The sub. who had gone to the schooner as boarding-officer saluted. The praise from his captain had amply recompensed him for the dangers he and his boat's crew had undergone in traversing the stretch of angry sea between the two vessels, only to find that he had departed upon a fruitless errand.
Philosophically he agreed with the skipper that it was all in a night's work, and made a hurried bolt below to shed his saturated garments, for in spite of oilskins and sea-boots he was drenched to the skin.
At eight bells noon on the following day another sail was reported, this time on the port quarter.
The "Strongbow's" helm was immediately put over and a course shaped to intercept the stranger.
"German, by all the powers!" ejaculated Commander Ramshaw. "She's got the confounded cheek to hoist her rascally colours."
The approaching vessel was a large steel barque. Her jibboomless "stump" bowsprit and the absence of chain-plates betokened her to be a modern craft and apparently a valuable prize.
The stranger made no attempt to alter course. A score or so of stolid, fair-haired Teutons were gathered on her short fo'c'sle, gazing with a faint degree of interest upon the grey-painted vessel approaching them, till a shot fired across the barque's bows, followed by a peremptory signal to heave-to roused them to unwonted activity.
Away aloft swarmed the astonished German seamen. Sail was quickly reduced, and curtseying to the short steep seas the barque was ready to receive her prize-masters.
Terence was in charge of the boat detailed to take possession of the barque. Armed with a revolver and accompanied by fifteen of the crew with rifles and bayonets, he took his place in the stern sheets of the boat. Deftly the patent disengaging gear of the falls was cast off, the men bent to their stout ash oars with a will, and five minutes later the boat was alongside the barque.
"Vot you vant?" demanded the skipper of the barque, which proved to be the "Freya" of Bremen. "Your vessel is a prize of his Britannic Majesty's Government," announced Terence.