Wheezing, coughing, shaking in every plate, vomiting1 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 tug2 had come a queer crooked3 path across that sea, and the lay of her smoke trail down the pearly glow of dawn still marked her tortuous5 course.
Not a breath of air stirred, but the speed of the vessel6 sent a breeze whipping over the poop of the steamer where a group of battered7 men stared fixedly9 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 feverish10 intensity11 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 blurs12 down the sheer of the tug's wake. Just beneath them the propeller13 rushed with watery14 thunder.
"Yonder she rises!" cried one of the watchers, pointing at two wireless15 masts that rose like the fins16 of a racing17 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 crook4 was added to the smoke mark in the sky. The Vulcan's blunt prow18 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 algae19 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 conning20 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 sling21.
Leonard Madden replied without removing his eyes from the rushing boat, "She has to be. All of Germany's naval22 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 veered23 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 ripple24, 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 foam25, 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 stout26 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 wasp27?"
That was exactly what Caradoc was doing. He had swung the Vulcan about in less than a hundred yard circle and was plowing28 straight back the way they had come.
The crowd on the poop held their breath at the daring maneuver29. Tug and submarine were now rushing at each other full tilt30, only one ran under water, the other on the surface. Suppose the submarine should thrust up a periscope31 for an instant—a cough of the torpedo32 tube and the Vulcan would be blown to scrap33 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 spun34 swiftly along, freighted with the most terrific engine of destruction. What strange warfare35! Who could have fancied that when savages36 began to use clubs to maul each other it would............