a flexible steel wire, which, by means of a couple of buoys, was permitted to sink to a depth of one fathom beneath the surface. Steadily the boats approached the dummy periscope, the cutter passing it to port and the whaler to starboard at a distance of twenty yards.

Presently Webb glanced astern. The towed buoys were now quite close to the upright spar.

"Give way for all you're worth, lads!" he ordered, while Haynes shouted a similar encouragement to the whaler's crew.

The strain on the grass rope increased. Then with a terrific roar a column of water shot two hundred feet into the air from the spot where the dummy periscope had been.

"We're much too knowing birds to be caught by that sort of chaff," remarked a member of the cutter's crew. The man was right. Had any passing vessel rammed the tempting-looking periscope she would have found herself bumping over a couple of mines that, with fiendish ingenuity, the Huns had lashed to the decoy in the hope that an inquisitive foe would be sent to the bottom. The trick was an old one, but it added to the complication of perils which the British seamen have to face hourly in the frequently underrated task of preserving the millions of inhabitants of the United Kingdom from the horrors of famine.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VII

Rammed

The echoes of the explosion had scarce died away when the Portchester Castle turned and steamed back to pick up her two boats. She was still about two miles off, and nearly three times that distance from the receding Two-Step.

The

The crews of the cutter and the whaler were busily engaged in coiling away the undamaged grass ropes. The connecting span had, of course, been blown to bits by the detonation. Both boats had to be baled out, for a quantity of water hurled skywards by the 

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