"Von swine of English sheep no more," chortled the U-boat officer. "Where your kapitan is?"
There was silence in the boats. The Old Man would have replied, but for the fact that the bo'sun had clapped his horny palm over his superior officer's mouth, and with a praiseworthy disregard for disparity of rank had bade him "keep his jaw-tackle bowsed down."
The inquiry was repeated in a decidedly menacing tone.
"Not here," answered the first mate, grasping the situation. "Most likely he's gone down."
As a matter of fact the staunch old skipper was "down," but in a different sense, for, endeavouring to assert defiantly that he was the master of s.s. "Andromeda" and not afraid of a pack of piratical Huns, he had been forcibly placed on his back in the stern sheets of the boat.
So intent upon other matters was von Loringhoven, who was in the first mate's boat, that the purport of the dialogue with the kapitan-leutnant of the U-boat failed to leave any impression on his mind.
"Take me on board!" he hailed in German. "I am Ober-Leutnant von Loringhoven, late of U 254."
"Silence there!" ordered the first mate sternly. With the rest of the survivors of the tramp he did not understand German, nor had he any suspicion that the words were in that language.
Great was his astonishment when the submarine commander ordered the boat alongside, and a couple of German seamen assisted the all too willing von Loringhoven over the bulging sides of the pirate craft. Then, her twin propellers churning the water into eddies of phosphorescence, the U-boat forged ahead and left the rest of the "Andromeda's" crew to their reflections.
"Wonder why the deuce those Huns collared Jimmy Marsh?" was the question that puzzled the boats' crews. "Suppose he knew a bit of Hun lingo and gave them lip, and they didn't like it."