While still a day and a night out from land, Barry awoke in the dim light of a misty morning, and proceeded to the deck for his constitutional. There he fell in with Captain Neil Fraser and Captain Hopeton pacing up and down.
“Come along, Pilot!” said Captain Neil, heartily, between whom and the chaplain during the last few days a cordial friendship had sprung up. “We're looking for submarines. This is the place and the time for Fritz, if he is going to get us at all.”
Arm in arm they made the circle of the deck. The mist, lying like a bank upon the sea, shifted the horizon to within a thousand yards of the ship.
“I wish I knew just what lies behind that bank there,” said Captain Hopeton, pointing over the bow.
For some moments they stood, peering idly into the mist.
“By Jove, there IS something there,” said Barry, who had a hawk's eye.
“You've got 'em too, eh,” laughed Hopeton. “I've had 'em for the last forty-eight hours. I've been 'seein' things' all night.”
“But there is,” insisted Barry, pointing over the port bow.
“What is it like?” asked Captain Neil, while Hopeton ran for his glass.
“I'll tell you what it's like--exactly like the eye of an oyster in its pulp. And, by Jove, there's another!” added Barry excitedly.
“I can't see anything,” said Captain Neil.
“But I can,” insisted Barry. “Look there, Hopeton!”
Hopeton fixed his glass upon the mist, where Barry pointed.
“You're right! There is something, and there are two of them.”
“Give the Pilot the glass, Hopeton,” said Neil. “He's got a good eye.”
“There are two ships, boys, as I'm a sinner, but what they are, I don't know,” cried Barry in a voice tense with excitement. “Here, Neil, take the glass. You know about ships.”
Long and earnestly, Captain Neil held the glass in the direction indicated.
“Boys, by all that's holy, they're destroyers,” he said at length in a low voice.
Even as they gazed, the two black dots rapidly took shape, growing out of the mist into two sea monsters, all head and shoulders, boring through the seas, each flinging high a huge comb of white spray, and with an indescribable suggestion of arrogant, resistless power, bearing down upon the ship at furious speed.
“Destroyers!” shouted Captain Neil, in a voice that rang through the ship. “By gad, destroyers!”