Half a dozen clouds of black smoke upon the horizon, growing larger and larger every minute; a great murmur of the crowd; officers in dress uniform with binoculars at their eyes; a group of journalists in hard felt hats, making notes!...
Now the destroyers can be seen in a half-circle, with three great ships in the background.
"The Transports!" the Admiral said--"from seven to eight thousand Germans in them--what a haul! Look, Mrs. Murphy, that is the Cruiser _Arethusa_ by the side of them. I expect they had a handful in disarming all those chaps, and they must be pretty short-handed on board the whole flotilla, for they"ll have had to send a lot of men aboard those two liners. Fine boats, the new light cruisers, _Captain_ Murphy?"
The old lieutenant of Coastguards flushed with pleasure.
"Never had a chance to go to sea in one of them, Sir," he said--"long after my time, I am sorry to say."
"Look!" Marjorie whispered to Doris, "they"re opening out. Isn"t it wonderful? How near they"re getting! It"s just like a figure in the Lancers."
Doris did not answer for a moment. Then she said:--"What"s that, right in the middle?"
The Admiral overheard her.
"You"ve quick eyes, young lady," he answered; "that, unless I am very much mistaken, is a certain Submarine, lately in possession of the Kaiser, and which people are talking about a good deal just now!"
It was so. The destroyers slowed down, and made a great lane upon the sea. In the centre of this lane was something infinitely small, a black speck, like a cork floating on the water.
It grew and grew.
Then, from somewhere not far away, there was the heavy boom of a gun.
Immediately, the air was rent with a noise like hundreds of bellowing bulls as all the ships at anchor opened their steam-sirens until the very stone quays trembled.
The cheers of thousands of voices, the wild tossing of hats into the air, the fluttering of hand-kerchiefs like sudden snow; and then, the Submarine, its whale-back ploughing through the Harbour waters, a white wake of foam behind it, came into full view. From the periscope fluttered two little flags, black and white. In half a minute the cheering, delirious crowd saw what they were.
"The skull and cross-bones, by Jove--two of "em!" said a young lieutenant on the Admiral"s Staff to his friend, a newly promoted Commander.
"So it is! How on earth did they get those on board a German submarine?"
"Someone of resource on board has spent a happy hour or two on the cruise home."
The young gentleman was right, but he did not know that d.i.c.kson max."s shirt and the back of d.i.c.kson major"s coat were the materials used by Mr. Scarlett, who was very handy with his needle.
"Here they come!"
"Here they come!" "Here they come" "Hurrah!" "Hurrah!"
Bang! went a whole salvo of guns. Upon the deck of the Submarine was a little group of four figures, and, if the truth must be told, four dirtier and more shame-faced human beings have rarely made a public appearance.
"Those must be the boys," the lieutenant shouted in his friend"s ear.
The other nodded. He was staring at the Submarine.
"By Jove!" he cried, "there"s the "Whelk," the good old Whelk! Look at him! We were at Osborne together, and he always swore he liked the beastly things--so the name stuck to him. That other chap must be his brother, I suppose--the schoolmaster Johnny."
"Good old Whe-e-lk!" he shouted, his hands to his mouth.
The lieutenant had never been shipmates with Bernard Carey. Also, his eyes were elsewhere. He twitched his friend"s arm.
"I say," he said, in an awed voice, "look at the faces of those two girls!"
The Commander did so.
"Lucky old Whelk!"
THE END