s. Suddenly a gun flashed and a cloud of brown
smoke surrounded the small steamer for a second. Shortly after that a
small shell splashed into the water about a thousand meters from us and
a water spout not higher than a small tree arose from the sea.

We laughed aloud.

"Such a rotten marksman! He wants to irritate us with a shotgun. That's
ridiculous."

"That's an insolence without an equal," argued Lieutenant Petersen
angrily, who felt that he had been insulted in his capacity of the
artillery officer aboard. "We should not submit to this outrage. May I
answer him, Herr Captain?" he asked me with eyes flashing.

"Yes, you may try as far as I am concerned, Petersen, but only three
shots. You can't hit him at this distance, anyway, and our shells are
valuable."

Grinning with joy, Petersen hurried to the guns, leveled, aimed and
fired, himself, while the water washed around him up to his waist.

"Too short to the right!" I shouted to him, after I observed the high
water spout through my double marine glasses.

The next shot fell close to the steamer. It became too hot for our
pursuer. He turned quickly and went back in the same direction from
which he had come. But the hunting fever had gotten into our blood. We
also turned and pursued the fleeing pursuer. Show us what you can do
now, engines!

Shot after shot flashed, roaring from our cannon. The distance was
almost too great for our range. We had to set the gun at the highest
possible angle in order to have any chance of hitting him. The first
shots all fell short, or to the side, but at the eighth we made a hit.
A roaring hurrah greeted the dark-brown explosion which marked the
arrival of the shell on the trawler.

In vain, the trawler sent one shot after another at us. They never came
near us. On our side, however, one hit followed another, and we could
see that the hostile ship was listing heavily to port, and we hoped to
be able to give him his death blow, when the outlines of three of his
colleagues were sighted behind and to the right and left of him,
approaching at great speed. Our only chance was to turn again in order
to avoid being surrounded, since too many dogs can kill the hare.

Early in the evening we submerged to keep ourselves at a safe depth. We
were very tired, because we had had thirty-eight hours of work and
realized, now that all the excitement was over, how the nerves began to
relax. To begin with, the nerve strain showed itself by