"Seen what, sir?" Lieutenant Desmond inquired.
"I'll tell you about it afterwards," returned Ingoldsby, still gazing intently into the periscope mirror. "Hullo! She's gone down!"
Just at this juncture, as the Schiller sank, a large German armoured cruiser, coming out of the mist, opened fire upon the Sarpedon, whose two boats were busy picking up survivors. To save his ship, and in obedience to orders he had received to retire, the British commanding officer steamed off, abandoning his two boats with the officer in charge of them, nine seamen, and the prisoners whom they had so far rescued.
Lieutenant Ingoldsby set his electric motor to work and started off to attack the enemy cruiser, but the latter altered course to the northward before the submarine could be brought within torpedo range. Ingoldsby thereupon returned to the boats, emptying his ballast tanks and rising awash close beside them, greatly to the astonishment of their occupants.
He stepped out on the deck of the conning-tower, followed by his sub-lieutenant and quarter-master.
"I'm sorry I haven't got anything like room for the lot of you, sir," he said to the officer in charge of the boats. "What had we better do?"
"We have twenty-five survivors," the other answered, "most of them badly wounded. Three of them are officers. One, indeed, is an admiral. You'd better make sure of him, in any case."
"I think I shall be justified in making sure of my own countrymen first," returned Ingoldsby. "Yourself and your men. That's ten all told. Well, perhaps I can make room for the admiral and his two officers; but no more. You see, we may have to submerge. We can let the rest of them have the boats. I can give them water, biscuits, and a compass, and set them a course back to Heligoland. They're not all of them wounded, are they? Some of them look as if they could work the oars. Which is the admiral?"
He looked across at the farther boat and saw a red-bearded man at the stern lying back with his head resting on the gunwale, while a youth in midshipman's uniform, kneeling at his side, was bathing his eyes with a bit of rag dipped in sea water. Like the rest of the rescued Germans, they were woefully bedraggled and wet, their scorched clothes hanging in tatters.
"Ah!" exclaimed Lieutenant Ingoldsby, recognising the man whom he had seen on the quarterdeck. "It's the same. And that's the boy who saved him. I'm glad you picked them up. Draw the boat alongside and let us get them aboard."