‘All right, thank you!’ said Skipper Novo--to get away from the pirate was precisely what he did not wish to do. For some fifteen minutes he went on towing his trawl, in hope of being attacked; but as nothing happened, he thought he was too far away from the smacks, and began to haul up his trawl. He was bringing his boat round before the wind, and had all but the last twenty fathoms of the trawl in, when the winch suddenly refused to heave any more, and the warp ran out again about ten fathoms--a thing beyond all experience. ‘Hullo!’ said the skipper, ‘there’s something funny.’ He jumped off the bridge and asked the mate what was the reason of the winch running back. ‘I don’t know, skipper--the stop-valve is opened out full.’ The skipper tried it himself; then went to the engine-man and asked him if full steam was on. ‘The steam’s all right.’ ‘Then reverse winch!’ said the skipper, and went to give a hand himself, as was his custom in a difficulty. The hauling went on this time, all but to the end.
Suddenly the mate gripped him by the arm--‘Skipper, a submarine on board us!’--and there the enemy was, a bare hundred yards off on the starboard quarter. ‘Hard a-starboard, and a tick ahead!’ shouted the skipper, and rushed for the gun, with the crew following. The gun was properly in charge of the mate, and he got to it first; but the brief dialogue which followed robbed him of his glory. ‘Right, skipper!’ he said, meaning thereby ‘This is my job.’ But in the same breath the skipper said: ‘All right, Jack. I got him! You run on bridge and keep him astern.’ The _Rosetta’s_ discipline was good--the mate went like a man, and the skipper laid the gun.
He was justified by his success. The enemy was very quickly put out of action, being apparently unable to cope with the whirlwind energy of Skipper Novo. From the moment of breaking surface less than sixty seconds had gone by, when the gun of the _Rosetta_ began speaking, and spoke nothing but hard words directly to the point. The target was 250 feet long, and only 300 feet away. Every shot was a hit. The fourth caused an explosion, and flames shot up four or five feet above the submarine. Evidently she could no longer submerge, and she attempted to make off upon the surface. But Skipper Novo was right in his estimate of his own chance--he had ‘got him.’ His fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth shots were all direct hits on the receding target, and at the eighth the enemy sank outright.