Dave Darrin After the Mine Layers; Or, Hitting the Enemy a Hard Naval Blow

by H. Irving Hancock

Dave Darrin caught sight of the officers, as the launches approached the destroyer, and felt like rubbing his eyes.

"The ober-lieutenant and von Schelling!" he exclaimed with a start. "They haven't recognized me yet. When they do that ober-lieutenant is going to wish that he had voted for going to the bottom of the sea!"

Not, indeed, until the officers came up over the side of the "Grigsby," and found Dave Darrin waiting on the deck, did the quartette of officers discover who their captor was.

"You?" gasped the ober-lieutenant! "Impossible!"

"Yes; you didn't expect to see me again, did you?"

"I—I—I thought you were——"

The German checked himself.

"You thought you had sent me to the bottom of the sea," Dave went on. "It wasn't your fault that you didn't, but you missed your guess."

Dave then gave the order for housing the prisoners below.

"Are you sending the officers to the same place of detention that you are sending my men?" demanded the ober-lieutenant, a spark of assertiveness in his manner.