“Can’t we do anything?” was Billy’s frantic query.
“We can volunteer to make a try,” replied the captain, as he raced to the water front, closely followed by the excited boys.
Freeman was standing near the seaplane station when the runners arrived.
Captain Johnson reeled off the story of the submarine mishap with telegraph speed.
“I’m in it every minute,” stoutly declared Josh, when advised of the rescue movement.
The volunteers instantly received the orders they sought, and with equal celerity set out on a mission that literally meant flying in the face of death.
They rode in two seaplanes that many times before had weathered storms of shot and shell.
Captain Johnson, himself, veteran of the air, acted as pilot in the lead, for he knew the direct route to the scene of the submarine disaster, and with Henri at the motor end. Billy guided the escort machine, with Josh behind him.
The seaplanes, of the very largest type, had capacity to carry, in a short run, at least a dozen of the submarine crew, if, indeed, that many had survived the pitiless fire to which they had for nearly an hour been exposed, and which fusillading had crippled the electric power appliance of the underwater craft.
Sweeping around the point, the shattered submarine was located by upstanding bridge and periscope, but the crew had been obliged to leave the boat and crawl out into the mud which held the bow aground.