toward us, like a bull with lowered
horns.

"We had better keep below the water at any price, even if we are smashed
to pieces against the sandbank and the boat breaks up, rather than to
be blown to pieces by the shells of the English," was the thought that
flashed through my brain.

"Fill the ballast tanks," I called down to the "Centrale." "Fill all the
tanks full, Herr Engineer. Do you hear? We must not under any
circumstances rise any higher!"

"All ballast tanks filling!" it was reported from below.

Oh, how quiet it was below! Not a word was uttered. No anxious
conjectures, no surmises, and no questions.

A deep, irresistible grief clutched my heart. My poor little boat! My
poor crew! There every man unflinchingly and unhesitatingly did his
duty, and devotedly put his faith in me. They were all heroes, so young
and still so brave and able. And I, the commander, had brought them
into the very mouth of death, and to me, the only one who could see our
desperate situation, it seemed as if the scale of death slowly weighed
against us, because the destroyer, with horrible certainty, was
approaching. His sharp prow pointed directly towards us. Soon he would
discover the projecting parts of our tower and prow, which the breakers
treacherously washed over, and then we would be lost. Soon a hail of
shells would sweep over us, and the greedy, foaming sea would roaringly
hurl itself through the open holes in our sides.

The filling of the ballast tanks had the desired effect. The boat lay
down heavily on the reef and spurred the wild waves to greater efforts,
and, though we did not rise any farther, the jolting increased in
violence because of its added weight. It was a wonder that the boat did
not go to pieces like an egg shell, and we all looked at one another in
surprise when, after a terrific jolt, nothing more occurred than the
bursting of a few electric bulbs. "First-class material," I thought to
myself.

The mate who, over my shoulder, was keeping watch on the destroyer
through the window on the port side, suddenly said, in his hearty, Saxon
dialect:

"Well, well! Where does he intend to look for us now, I wonder? At any
rate, he doesn't think that we are stuck here among the breakers."

"Mate, you old optimist. Those words I'll never forget. Great God! If
you are right! Then certainly----"

"He is already turning," the little chap cut me short, and jammed his
nose against the window-glass, so as to be abl