They were close to the converted submarine now. On the narrow deck, abaft the motors a man was seated on a camp chair, smoking. He stood up as the boat approached.
Hans hailed him and for several minutes the two brothers hurled harsh gutturals at each other. Bill guessed them to be speaking a low Bavarian dialect of German. He failed to understand a single word of what they said.
“He wants me to thank you—he will come,” Hans asserted presently.
“What a polite family you are—” chuckled Bill. “Let’s get aboard.”
Fifteen minutes later those officers and men who had remained on deck aboard the anchored pirate ship were astonished to see the Flying Fish taxi down the harbor and take the air. A few seconds later her tail lights disappeared into the dark beyond the headlands. Aboard the Amtonia orders were shouted, bells clanged, and presently the whining howl of her siren awoke the echoes of the night.
Half an hour passed. Bill, at the wheel of the Flying Fish, leaned forward, his eyes focussed on a pinpoint of light far below and about ten miles ahead of the speeding airplane.
“There she is on a bet,” he said to Osceola, who was in the other pilot’s seat.
“You mean the warship Charlie told us about? What makes you so sure?”
“I’ve got a hunch, that’s all. Anyway, nothing but a fishing boat or one of the little steamers that put in at the small seaports along this part of the coast would be so close to shore. That’s a big ship out there. I think I’m right about her.”
Bill’s hunch was correct, as the two in the cockpit presently saw.