"It ain't as if the Hun had done us in altogether," said Larry just before he dropped asleep. "He was clever, he was, and that Heinrich was about the most cunning scoundrel that the Kaiser could have employed. See how he failed, though! Gee! That bomb ought to have blown the front of the ship away, and yet it left her cargo almost undamaged. Reckon, young Bill, your chaps is working like niggers now to get it salved, and—and—we're here."
"And alive and well," said Jim cheerfully.
"And while there's life there's hope. And there's the French front," Bill chimed in in sleepy tones, "that's the next thing to be thought of."
Yet other things soon arose to engage their attention. It was at an early hour on the following morning—though they themselves did not know that the day had broken, for it was quite dark in the interior of the submarine and the electric beams still flooded their compartment—that they knew that the vessel had stopped, and presently felt a breath of cool air as the door of their prison was opened.
"Come up!" a voice called, and obediently they clambered into the conning-tower and so on to the deck of the submarine. She was lying awash, and near her a surface vessel, a trawler by appearance.
"Hope you haven't had an uncomfortable night," grinned the officer in command of the submarine. "I'm transferring you to one of our mine-sweepers. She'll take you to Germany and to prison. Bon voyage!"
A boat pulled alongside and the three dropped into it and were rowed to the trawler, which, as soon as they were aboard, hauled in its anchor and steamed off, leaving the submarine still floating on the surface. Not that Larry and Jim and Bill were able to watch her, for immediately they reached the deck of the vessel they were hustled to a companion-way and forced to go down between decks. Here, when their eyes became accustomed to the darkness, they found themselves in the hold of the vessel with a number of other occupants of the space seated against the bulkheads or against the sides of the trawler.
"Hello, mates!" began Larry, as if to open the ball. "Cheerio!"
A short, heavily-built man came forward at once. "You're British?" he said. "No, American!"
"No, both," said Larry. "I'm American, so's Jim, here. This here is Bill, who's English."