"And it has been doing some damage," rejoined Mark.
"Eh? What's that?" interrogated Mr. Croucher. "A German submarine? Where? How do you know?"
Mark explained, indicating the trawler.
"Well, sir," he said. "She's flying the signal to say so. That red flag with the ball beneath it means that there's a submarine in the neighbourhood. But as well as that, she has more men in her than her own crew. I expect she has rescued them from some ship that the submarine has torpedoed."
"Dear me!" exclaimed Mr. Croucher. "We shall have no ships left soon if this sort of thing goes on much longer! Can't the navy put a stop to it? Even the enemy's battleships are doing less harm than their submarines. It's simply terrible!"
"Between ourselves," remarked Constable Challis, "it's nothing but silly spite and disappointment that makes them sink our ships. They can't touch our cruisers now, so they sneak about sendin' our merchant vessels to the bottom. Yesterday I came upon some boys tryin' to get at a bird's nest. When they saw they couldn't manage it, they began to throw stones at it. That's the way the Germans do. Silly spite; that's all."
Mark Redisham went down the town, keeping step with a battalion of Territorials marching behind their band. When he arrived at the harbour the trawler which he had watched from the cliff was coming in. She had picked up sixteen men drifting in open boats. Their ship, the Priscilla, a cargo steamer bound for one of the northern ports, had been sunk by an enemy submarine.
Early in the morning the Priscilla had been going under easy steam when a submarine had come to the surface a little distance away on the starboard side, hoisting the German flag and signalling to the steamer to stop.
Instead of obeying, the English captain put on full speed and steered a zig-zag course with such skill that the submarine soon dropped astern, unable to keep pace with him or to aim at him with her torpedoes or even her deck guns.
The captain was congratulating himself and his engineer on their lucky escape when suddenly a second submarine popped up right in front of his vessel's bows. This time he was obliged to stop his engines, for he saw a gun rise from its chamber on the submarine's deck. Two officers stood on the platform of the conning-tower.