those extra knots of
speed the captain had spoken of, and all that, and even more than, he
had prophesied had come to pass. It was just such a swaggerer of a sea
as that first one that _Zip_ had dived into which did the trick, only,
as the _Flossie_ was going faster, the impact was somewhat more severe.
She was a mile or more distant from us when it happened, and, watching
from the bridge of the _Zip_, we simply saw her dissolve into a
sky-tossed spout of foam. When she reappeared she was floating, beam-on,
to the seas, and, for the moment, an apparently helpless hulk.

The captain's instant diagnosis of a couple of muffled detonations which
followed was entirely correct.

"That sea must have 'jack-knifed' the _Flossie_ so sharply," he said,
"that the recoil took up the slack in the wires, releasing two 'cans'
she seems to have had set and ready. It's about the same thing as just
happened to us, except that the tautened wire only rang the stand-by
bell, the signal for the men to set the depth-charges. First thing I did
after we came to the surface was to negative that supposed order. That
was what I was doing when I waved to those boys who were clawing at the
'cans,' with their heads under water. Lucky they weren't carried away."

It was a chastened _Flossie_ which had gone floundering back to station
a few minutes later, but somehow or other she had managed to carry on,
and now she was back at Base. I won't "give comfort to the enemy" by
trying to describe her appearance, but some hint of it may be gleaned
from the laconic comment of one of the _Zip's_ signalmen, as the
"Flotilla's Pride" was warping in to moor alongside the mother ship.

"Gee whiz!" he ejaculated. "See the old _Vindictive_ limpin' home from
Zeebruggy! S'pose they'll fill her up with concrete now an' block a
channel."

The captain grinned as he overheard the remark where he waited by the
starboard rail for the last of the mooring lines to be made fast. "It's
not quite so bad as that," he said. "If need be, they'll have her, and
all the rest of us, right as trivets in three or four days, and quite
ready to take the sea again when our turn comes. It's all in the convoy
game, anyhow, and not such bad fun after all, 'specially when it's
behind you, and you've got a bath, and a change, and a lunch at the
Club, and an afternoon of tennis in immediate prospect. Come along."

CHAPTER VI

YANK BOAT _versus_ U-BOAT

It was the turn of the tide a