The nearest pair were only a matter of half a cable's length away, and presently our worst ordeal commenced.
We were drifting towards them with the ebbing tide, and were now on the fringe of the great mine-field, perhaps the most extensive ever laid. Once in among those floating engines of death we should have a lively time.
It was with no very pleasant thoughts that we considered this new danger. I might have turned the machine gun on the mines, but there was the risk of exploding instead of sinking them, and if one went off it was fairly safe to assume that its mate, a couple of fathoms away, would detonate in sympathy. I presume that this is the underlying idea of distributing mines in this fashion.
During the next four hours these horrid death-traps gave us a terribly anxious time. We had some very narrow shaves, for at low-water hundreds were in sight, and as the seaplane drifted along we were powerless to avoid them.
The pilot got on one float and I got on the other, and once or twice we actually had to ward the mines off with our bare hands in order to keep them from knocking against the machine. Had one of them done so this story would never have been written. Fending off the mines was a ticklish operation, as you may suppose. Great care had to be observed in exerting our strength, and we had to place our hands on parts of the casing of the mine that were devoid of horns, or between two horns, if it was not floating high enough. While engaged in this delightful occupation I went overboard twice, but managed to scramble back safely without getting into trouble with the mines.
Once a mine went off. It was too far away, however, for us to see what caused the explosion. It is not improbable that a luckless porpoise might have bent a horn in one of its leaps.
At length, to our heartfelt relief, the tide turned, and the mines began to disappear under the water again.
By that time we were drifting nearly the opposite way again, carried along by the flood-tide.
IV—"AN AEROPLANE COMES TO RESCUE"