Before Seton and his companion, having completed their task of strafing the Hun gunner, could hurl their bombs, a fusillade of pistol shots rang out. A bullet grazed Smith's cheek; another ploughed a furrow through Seton's hair.
The pilot threw a bomb full in the face of a Prussian unter-leutnant. The missile failed to explode, although it floored the German. Another Boche picked up the bomb and hurled it back. Ricochetting against the wall it hurtled past Seton's head and clattered on the floor of the tunnel ten feet in the rear of the British officers.
There was no time to devote to that. If the sinister missile exploded it meant an end to the contest, but fortunately it was what was known as a "dud".
Almost immediately Alec threw a grenade. It exploded within a couple of seconds of leaving the Sub's hand. When the smoke cleared away, the gun was deserted, save by the dead and dying. Three Huns who had escaped the death-dealing missile had promptly leapt through the embrasure into the sea.
"By Jove, we've put a battery out of action," declared Smith breathlessly. "What luck!"
"Luck, indeed," agreed Alec, pointing to the unexploded bomb. "If that beauty had gone up—but it didn't. What's doing now?"
The two men made their way to the embrasure. It was just possible to squeeze between the steel shield and the granite face of the gun emplacement.
Without, the scene beggared description. Although the 15-centimetre guns were silent, hundreds of smaller quick-firers and machine-guns were letting rip at what was certainly short range. Search-lights were swinging to and fro across the harbour, star-shells bursting high aloft turned night into day.
From seaward shells were coming in showers knocking splinters from the Mole extension on which a Hun battery of six 88-millimetre guns was rapidly being put out of action.
To the right of the embrasure at which the two British officers had taken up their post of observation could be discerned a string of canal barges, moored end to end with anti-torpedo nets between, while the line of obstruction terminated in a number of net defence buoys, their position hardly visible even in the strong artificial light.