It was an odd defiance, a tugboat's challenge to a German battle line.
The nibbling of a mouse once set a lion free. Here was a mouse
endeavoring to net a whole herd of lions.
The cruisers did not overhaul the little vessel as rapidly as Madden had
anticipated. The _Vulcan_ skurried through the seaweed fields,
dodging this way and that in order to take advantage of every lane of
open water, but the unwieldy battleships could not accept small
advantages, and were forced to plow straight ahead, through weed or wave
as it came.
Thus the cruisers still fired at extreme range, and the tug escaped
destruction as a gnat might jiggle between raindrops and survive a
summer's shower.
Amid steady crashes, Madden awaited stoically for the shot that would
erase the _Vulcan_ from the face of the sea. There came another
splintering shock; the upper half of the foremast made a curious jump,
and came down with its rigging and plunged overboard in the rushing
water. The obstruction instantly choked down the tug's speed. Every man
in the crew seized axe, saw, anything, and rushed forward in a fury of
impatience, hacking, chopping, sawing, working through the wreckage and
cutting the ropes with jackknives, in an effort to clear the tug of
debris. After an intolerable while, the last ratlines snapped like
pistol shots, the whizzing end of a rope struck a sailor and laid him
out as if clubbed, then the foremast fell away and the _Vulcan_
rushed forward again.
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