Into the cloud she dashed, and where she went after that—although the fog bank was low—the lookouts of the Colodia could not tell.
“If we only had a hydroplane to send up!” said Whistler Morgan to his chums. “The time will come when every destroyer will have its pair of hydroplanes for observation. From a thousand feet up, that fog would never shelter the raider. The hydroplane could signal us the raider’s position and we’d follow her just as though it were clear weather.”
In this case, however, the commander of the destroyer did not wish to desert the Ferret until he had learned her condition. The Colodia described a wide circle and steamed back within hailing distance of the crippled British ship.
Fortunately there were no women or other passengers aboard this vessel. Her wounded were few, too. The hull of the craft had not suffered. Already her machinists were at work on the propeller. They had new blades in the hold, and the end of the shaft was not injured. They proposed to sweat on the new propeller, make such other repairs as were necessary, and then attempt to limp into the Bermuda station under her own steam.
“You can’t beat those fellows!” said Ensign MacMasters admiringly. “The merchant sailors nowadays have more to face than we do, and with less chance of getting safely out of a scrimmage. I wouldn’t want to be hobbling along in that cripple to the Bermudas with that German pirate in the vicinity.”
Just where the Sea Pigeon had gone behind the fog they could only surmise. But Commander Lang ordered a course south by west, hoping that the raider would turn up again.
Phil Morgan and George Belding had time to think of the Redbird and her precious freight once more. It was little satisfaction for either to know that Sparks and his assistants were on the lookout for messages from the sailing ship.
Nothing came up that night to give the anxious boys any satisfaction. Sparks reported nothing in the morning. But as the hour drew near when the mysterious messages usually came over, both Belding and Whistler Morgan hung about the door of the radio room.
The radio chief knew just how anxious they were and he did not scold them. Soon after dinner he sent George to the bench to try to pick up the uncertain sounds that he believed came from the Redbird’s wireless.
George could only get a letter now and then. The sending—if it was it—was weaker than before. In desperation the youth began to send himself: