tumbling pell-mell for the conning-tower hatchway, of the wicked gun abandoned forward still trained on the fleeing merchantman. The next instant the{72} quarry had shot beneath them. A sharp concussion of the air beat upon the fragile car and body of the airship as her nose was flung up and round. The dirigible’s bomb had burst right forward on the pointed bows, and the submarine was diving in a confused circle of broken water and spray.
{72}
The Blimp turned to drop another bomb ahead of the rapidly vanishing wake, and then marked the spot with a calcium flare, while the wireless operator jiggled a far-flung “Tally ho!” on the sending-key of his apparatus.
The tramp disappeared below the horizon, and they caught disjointed scraps of her breathless tale while they circled in wide spirals above the watery arena.
Three motor launches were the first upon the scene, each with a slim gun in the bows, and carrying, like hornets, a sting in their tails. They were old hands at the game, and they spread out on the hunt with business-like deliberation under the directions of the Blimp’s Morse lamp. The captain of the inshore boat (he had been a stockbroker in an existence several æons gone by) traced a tar-stained finger across the chart, and glanced again at the compass. “Nets—nets—nets,” he mumbled.{73} “The swine probably knows about those to the northwest ... He daren’t go blind much longer. Ha!”
{73}
“Feather three points on your port bow,” winked the Blimp. Over went the motor launch’s helm, and the seaward boat suddenly darted ahead in a white cloud of spray. Bang! a puff of smoke drifted away from the wet muzzle of her gun; half a mile ahead a ricochet flung up a column of foam as the shell went sobbing and whimpering into the blue distance.
“Periscope dipped,” waved a pair of hand-flags from the boat that had fired. And a moment later, “Keep out of my wake! Am going to release a charge.”
For an hour that relentless blindfold hunt went forward, punctuated by exploding bombs and depth charges, and the crack of the launches’ guns as the periscope of the submarine rose for an instant’s glimpse of his assailants and vanished again. Twice the enemy essayed a torpedo counter-attack, and each time the trail passed wide. Then, crippled and desperate, he doubled on his tracks, and for a while succeeded in shaking off the pursuit. Nets, as he knew, lay ahead, and nets were death; safety lay
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