"Why bad luck to it! Bad luck to it, Oi say!" cried Hogan as the wind whistled about him; "running us out o' the bushes loike a swamp rabbit."
Just then the submarine veered off her straight course somewhat to extend her open water run for two or three miles up the edge of the field. A length view showed her to be a delicate looking craft. Her sharp prow cut the water with hardly a ripple, in sharp contrast to the Vulcan, which shouldered up a waterfall as she lunged forward.
Suddenly, and rather unexpectedly, the submarine porpoised. There was a swash of foam, and she was gone.
The men on the poop stepped around to the side of the tug and stared anxiously southward. Bits of flotsam mottled the blue expanse, but it really appeared as if the saving drift weed were thinning to nothing. Hogan glanced back over the way he had come.
"Sure it'll be a fair field and no favor, sweet Peggy O'Neal!" he hummed nonchalantly under his breath.
At that moment a violent shaking went over the Vulcan, and the short boat swung her prow about with tug-like promptness. It was as if the stout little craft had swung around on her heel.
"Faith and would ye shake a man's arrum off!" shouted Hogan at nobody in particular. "And are ye going back to meet the friendly little wasp?"
That was exactly what Caradoc was doing. He had swung the Vulcan about in less than a hundred yard circle and was plowing straight back the way they had come.
The crowd on the poop held their breath at the daring maneuver. Tug and submarine were now rushing at each other full tilt, only one ran under water, the other on the surface. Suppose the submarine should thrust up a periscope for an instant—a cough of the torpedo tube and the Vulcan would be blown to scrap iron.
The men on the poop ran forward, staring with frightened eyes over the gray-green soggy field through which the Vulcan ripped her way.