"Wonder if the tramps are Q-boats after all," soliloquized Alec. "One doesn't know t'other from which in these jolly old times. . . . Chance of luring Fritz and seeing a bit of life, eh, what?"
Five minutes later the convoy acted according to orders, the two destroyers and their sluggish charges shaping an easterly course through the mine-infested North Sea.
CHAPTER IV
Torpedoed
"Port five—steady."
"Port five it is, sir."
Alec Seton, sheltering under the lee of the bridge dodger, raised his binoculars and peered steadfastly through the gloom. It was night. Patches of fog were ganging around with irritating persistency, as if bent on following and hampering the Bolero's movements. There was just sufficient headwind to throw cascades of icy cold spray over the destroyer's flaring bows. The breeze whistled mournfully through the rigging, while aft a long trail of black smoke, beaten down by the heavy atmosphere, hung sullenly over the short, vicious seas. According to reckoning the Nord Hinder lay 5 miles east by north.
It was not idle curiosity that had prompted Seton to order the course to be altered. Less than a mile away was something showing black and ill-defined even to the powerful night-glasses. It might be anything from a derelict tramp to an abandoned boat. It might be a German submarine or a sea-going torpedo-boat flying, or rather supposed to be flying, the craven Black Cross Ensign of Germany.
Whatever it was, it was Seton's duty to investigate, taking proper precautions in the event of the object turning out to be a hostile warship.
There was also the possibility—almost the probability—that the strange craft, if a craft it were, might be a British or Allied vessel. In any case, before the Bolero could open fire she had to establish the national identity of the stranger. A Hun was under no such obligation. He could open fire indiscriminately, not caring whether his target were a hostile or a neutral vessel.