"'Mm—that's true. How many do you think that boat carried?"
"Round about forty—she was a big packet."
"Only twenty file—still, that's good enough. Besides, they'd have done damage to-morrow if we hadn't got them."
"True for you, Sub—and they might have killed women on that trip. Now they won't get the chance."
"Twenty file. Ugh! I'll make 'em salute when I see them. Hullo! See that, sir?" The two men rose to their knees and stared out to the west. A bright glow showed beyond the horizon, and through it ran a flicker of pulsating flashes of vivid orange light. The glow broke out again a point to the northward, and the unmistakable beam of a searchlight swung to the clouds and down again. As they looked, the glow spread, and the rippling flashes as gun answered gun came into view over their horizon. Mottin fumbled for the glasses, but found them wet through and useless. The action was evidently coming their way, and was growing into a pyrotechnic display such as few are fortunate enough to see.
"Destroyers—coming right over us—Very's pistol, quick! We may get a chance here. Don't let the cartridges get wet, man—put 'em in your coat." The guns began to bark clearly above the straining and bumping noise of the crumbling seaplane, and a wildly-aimed shell burst on the water half a mile to windward. Both men were standing up now, staring at the extraordinary scene. A flotilla of destroyers passed each side of them, one leading the other by nearly a mile. The searchlights and gun-flashes lit the sea between the opposing lines, and the vicious shells sent columns of shining water up around the rapt spectators, or whipped overhead in a continued stuttering shriek.
A big destroyer passed at half a cable's length in a quivering halo of light of her own making. The short choppy beam sea sent a steady sheet of spray across her forecastle, a sheet that showed red in the light of the guns. As she passed the Sub-Lieutenant raised his hand above his head, and a Very's light sailed up into the air, showing every detail of the battered seaplane with startling clearness for a few seconds. A searchlight whirled round from the destroyer, steadied blindingly on their faces a moment, and was switched off on the instant. As swiftly as it had approached, the fight flickered away to the eastward, till the last gleam was out of sight, and the two wet and aching men crouched back into the slopping water to continue their baling.
"If they do find us, it'll be rather luck, sir," said the younger man. "She isn't going to last much longer."
"Long enough, I reckon. But they may go donkey's miles in a running fight like that. Is that petrol tank free?"