"I thought that the Germans were sinking you," replied Tressidar. "Stand by with a line. We are running alongside."
The "Gannet," losing way, made fast to one of the trawlers, and Tressidar, accompanied by half a dozen armed men, gained the fishing-lugger's deck.
The sub. was greeted by a tall, broad-shouldered Devonshire man of about fifty years of age. His heavily bearded face was almost hidden under a sou'wester, in spite of the fact that the sun was shining brightly. On the deck just abaft the windlass was a young German unter-leutnant, bound hand and foot and obviously half dazed with the result of a blow on the left temple. Two German seamen, their clothes saturated with water, were lashed to the mizzen mast.
[Illustration: "ON THE DECK WAS A GERMAN UNTER-LEUTNANT, BOUND HAND AND FOOT">[
The trawler had sustained damage. Her bitts had been carried away, with the result that her bowsprit had run in, and a raffle of head sails and gear littered the fo'c'sle. The other trawler appeared to be undamaged, with the exception of a large rent in her mainsail. The submarine, or as much as was visible above water, looked a wreck. The cover of her conning-tower hatchway was buckled, her twin periscopes had been snapped off close to the deck. Her ensign staff, with the Black Cross flying, was trailing over the side, and one of her disappearing guns had been dismounted.
"She tried her tricks on we, an' we wouldn't have any," declared the skipper proudly. "Them didn't reckon wi' Devon lads, did 'em, Bill?"
His mate, thus appealed to, merely grinned and scratched his head. Nor was the master of the second lugger more communicative.
"Us seed Charlie a-doin' the job properlike, so we gi' a hand. Not as though Charlie wasn't good enough for the job," he explained, "but us thought 'twas a good chance to get our own back, so we chipped in."