrons of German cruisers?"

"German cruisers! That's England's line of battle, Madden! England! Old
England! God let me get to them and tell 'em what I know, then I don't
care what happens!"

CHAPTER XXI

THE BATTLE

"Th' signal book! Get the signal book!" bawled Greer amid the uproar.

"W'ere is it?"

"In the flag locker! Chuck the flags out, too! Scatter 'em out!"

"W'ot you want to signal?"

"Submarine--tell 'em to look out for submarines!"

Hogan, who held the volume in the crook of his bandaged arm, licked his
thumb and jabbed through the leaves in distracted attention. "There
aren't no code letters for submarine!" he cried at last--"not in here!"

"No," shouted Black, the _Vulcan's_ former captain, "that's an old
code--wasn't any submarines then!"

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