The chase was a fairly long one, as the speed of the drifters was not sufficient to enable them to gain rapidly on their quarry, but the flexibility of the steam-engine gradually gave the surface ships the advantage and they crept up level with the light. Then, with their boilers almost bursting and flames spouting from the funnels, they drew ahead until over the submarine itself. Depth charges were dropped from the stern of the drifters. The water boiled with the force of the explosions and the light on the buoy went out. Still the drifters held their course in the now pall-like blackness, and other bombs splashed into the water astern, to explode with a dull vibration a few seconds after they had sunk from the surface.
The engines of the two small surface ships were shut off and every ear became alert, but no sound broke the stillness of the summer night, except the rumble of distant thunder and the gentle lap of the sea against the sides. Morse signals winked from one ship to the other and back again. When due precautions had been taken against a further surprise attack, the chivalry of the sea called for a search to be made for possible survivors. This was done with the aid of flares, but only oil and some small debris were found. Dan-buoys were dropped to mark the spot and soundings taken. Twenty-four fathoms deep was added to the report of the action, and a few days later a diver reported having found the wreck of the U-C 00.
CHAPTER XXIV
MYSTERIES OF THE GREAT SEA WASTES
The piratical warfare of German submarines produced many sea mysteries. Some were solved after the lapse of months and even years, while others will, in all probability, remain unknown until the sea gives up its dead.
Among the latter may be numbered the curious discovery in the North Atlantic of a nameless sailing ship, without cargo, identifying papers or crew, but sound from truck to kelson, and with her two life-boats stowed neatly inboard and a half-finished meal on the cabin table. Experts examined this vessel when brought into port, but so far have been utterly unable to offer any solution or discover any clue, beyond the fact that she was built and fitted out in some American port and carried an unusually large crew.
Another similar mystery was the disappearance of a French vessel while on a voyage to New Orleans and the discovery eleven months afterwards that she had called for water and food at a small port on the Pacific coast of South America. No further trace has so far come to light, nor the reason for her changing course and rounding Cape Horn.
A mystery which remains a mystery to the end of the chapter is likely to be irritating to the imaginative mind, but to the following occurrence there came a solution after the lapse of a few weeks.