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!"