Down into the village he was led and directly to the headquarters of the base officer. The party paused before a cottage that once had been the happy home of a Belgian fisherman. The German lieutenant tapped him on the shoulder and motioned for him to follow. In a moment Jack was ushered into the presence of a corpulent German naval captain with sleepy eyes, who looked without interest at the youthful prisoner and yawned as he heard the story of the capture.
"Shoot the wireless man who fell asleep," he drawled. "Lock up the boy for the present. I'm not in the mood to cross examine a young spy." And yawning again he waved dismissal.
Jack was conducted to an old boat house that in the days before the war had been used by the Belgian fishermen as a repair shop for their fishing craft. He was glad of a chance to rest. The ropes had bound his legs and arms painfully, and his muscles ached from the battering he had received in the sea while making his escape from the Dewey. The Dewey! Jack thought now of his good old ship and wondered what "Little Mack" and the rest of the boys were doing.
Completely tired out, he climbed into a dilapidated old fishing dory and stretched himself out in the bottom of the boat. Using a tarpaulin for a cover, he made himself as comfortable as possible and dozed off.
So fatigued was he that he slept soundly, unconscious of the activity without, where the moored U-boat was being fitted for another voyage into the North Sea.
It was several hours past noon when he was awakened by the roar of guns, hoarse cries of men, and the stamp of feet outside his prison. As he jumped to his feet and clambered out of the boat a shell burst just over the fish-house, scattering a hail of metal over the flimsy roof and tearing a jagged hole in the wall above the doorway. Running to a window that looked out over the canal wharf, Jack saw Germans scrambling up out of the hold of the U-boat, some of them carrying rifles, others lugging a machine gun. The village was in wild confusion.
"Am I dreaming?" Jack asked himself incredulously, "or is the village being attacked?"
For answer came another shell that ripped its way clean through the frame building in which he was housed, bursting with a roar that brought the flimsy structure crashing down upon the head of the imprisoned boy. Blinded by the dust and splinters, he fought his way madly through the mass of debris until he emerged clear of the wreck. The first thing he stumbled upon was the body of the German sentry who had been posted outside the guardhouse. He had been struck down by a fragment of the shell and blood flowed from an ugly wound in the head.
Jack paused only long enough to rip off the sidearms and ammunition belt of the stricken German and then ran pell-mell across the open space that fronted the old guardhouse to one of the village streets up which the stream of German sailors had vanished. As he got an unbroken view up the street and on to the higher ground that stretched away from the village, Jack beheld a pitched battle in progress with a skirmish line stretched out as far as the eye could carry. The Germans had raffled to the defense of their hiding place and had hurriedly thrown up an emplacement for their machine guns. "Crack—-crack——crack!" came the spitting of the rifles, interspersed now and then with the louder detonation of light artillery.
Whoever they were, whether English, French, or American, Jack saw at a glance that the village had been attacked. He thought of the U-boat at the wharf and forthwith decided that his bit in the spectacular drama now being staged was to prevent the escape of the craft. Hurriedly retracing his steps, he made for the wharf, running at top speed and drawing the revolver he had appropriated from the wounded sentry. As he came dashing down to the wharf he discerned a German at the quay-post endeavoring to cast off the towline.