CHAPTER XXIII

How the _Pelikan_ Surrendered

As soon as darkness set in the monitors switched on their searchlights, the _Crustacean_, which was farthest up-stream, training her projectors on the channel in the direction of the distant _Pelikan_, while the _Paradox_ swept both banks with her powerful beams. In the lagoon the _Eureka_ and the _Simplicita_ directed their searchlights upon the shore.

About one bell in the middle watch the look-out on the _Crustacean_ noticed two dark objects drifting down-stream. At first he thought them to be a pair of hippopotami, but as their relative distance seemed constant and there was no sign of propulsion, he reported the matter to the officer of the watch.

"It's only a part of the boom, smashed by our shell fire," he remarked casually. "We'll get a lot of wreckage down with the ebb-tide."

Nevertheless he gave orders for the helm to be starboarded. The monitor, sheering to port under the force of the current until her cable was hard athwart her stem, missed the barrels, for such they were, by a good twenty yards. Steadily they drifted by, eventually stranding in the mud at a distance of two hundred yards from the _Paradox_. In half an hour they were high and dry, lying directly in the rays of the larger monitor's searchlight.

Twenty minutes later another pair of barrels came drifting down. The officer of the watch of the _Crustacean_ executed a similar manoeuvre, but before the monitor sheered out of the track of the derelicts, the barrels were hung up one on either side of the bows.

"I can hear something ticking, sir," reported a seaman leaning over the low freeboard.

The officer hastened for'ard and listened.

"Nonsense!" he declared. "It's the bull-frogs on shore that you can hear, or else the lap of the water. They're only waterlogged barricoes. Push them clear with a boat-hook."

Three or four seamen tried to free the bows from the obstruction but without success. The barrels afforded little or no grip, and pinned down by the rush of tide refused to be thrown clear.

"Away sea-boat!" ordered the officer of the watch.

Quickly the boat was manned, and rowing well ahead of the _Crustacean_, was allowed to drop stern foremost until the coxswain was able to bend a rope to one of the barrels.

"Can you hear anything, Sanders?" asked the officer of the watch.

"No, sir," replied the petty officer.

As a matter of fact he was suffering from gun deafness, but from praiseworthy yet indiscreet motives he had kept the knowledge of his temporary physical defect to himself.

Ordering the men to give way, the coxswain jerked the obstruction clear of the _Crustacean's_ hawse.

"Shall I make this fast alongside, sir?" he asked. "Perhaps you'd be likely to examine it in the morning."

"No," was the reply, "Tow it clear of the _Paradox's_ hawse and cast it adrift."

The boat pushed off. The officer of the watch, returning to the bridge, watched the progress of the two barrels as they wobbled in her wake.

Suddenly his attention was aroused in another direction by a loud shout of; "Vessel dead ahead, sir!"

Sweeping round a bend in the river into the glare of the searchlights was the _Pelikan_. She was drifting broadside on, her length appearing to occupy the whole breadth of the deep channel.

"Action stations, there!" roared the officer of the watch.

A bugle blared. Up from below tumbled swarms of men dressed in motley array of a meagre description. The officers, berthed in the after part of the superstructure, rushed out. In thirty seconds the turret, with its pair of monster 14-inch guns, was surging round as a preliminary test of the turning mechanism.

At a glance Stirling took in the situation. The _Pelikan_, being not under control, had been turned adrift with the object of fouling and seriously damaging the British vessels lying in the strong tideway.

He telegraphed for half-speed ahead. The engine-room bell had not clanged a minute when the propellers began to churn. Hurriedly the cable was slipped, and the anchor with eighty fathoms of studded steel chain was lost for ever in the muddy bed of the Mohoro.

The youthful lieutenant-commander's first duty was to avoid the danger of being fouled. He could not go astern until the _Paradox_ was safely under way. Regarding the _Pelikan_ he was as yet uncertain whether to order the sea-boats to board her and drop anchor, if by chance her ground tackle were ready for instant use, or whether to sink the raider without further ado.

His deliberations were cut short by a tremendous explosion on the bank of the river on the starboard quarter of the _Crustacean_. Where the stranded barrels had been was a huge cavity in the mud, into which the water was pouring rapidly.

A few seconds later another explosion occurred well astern of the _Paradox_. The barrels were nothing more or less than deadly infernal machines. Had they exploded close to the side of either of the monitors it would be doubtful whether, even with their elaborate protection against torpedoes, they would have kept afloat after the terrific concussion.

Almost simultaneously the searchlights on the _Paradox_ went out. Fragments from the explosion had put the two projectors out of action.

The echoes of the explosion had scarce died away when a shout was raised that the drifting _Pelikan_ was on fire.

With startling suddenness lurid flames were belching from her decks. Spurts of red-tinged smoke eddied from her open scuttles. In a few seconds she was a mass of fire from bow to stern.

Slowly she drifted down-stream. At intervals her stern hung up in the mud, till, caught by the current, she would swing round and slide away from the bank. The flames reached well above her mastheads, yet there was comparatively little smoke. The roar of the devouring elements out-voiced every other sound, even the terrified noises of the denizens of the mangrove forests as they fled from the glare that rivalled that of the sun.

From the conning-tower Stirling ordered a shot to be fired from one of the huge turret-guns, but before the muzzle could be depressed a stupendous explosion shook sky, land, and water.

Denbigh, gripping the bridge rail, felt himself borne backwards by the furious rush of air. Temporarily blinded by the vividness of the flash, he was dimly aware of a series of crashes above and below him. The stanchion rails snapped off short. In vain the sub strove to regain his balance; he subsided heavily against the side of the chart-room, stunned by the terrific thunder-clap that followed the explosion.

