The wind snatched at the clothes and bandages of the intent men. Masses
of seaweed swept like gray blurs down the sheer of the tug's wake. Just
beneath them the propeller rushed with watery thunder.
"Yonder she rises!" cried one of the watchers, pointing at two wireless
masts that rose like the fins of a racing shark above the green surface
of the Sargasso.
"Yonder she rises!" repeated a voice amidship, and more faintly still
came the repetition from the bridge, "Yonder she rises--hard a-port!"
A sudden shift of the rudder shook the _Vulcan_ from peak to
keelson. Next moment the tug was speeding squarely across a seaweed
field, and another crook was added to the smoke mark in the sky. The
_Vulcan's_ blunt prow drove through the seaweed at a great rate,
while the clammy mass swung back together not sixty yards behind the
churning screw.
A strange race had developed between the tug and submarine. When both
crafts were on the surface in open water, the submarine had a knot or
two advantage of the _Vulcan_ and could have picked her up in four
or five hours. But early in the night Caradoc had discovered that the
powerful screw of the steamer, designed, as it was, to propel vast
loads, could make the higher speed across the algae beds.
On the other hand, if the submarine dived to escape the drag of the
weed, she again became the faster craft.
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