This smoke offered a splendid bit of camouflage for the raider and the launch. Up to this point the lookouts in the destroyer’s tops had caught no glimpse of the Sea Pigeon. She was a very wary bird indeed!
The smoke cloud from the burning ship spread across the sea and supplemented the fast dissolving fog in hiding the German craft. But suddenly a lookout hailed the Colodia’s quarter:
“Steamship’s top, sir! Six hundred yards abaft the sinking ship, sir!”
Orders snapped to the forward gun crews. They could see nothing but fog and smoke astern of the Susanne; but their knowledge of elevation, distance, and other gunnery lore, encouraged them to hope for a “strike.”
The guns began to speak, and the shells shrieked over the stern of the sinking steamship, exploding somewhere in the smoke cloud. There followed no shots in reply. The Germans were shy. The thickening smoke shut out again all sight of the Sea Pigeon.
The condition of the Susanne was threatening. Commander Lang dared not consider a pursuit of the German raider when lives were in such peril here.
Two boats were all that had been put out from the sugar ship. Her other small craft were smashed by the shellfire of the raider.
Some forty or more people were gathered in the bows of the Susanne, and they must needs be taken off quickly. The big merchant vessel was surely going down.
Her two boats had already pulled away to a safe distance. Commander Lang would not risk his own small craft near the trembling hull of the Susanne, but swerved the course of the destroyer that she might run in under the high bows of the ill-fated ship.
Signals were passed, and the remaining members of the Susanne’s crew hastened to prepare slings in which to lower the passengers to the destroyer’s deck.