"Not I, stranger. This hyer ship an’ cargo is jest insured up to the hilt in ’The Narragut Marine Assurance Company’. An’ since the bulk of the shareholders are Huns--wal, I guess it’s ’nuff said."
"Ach! Then I suppose I must let you go," exclaimed the baffled German officer. "If you fall in with any British war-vessels you might tell them that we have two Englishmen on board."
"Maybe you’d care to let us give ’em a passage?" hazarded the Boston skipper.
"If that had been our intention we should have done so without asking a favour," rejoined the unter-leutnant.
"Perhaps you would care to examine the ship’s papers?" enquired the master. His keen eyes had detected a small, swiftly moving object on the horizon--the expected patrol boat. Cap’n Hiram Goslow, although a tough Republican, was quite in sympathy with the Allies. On previous voyages he had fallen foul of the Huns, and the treatment he had received still rankled. "Maybe you aren’t quite satisfied about the ’Narragut Marine Assurance Company’ stunt?"
For the next half-minute the fate of U99 with all on board trembled in the balance. The unterleutnant, only too pleased to have the opportunity of finding a flaw in Captain Goslow’s statement, was about to accept the invitation, when a warning shout from the kapitan of the U boat brought the boarding-party scrambling on board with the utmost alacrity.
To the accompaniment of a chorus of jeers and laughter from the American crew, the submarine submerged and was lost to sight.
Although Jack Sefton and his brother were in ignorance of the precise nature of the meeting with the tramp and the imperturbable Captain Goslow, they knew by the unwonted noises and the shutting-down of the motors that something had transpired. The sudden closing of the hatchways, and the hasty dive taken, told the sub that once again the ceaseless vigilance of the British navy had been responsible for a bad quarter of an hour for the Germans.
The kapitan’s boast to the effect that his prisoners would be landed at Wilhelmshaven at nine o’clock was an empty one. Wildly exciting moments, when the U boat found herself foul of a maze of steel nets, delayed her progress, until at length U99 arrived at a position forty-five miles N.N.W. of Heligoland.