"Send men on deck through the fore and aft hatches equipped to cut
away the cable nets!"

Cramming his revolver into his holster, Jack hurried forward while
Ted made off aft to the engine room. In another moment the forward
hatch was thrown open and three of the German seamen emerged on deck,
followed by the _Monitor's_ executive officer in German naval uniform.
At the same time Ted climbed up from the engine room on the aft deck,
followed by four of the German prisoners. In the dim light the crews
moved about their work like phantoms.

As best they could the Germans lifted the steel wires and cables and
carried them along the deck of the _Monitor_; one toward the bow,
the other toward the stern. It was tedious work and hard work, too,
for the cables were heavy and so interwoven that it was a difficult
task to move them. Ted and his crew had the hardest work because of
the fact that the netting had become entangled in the propeller blades.

Jack and his men finished first, having lifted the last steel mesh
clear of the prow of the _Monitor_, the Germans under him standing
about the deck at his command as though but taking a little air
on the deck of their own vessel After what seemed an eternity to
the submarine commander in the conning tower, Herr Schmidt announced
that the vessel was clear of the entanglements.

"Fine!" exclaimed McClure. "Now we are going away from here."

So saying, he rang the engine room ahead and the _Monitor_ began to
move off at moderate speed. At the same time there was a great
commotion on the German destroyer and a voice at the end of a megaphone
demanded in stentorian tones where the U-boat was going.

"Tell them we are going into Ostend," said McClure, as the German
officer relayed the message into the conning tower.

Now the American officers were intent upon a safe get-away. In order
to make as small a target as possible of the _Monitor_ the tail of
the sub was turned to the destroyer and in that position she glided
away into the depths. In two minutes she was submerged, only the
tips of her periscopes showing.

"They have their aft guns trained on us and are firing away as fast as
they can load and reload," said Jack as he gazed into the tube.

"Well, they'll never get us now," exclaimed McClure as the _Monitor_
took in another three hundred pounds of water ballast and dived down
out of sight of the German warship.

There was danger now of running into another net