For nearly an hour the two vessels continued to pound along in a south-easterly direction, each hidden from the other by the enveloping fog.
"Something's got to be done," said Lawless at last. "In my opinion she's a German, for she's certainly laying a course towards Heligoland, and if we're not mighty careful we'll find ourselves in a trap. Point is, how the devil are we to make the skipper give himself away?"
"Send a wireless in English. If he's——"
"No good," broke in the Lieutenant. "If he's a German he'd savvy the dodge and play up to us."
The fog was now beginning to show signs of clearing overhead, though it still lay thick upon the sea. There was every prospect of its soon disappearing altogether, and then, perhaps, the mystery of the unknown vessel would be solved and her fate—or that of the Knat—decided.
"Look!" shouted Trent abruptly, but before Lawless could follow the upward direction of his gaze something fell in the water just astern and then came the sound of a loud explosion. Others followed in quick succession, some of the bombs falling so close to the destroyer that the men standing by the torpedo tubes were drenched by the water they threw up. There was no need to inquire as to the cause of these unpleasant phenomena, they were due to a Zeppelin hovering above—probably the same one which had been encountered earlier in the day.
"That settles it," said Lawless. "We're in company with a German cruiser and her guardian angel."
He had only just finished speaking when there was a deafening boom on the port side and a volley of shells went hurtling over the destroyer, one of them snapping her wireless mast in two like a twig. Obviously the Zeppelin, having sighted the Knat and notified the fact in the usual way with bombs, had warned her sea consort of the destroyer's proximity by wireless, and the cruiser had answered by firing more or less haphazard into the fog. In fact, she came very near sinking her unseen enemy and would have probably succeeded had not her guns been trained at too high an angle.
Lawless, now that his doubts were at rest, lost no more time, all the men were at their stations in readiness and there was no further reason to delay an action. His object now was to creep up abreast of the cruiser until he could launch a torpedo with a fair chance of its getting "home." This manœuvre, however, was not by any means easy, for it necessitated exposing the Knat to the enemy's fire, and if only one shot made good it would almost certainly mean an end of the adventure so far as the destroyer and her crew were concerned. Moreover, the airship was still dropping bombs and keeping her consort informed as to the enemy's position.
The first two attempts to torpedo the German proved unsuccessful, and in both cases the Knat was driven off with the loss of several men killed and wounded, while the machine-gun aft on the bandstand had been wrecked by the only air-bomb which, up to the present, had struck the vessel. With such odds against him, Lawless would have been quite justified in drawing off; but to retire before a superior foe is not one of the ways they have in the Navy. Therefore the Lieutenant prepared for a third attempt, which, as the mist had begun to clear, was likely to prove the last whatever the issue might be.