"H'm, no," replied Gilroy. "We ought to have bagged the lot, and we should had it not been for the 'Lion' being crocked."
"I expect the Press will make a song about our not having done so," remarked Aubyn. "It's easy for the arm-chair critics to expound theories of what ought to be done."
"Let 'em," declared Gilroy grimly. "If I had my will I'd ship a few of these professional advisers—people who are ever ready to tell their mother's mother how to extract the contents of a bird in embryo—and let them see what's going on. I'll bet they'd change their tune and not ask what the Navy is doing. It's impossible to ram into their thick heads that sometimes it pays to sacrifice a small craft in order to enable a battle-cruiser to get a sniff in. That's what we are doing now."
Aubyn looked at his companion in surprise.
"Fact," continued Gilroy. "We have information that a German flotilla of light-cruisers and destroyers is out: independently of the crowd we sent home as fast as their engines could take them. What we have to do is to get in touch with them, lure them on, and let our light-cruisers come up and bag the lot. If the German boats won't come out—and they are vastly superior in number to our lot—there are two conclusions. Either they fear a trap, or else they cannot negotiate their own mine-field. If they do pluck up courage and come for us, we've got to make a running fight for it, and at the same time watch these fellows' course."
"So, apart from screening the 'Lion' we have to discover the passage through the enemy's mine-field?"
"Exactly," answered Gilroy. "The information is most necessary, although I cannot at present say to what use it will be put. Hullo! there's the 'Action.'"
Both officers tore up the narrow companion to find that the periscope of a submarine had been sighted on the port-bow. Evidently the skipper of the "unterseeboot" had a great respect for the ramming powers of British destroyers; for, without attempting to discharge a torpedo, he promptly dived to such a depth that on the "Livingstone" passing just ahead of the swirl that marked the submarine's disappearance no tell-tale oil rose to the surface.
By this time the mist had increased; the nearmost British destroyer was just visible. The rest were swallowed up in the bank of haze. The flotilla had changed course and was now running S.S.W. or practically parallel with the chain of islands extending from the mouth of the Weser to the Dollart.
Suddenly out of the mist loomed the outlines of four grey torpedo-boats: the forerunners of the Borkum flotilla. On they came at a good twenty-six knots, the smoke pouring from their funnels and obscuring any hostile craft that might be following in their wake.