At last, when it appeared hopeless to struggle any longer and he had almost resigned himself to his fate, Lawless thought he heard a harsh, gutteral voice hailing him through the darkness. With his last remaining strength he struck out in the direction from which the voice had seemed to come, and a moment later he and his companion were dragged out of the water and over a curved, slippery surface.
"Gott im Himmel!" exclaimed someone, and Lawless, raising his head, found himself sprawling upon the platform of a large submarine—the same one, he felt sure, which he had recently attempted to sink. Then the man who had given vent to the ejaculation, asked him something in German.
"Don't understand your lingo," answered the Lieutenant, dragging himself into a sitting posture and observing that his questioner was a tall man clad in oilskins and sea-boots.
"Who are you?" demanded the other, this time in fairly good English.
"Lieutenant-Commander Lawless of the British destroyer Knat. Who are you?"
"Commander Carl von Ranheim of the German Navy," answered the man, and added, somewhat unnecessarily, "you are my prisoner."
Lawless, now somewhat recovered, gripped a handrail and dragged himself upon his feet. Two sailors, he observed, were assisting the man for whom he had risked his life through the conning tower hatch. Then, looking over his shoulder, he saw the distant beam of the Knat's searchlight still focussed upon the patrol boat; evidently no one had seen him fall overboard nor had he yet been missed.
"Well," he remarked turning to the Commander of the submarine, "what are you going to do with me?"
"I have a good mind to send you back where you came from," answered the German officer, jerking his head in the direction of the water.
"As a reward for saving one of your men, I suppose," replied Lawless. "Well, as you seem to be afraid of even one Englishman, perhaps it is the best thing you can do."