Amid steady crashes, Madden awaited stoically for the shot that would erase the Vulcan from the face of the sea. There came another splintering shock; the upper half of the foremast made a curious jump, and came down with its rigging and plunged overboard in the rushing water. The obstruction instantly choked down the tug's speed. Every man in the crew seized axe, saw, anything, and rushed forward in a fury of impatience, hacking, chopping, sawing, working through the wreckage and cutting the ropes with jackknives, in an effort to clear the tug of debris. After an intolerable while, the last ratlines snapped like pistol shots, the whizzing end of a rope struck a sailor and laid him out as if clubbed, then the foremast fell away and the Vulcan rushed forward again.
"Look ahead, Madden!" shouted Caradoc in the uproar. "We've got to run among thicker fields than these!"
By this time the tug's rockets were spent and the German cruisers were rushing down a line of gigantic smoke-palms that were planted by the little vessel.
"You might as well surrender," called the American coolly. "You won't find a merchantman if you go in thicker fields—you know that."
"Surrender!" bawled Smith. "Do you think they shall have this tug to haul their prizes? Let 'em sink us, and then pick us up in boats! Look ahead!"
The American turned his binoculars obediently and scanned the west and north. His eyes traversed skein after skein of the brilliant colorful patternings, but he was unable to find a very closely netted region. He was about to announce his discovery to Caradoc when his lense focussed on another grim menace almost dead ahead.
He stared at it with a curious dropping of hopes that he had not suspected were in his breast.
What he saw was another fighting top. That pertinacious submarine had apparently surrounded the elusive Vulcan with German fighting ships.
Leonard removed his field glasses and stood for a full minute filled with a keen frustration. The splitting din about him roared on uninterruptedly, and yet somehow he had been hoping the Vulcan would escape.
"What do you make of it?" bawled Smith, who had been watching the submarine, which was once more drawing dangerously close.