Morgan was in one of these boats. All through the fight he had thought of the Argentine skipper, Captain di Cos of the Que Vida. The possibility of his still being aboard the submarine worried the American lad. If there were prisoners, they had gone down with the enemy craft.
These were the fortunes of war; nevertheless, that the unfortunates should be lost with the members of the German crew, was a hard matter. Only three survivors were picked up, and one of them, with his arm torn off at the socket, died before the boats could get back to the destroyer.
The two were Germans. Questioned about possible prisoners aboard the submarine, they denied knowledge of them. Yet it was positive that Captain di Cos, at least, had been carried away by the German craft when the Que Vida was sunk.
Later some information was gleaned from the two prisoners brought back to the Colodia. The super-submarine had been known as the One Thousand and One. She was the first of a new type of subsea craft that the Germans hoped to use as common carriers if they won the war.
According to the story told by the prisoners—especially by one who was more talkative than his fellow—the huge submarine had a crew of sixty men, with a captain for commander, a full lieutenant and a sub-lieutenant. She was fully provisioned and carried plenty of shells. Her commander’s desire to save torpedoes, their supply of which could not be renewed nearer than Zeebrugge or Kiel, was the cause of the submarine being caught unaware by the destroyer.
Had the Western Star been sunk at once by the use of a torpedo, the underseas boat would have been far away from the scene when the American ship arrived. It was an oversight!
“And it is an oversight her commander can worry about all through eternity,” Mr. MacMasters growled, in talking about it with the boys he took into his confidence now and then. “It is my idea that that big sub could get stores and oil without running home to her base; but she could not get torpedoes.”
He did not explain further what Commander Lang and his officers suspected. But the German prisoners had been interrogated very carefully along certain lines, especially regarding that German raider called the Sea Pigeon for which the Colodia had really been sent in search.
The big submarine had taken considerable treasure and valuable goods from the vessels she had sunk. Then, for a time, she had disappeared from the steamship lanes. Where had she gone with the stolen goods?
The prisoners hesitated to explain this. Indeed, one of them became immediately dumb when he saw what the questioning was leading to. From his companion, however, was obtained some further information.