The arrival of the colonel and almost all the other officers in various "fancy rig" proved the truth of Dudley's remark. Armed with field glasses, marine-glasses, and telescopes the officers gathered aft, dividing their attention between the labouring Ponto and the greyhound Tompion.
In about an hour the tramp had dropped astern to the distance of a little over five miles, but was still maintaining a course parallel to that of the convoy, while the escorting cruiser was still zig-zagging across the bows of the leading transports.
Presently the Tompion turned sharply to starboard, steering westward for quite two miles before she shaped a course exactly opposite to that of the convoy, signalling the while to the Ponto, asking various, almost commonplace questions regarding her speed and coal-consumption.
It was merely a ruse to lull suspicion. With every gun manned and torpedoes launched home the cruiser flung about until she was bows on to the stern of the tramp. Then came the decided mandate: "Heave-to and send a boat."
Unable to bring more than three guns to bear astern the Hun raider—for such the so-called Ponto was—ported helm, her speed increasing rapidly. Almost at the same time a six-inch gun sent a shell perilously close to the weather side of the cruiser's fore-bridge.
Before the raider could fire a second time three shells struck her close to the stern-post, literally pulverising the whole of the poop. The after six-inch gun, which had been concealed under a dummy deck-house, was blown from its mountings, the heavy weapon crashing through the shattered decks to the accompaniment of a shower of splinters and a dense pall of flame-tinged smoke.
It was more than the Huns bargained for. Knowing that the British cruiser was already aware of the presence of a number of prisoners on board the raider counted on the Tompion withholding her fire. The Ponto would then "crack on speed," for in spite of her alleged maximum of eleven knots she was capable of working up to twenty-eight, or a knot more than the speed of the cruiser under forced draught. These hopes were nipped in the bud by the Tompion blowing away the Ponto's stern and putting both propellers out of action.
Of subsequent events immediately following the brief action Wilmshurst and his brother officers saw little. Their whole attention was directed towards their men, for the Haussas, on hearing the gun-fire, impetuously made a rush on deck—not by reason of panic but out of the deep curiosity that is ever to the fore in the minds of West African natives to a far greater extent than in the case of Europeans.
Next morning the Ponto was nowhere to be seen. She had foundered within two hours of the engagement, while two hundred of her officers and crew were prisoners of war on board the Tompion, and a hundred and twenty British subjects, mostly the crews of vessels taken and sunk by the raider, found themselves once more under the banner of liberty—the White Ensign.
During the course of the day Wilmshurst heard the salient facts in connection with the raider's career. She was the Hamburg-Amerika intermediate liner Porfurst, who, after being armed and camouflaged, had contrived to escape the cordon of patrol-boats in the North Atlantic. For three months she had followed her piratical occupation, re-provisioning and re-coaling from the vessels she captured. Whenever her prisoners grew in number sufficiently to cause inconvenience the Porfurst spared one of her prizes for the purpose of landing the captives in some remote port.