"Keep cool all," commanded Snowling. "Let 'em know as we're Britons. Give her another peppering, Mark!"
Mark and his assistants had already shown that they were better gun-layers than their enemies, and their next cannonade sent splinters flying from the destroyer's decks. Her wireless machinery and aerial was already wrecked. Her guns were silent for a while as she manoeuvred to discharge a torpedo.
Suddenly Harry Snowling put his helm hard over, the Dainty swung round bow on, and she raced forward like a mad animal direct for the destroyer and crashed into her amidships, her powerful prow smashing like a battering-ram into the steel plates.
The destroyer's bridge fell over, and the five officers and men who had stood upon it were flung headlong into the sea.
The trawler's engines were reversed. She backed out of the gaping hole she had made and then stood still as if to take breath after her exertion. The German boat, badly damaged, but not injured below water, just turned round, and, without waiting to pick up any of her men in the sea, made off as fast as her condition would allow her in the direction in which she was originally going.
"And now," said Harry Snowling, when the survivors had been picked up and stowed safely below, "I reckon we may as well steer straight for home and get a coat of paint over them scratches on our bows."
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE MEETING ON THE CLIFF.
"Beautiful view from here," remarked the stranger, dropping the stub of his cigarette on the pavement of the esplanade. "I should say it must be sharming in der spring, ven der gorse vos all in bloom. It minds me of Scotland."
He spoke very softly, with a slightly Scotch accent—or was it merely broken English? Mr. Croucher took it to be Scotch; but he was not very quick at recognising accent, and perhaps it was the reference to Scotland which gave him the idea.