“Steamer in sight, sir!”
The position and course of the stranger was given, and immediately everybody who had glasses turned them in the indicated direction. The destroyer’s course was changed a trifle, for everything that floated on the sea was examined by the Allied patrol.
Soon the high, rusted sides of an ancient tramp steamship hove into the view of all. She was a two-stack steamer, and despite her evident age and frowsiness she was making good time toward the Thames.
“Taking a chance,” Ensign MacMasters said to Whistler and his friends. “That is what she is doing. She’s not even camouflaged. Her owner has found some daredevil fellows to run her and will make a fortune in a single voyage—or lose the ship, one or the other. Great gamblers, some of these old ship owners.”
“Gamblers with men’s lives,” said George Belding. “I should know. My father is in the business; but he does not take such chances as that.”
“Not even with the Redbird?” whispered Whistler anxiously. “I don’t know about Phoebe and Alice sailing on her.”
“Oh, pshaw! there’s no danger over yonder,” declared George. “We’ve driven all the Huns from the Western Atlantic.”
“Hope so,” returned Whistler.
Just then a cry rose from some of the men on deck. The destroyer was near enough to the tramp steamship now to observe what went on aboard of her. They saw men running about her deck. Then followed the “Bang! Bang! Bang!” of her deck guns.
The guns were aimed for the far side of the tramp—the object they were aiming at being out of sight. But the destroyer’s crew knew what that fusillade meant.