It was as if
the stout little craft had swung around on her heel.
"Faith and would ye shake a man's arrum off!" shouted Hogan at nobody in
particular. "And are ye going back to meet the friendly little wasp?"
That was exactly what Caradoc was doing. He had swung the _Vulcan_
about in less than a hundred yard circle and was plowing straight back
the way they had come.
The crowd on the poop held their breath at the daring maneuver. Tug and
submarine were now rushing at each other full tilt, only one ran under
water, the other on the surface. Suppose the submarine should thrust up
a periscope for an instant--a cough of the torpedo tube and the
_Vulcan_ would be blown to scrap iron.
The men on the poop ran forward, staring with frightened eyes over the
gray-green soggy field through which the _Vulcan_ ripped her way.
It seemed fantastic to think that somewhere under that lifeless weed
human beings spun swiftly along, freighted with the most terrific engine
of destruction. What strange warfare! Who could have fancied that when
savages began to use clubs to maul each other it would end in this
diabolical refinement! Weapons, weapons, weapons--the history of man's
undying savagery working under new forms of civilization! The war
submarine--what a monstrous offspring of genius!
The sun rose like a white-hot ball in the brazen sky and the men held to
the rails, mouths open, and stared ahead into the safe open water,
expecting every moment for the _Vulcan_ to spatter skyward in a
volcano of fire and steel.
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