"Cease fire!" ordered Hythe; then, "Carry on. Search the bush away on the right. There are hundreds of the enemy lurking there."
Round swept the muzzle of the gun; up went the sight to a thousand yards. "Pop, pop, pop," went the sharp detonation of the quick-firer, till half a dozen rounds had been fired. Then came an ominous silence.
"Carry on," repeated the sub in a loud voice. "I gave no orders to cease firing."
"Can’t help it, sir," replied Polglaze, who was sitting across the trail and manipulating the firing-gear. "The blessed thing’s jammed."
It was indeed fortunate that the mechanism had not gone wrong during the attack, but the danger was not yet over. It was imperative that the weapon should be rendered serviceable again before the rescued crew could be taken off.
As soon as the Somalis withdrew beyond range the wearied men of the stranded vessel hastened to greet their new-comer, while the master, a short, broad-shouldered, rubicund-visaged old salt, briefly explained to Hythe the circumstances under which the vessel went ashore.
It came as no surprise to the sub to learn that the ship--the two-thousand ton Diesel engined tramp, "Iticaba"--had been chased by the "Vorwartz." Scorning to surrender, the sturdy skipper served out rifles and ordered his men to fire at the submarine as she rose to the surface to hail the "Iticaba" to heave-to. The bullets had no more effect than peas rattling on a corrugated iron roof, but Karl von Harburg lost no time in retiring to the security of the conning-tower.
The chase was a long one, and although the "Vorwartz," fired three torpedoes only one hit the mark, exploding under the "Iticaba’s" starboard quarter and destroying one of her twin propellers and buckling the rudder, while the steel plating of the hull was fractured sufficiently to cause the vessel to be in a sinking condition.
Still the old skipper stood doggedly on the bridge, refusing to surrender. His one hope was to run the ship ashore in shoal water where the submarine could not follow. Ordering every available pump to be worked to its utmost capacity the "old man" still found the leak gaining, and it was a question whether the "Iticaba" would or would not founder in deep water.