“Gab, gab, gab!” ejaculated Ikey, seriously. “It doesn’t prove anything. I want to know if I am going to get the twenty? I saw the submarine first.”
“A mirage,” scoffed Frenchy.
“That’s all right. It was a reflection of a real ship. Mr. MacMasters said so. If I’d seen a submarine picture in a looking glass, rising right off yonder,” and he pointed over the rail of the destroyer, “wouldn’t I have yelled, ‘There she blows!’ and got the double-eagle?”
“But you gave no alarm,” grinned Al. “Did he, Whistler?”
“I guess he did call the attention of an officer to it,” Whistler responded, with great gravity. “Are you going right up to the Commander with your claim, Ike?”
While the boys and the rest of the crew were joking about the mysterious submarine, the officers of the Colodia were seriously engaged in discussing the immediate course of the destroyer. They were under orders to find the Sea Pigeon, a very fast raider; but they could not refuse very well to try to pick up this big submersible, if she could be overtaken.
The wireless messages from the Que Vida had ceased hours before. That afternoon they sighted a regular flotilla of small boats on the quiet sea and knew at once that the submarine had again been at work. This time, however, the Germans had been more merciful than usual to the crew of the sunken ship.
Nevertheless the two life crafts and four boats were a long way from either Fayal or Funchal. The sea was quiet, but the German submarine commander did not know it would remain so. He had gone directly contrary to international law in deserting these people.
They proved to be the crew and passengers of the Que Vida, more than twenty-four hours in the boats. The captain had been carried away, a prisoner, by the huge submarine that had attacked the steamship from Buenos Aires.
The story of the chief officer of the lost ship was illuminating. The Que Vida might have escaped the Germans, being a fast vessel, had it not been for the fact that the former appeared to be a merchant ship, and flew a neutral flag, as did the Que Vida.