Darkness had set in with a cloudy sky. Everything went well until about time for Scotty to report at midnight when the marine on guard saw something over the port bow; it looked like a vessel coming, without lights.
"What do you think it is?" Howard asked anxiously.
"I can't make out but it's something and it's getting plainer. I wonder where Scotty is with the Sprite?" The marine stood at attention by the side of the one-pounder in the bow. The submarine was riding easy just clear of the Anti-Kaiser's sides.
We finally recognized the outlines of a vessel advancing, and apparently a big one, too. It was not moving fast but was surely approaching, bearing directly down on us. Our port and starboard lights were surely visible to them and they could certainly see them in time to clear us.
"What can we do but fire on her? She will be on top of us in another minute!" shouted Howard, fully alive to the danger.
I called to the marine to let a shot go directly at her, which he did instantly, then another and another, but the little one-pound shots apparently made as much impression on her iron bow as water on a duck's back, and she did not veer a fraction of a point, coming dead on us. When she got closer I could make out she was undoubtedly a big merchantman, perhaps eight or ten thousand tons. How I prayed for Scotty to be here and give her a dose of a five-pound gun. But seconds counted now, our danger was extreme, and we were wholly helpless. On she came, moving perhaps at the rate of twelve knots. She could not possibly keep such a course by mistake for the one-pound gun made enough noise in the silent midnight Gulf to awaken the dead.
Howard was not excited. He made a step toward the marine waiting for another order to fire, then stopped and seemed to measure our chances. He appeared to be taking inventory of the damage the great blunt bow would do during the few seconds before she struck the Anti-Kaiser wrecking boat a glancing blow forward that brought her over on her beam's end, snapping the hawsers that fastened us to the submarine, as through cotton strings or cobwebs.
Howard and the marine grasped the one-pounder to keep from sliding down the now vertical decks of the Anti-Kaiser into the sea, I being just as fortunate in getting my arm through a hawser eye.
Her dull black iron sides seemed an age getting out of the way, leaving the Anti-Kaiser trembling and rocking like a chip on the white caps.
Both Howard and I rushed to the side to ascertain if possible what was undoubtedly a deliberate attempt to run us down, murder us and steal the prize we had labored so long and arduously to raise from the floor of the sea.