“Hullo!” exclaimed Jack, suddenly, as they all stood waiting nervously to see the next flash and puff from the cruiser’s turret. “I can see a gleam of hope for us. See what’s ahead!”
Ahead of them the sea appeared to be giving off clouds of steam as if it was boiling. As yet this vapor had not risen high, but it was rapidly making a curtain above the sunny waters.
“Fog!” cried Bill, delightedly.
“It cannot be too thick for me,” said de Garros.
“Perhaps Captain Rollok foresaw this and that was why he refused to halt,” said Jack. “Certainly, if we can gain that mist bank before we get badly injured, we’ll be all right.”
It was now a race for the thickening fog curtains. The cruisers appeared to realize that if the Kronprinzessin could gain the shelter of the mist, there would be but small chance of their capturing her. Increased smoke tumbling from their funnels showed that they were under forced draught. But as their speed increased so did that of the “gold ship.”
The gun boomed again on the Berwick, the foremost of the pursuers. The projectile struck the stern of the liner and knocked the elaborate gilt work wreathing, her name and port, into smithereens.
“Aiming at the rudder,” commented Jack. “That’s a good idea from their point of view.”
“But a mighty bad one from ours if they succeed in hitting it,” said Raynor, with a rather sickly laugh.
Two more shots, one of them from the second cruiser, flew above the fugitive liner and then the mist began to settle round her swiftly-driven hull in soft, cottony wreaths. In five minutes more the fog had shut in all about her.