"Ve vos surrender—so," shouted Falkenheim.
"All right," replied the British lieutenant. "We accept your surrender, provided you do no damage to your craft."
"Dot is so," agreed the kapitan. "Nodings done is to der unterseeboot."
Skilfully two of the picquet-boats were manoeuvred and brought alongside the prize and the German officers and crew were taken off. The bridle of the moorings that had been the cause of the submarine's misfortune was cast off—it had simply caught to the for'ard horizontal rudders—and the vessel taken in tow.
A signal was made for a destroyer to take charge of the prize, since the steamboats were too small for the task. Their share of the business was over. The kudos was theirs; they were content to shift the burden upon their comrades of the destroyer-flotilla.
Suddenly a bomb hurtled through the smoke-laden air and exploded with a terrific detonation close to the leading picquet-boat. The frail craft literally crumpled up and disappeared in a cloud of smoke, leaving a sub-lieutenant and two badly wounded seamen struggling for dear life.
Overhead was a German double-fuselaged biplane, intent upon the destruction of the captured submarine so that she might not fall into the hands of the British.
Another bomb dropped, without effect beyond sending a fragment of metal through the funnel of the "Anzac's" steamboat. Regardless of the danger, other picquet-boats dashed up to rescue the survivors of the sunken craft, while from the approaching destroyer a steady stream of shells was directed upon the hostile battleplane.
Unconcernedly the German aviators hovered overhead, circling and dropping their lethal missiles with a set purpose, until a bomb alighted fairly upon the fore-part of the submarine.
When the cloud of smoke had drifted away, the chagrined British sailors saw their prize had been snatched from their grasp. She was sinking.