Mark watched them, and presently determined that they were Germans, making for the Scheldt.
"You'd best rap out a wireless message," said Skipper Snowling.
"I don't think there's any need," returned Mark. "Look what's coming along behind them!"
He indicated a second cloud of smoke, much greater in volume than the first, and blacker. The Germans also had evidently seen it, for they had put on full steam, doing their best to escape. Whatever their pursuers might be, they were quickly lessening the distance that divided them from their prey. Mark watched the chase excitedly.
The four enemy boats were small compared with British destroyers; but they were going at quite twenty-six knots speed. Each was armed with three quick-firing guns and two machine-guns, and carried a crew of sixty officers and men. They flashed past, paying no attention to the trawlers.
Through the black oil smoke in the distance could now be distinguished a British light cruiser and four destroyers, rushing along like railway trains, with their high prows smothered in white spray. They were overhauling the Germans hand over hand.
"They can't escape! They can't escape!" cried the skipper.
Apparently the fugitives realised this; for they turned abruptly to starboard and at once opened fire on their pursuers. The distance between was about four miles, and it was at this range that the British cruiser, and her consorts, extending themselves into line abreast formation, began their cannonade. The shells from the two opposing sides crossed in front of the patrol of trawlers, which stood by, witnessing the fierce combat.
It lasted hardly more than an hour, a running fight in which everything depended upon marksmanship and in which the superiority of the British gunnery was from the first apparent.
A few moments after the action began, the leading German boat was struck in a vital part. Clouds of wreckage and smoke filled the air about her as the British lyddite shells hit her and exploded, smashing the thin steel plating of her hull. When the smoke cleared, there was nothing left of her but a few survivors struggling in the waves.