Intense darkness succeeded the vivid brightness of the prolonged flash. The searchlights of the _Crustacean_ had failed.

Slowly Denbigh sat up. He became aware that debris was littering the partly wrecked bridge. In vain he tried to pierce the darkness and discern the whereabouts of his companions. A hot, pungent smoke drifted past, causing him to splutter almost to suffocation.

Someone tripped across his legs. It was Stirling emerging from the conning-tower. He recognized the sub's very forcible language.

"Hold on," cautioned Denbigh, "or you'll be overboard. The bridge has gone to blazes."

As he spoke the _Crustacean_ shuddered. Her bows rose slightly. With her hull still quivering under the pulsations of her engines she had run aground on a mud-bank on the port-hand side of the river.

Treading warily Stirling groped till he found the engine-room telegraph. Guessing the position of the lever he ordered "Stop". In the pitch-dark engine-room, for every electric lamp in the ship had been shattered, the artificers, facing death amidst the whirring machinery, succeeded in carrying out his orders.

Through the darkness came muttered exclamations and partly stifled groans. Down-stream the _Paradox's_ siren, for want of better means of communication, was wailing in long and short blasts.

"I have brought up to starboard," was the message. "You may feel your way past me."

"There's no may about it," thought Stirling grimly; then, leaning on the twisted bridge rails, he shouted in stentorian tones: "The hands will fall in on the port side of superstructure facing outboard. Bugler!"

"Sir!" replied a boyish voice through the impenetrable gloom--a voice without a tremor save of excitement.

"Sound the 'Still'."

A silence brooded over the stricken monitor. Even the wounded forbore to groan. Then someone appeared from the superstructure bearing a couple of "battle lanterns". Lights, too, began to glimmer through the hatchways, while with admirable promptness the electrical staff set to work to renew the carbons of the searchlights and to test the circuits of the internal lighting system.

Already the wounded were being carried below by their messmates. Four scorched and maimed forms lay motionless on the low fo'c'sle. There was no need to bestow medical attention upon them.

By this time Denbigh was aware that besides Stirling and himself only three persons remained on the bridge. Neither of them was O'Hara. Nor could he find the mate of the _Myra_, who on the first alarm had hurried with the others to the bridge.

The sub made his way to the ladder. Two steps did he descend, then his foot encountered nothingness. The rest of the ladder had been swept out of existence.

Grasping the still intact handrail Denbigh lowered himself to the superstructure. Almost the first man he met was Armstrong, who was mopping his cheek with a blood-stained handkerchief.

"It's nothing," replied the mate in answer to Denbigh's enquiry. "Didn't discover until I went below."

"Seen anything of O'Hara?" asked the sub anxiously.

"Yes, I've just carried him below, and I was on my way back to look for you."

"Thanks," said Denbigh briefly. "And what's happened to O'Hara?"

"Only shaken, I believe. He was blown off the bridge with the signal locker for company. They both fetched up against a splinter screen. O'Hara swears it isn't much, but I have my doubts."

The two officers made their way across heaps of debris to the diminutive ward-room. Here lying on a cushion on the floor was O'Hara.

He turned to smile as Denbigh entered but the attempt was a dismal failure. His face was drawn and grey in spite of his tanned complexion.

"My leg feels a bit queer," he said in answer to his chum's enquiry. "No, don't bother about the doctor. He's got quite enough to do. I say, old man, von Riesser's giving us a run for our money, isn't he?"

O'Hara's sentiments were almost identical with those of the rest of the ship's company. Not a word was said concerning the treachery of the kapitan of the _Pelikan_, whose method of handing over his ship was far from being in accordance with the terms of the capitulation. The fact that von Riesser had outwitted them certainly gave them food for reflection, but the unanimous conclusion was that the fun was by no means over.

The falling tide left the _Crustacean_ hard and fast aground on the slimy mud. With daylight the actual state of affairs could be discerned.

A quarter of a mile up-stream lay the remains of the much-sought-for raider. Only a few bent and buckled ribs and plates showing just above the water's edge marked the spot whence the devastating explosion had emanated. One of her funnels, looking like a distended concertina, had been hurled ashore and had lodged against a clump of palm trees. The mud-flats and the adjoining banks were littered with fragments of metal twisted into weird and fantastic shapes.

Down-stream lay the _Paradox_, now swinging to the young flood. The bore was not now in evidence, since it was the period of neap-tides, and the alteration in the direction of the tidal stream was scarcely perceptible.

The _Paradox_ had come off comparatively lightly. To all outward appearances she was intact, with the exception of her wireless gear, the wreckage of which was already being cleared away. Beyond a certain amount of breakage of glass and half a dozen of her crew sustaining slight wounds, the damage done was not in proportion to the danger to which she had been exposed.

The _Crustacean_ had suffered severely. Her fire-control platform and wireless gear had been swept out of existence. There were four deep gashes in her funnel, which was only kept in position by the chain guys. One half of the bridge had vanished; the remaining portion resembled a scrap-iron heap.

Her boats had been badly shattered save one, and that exception was the sea-boat, which was on her way back to the monitor when the explosion took place and escaped injury. Every bit of steel work exposed to the destroyed ship was pitted and blistered, while a heavy mass of plating from the _Pelikan_ had embedded itself in the monitor's quarterdeck.

Below the water-line she was undamaged. On taking soundings in her well no abnormal quantity of water was found. With the assistance of the _Paradox_ it would be a comparatively easy matter to release her from her mud berth at high water.

But other work was imminent. Every minute Kapitan von Riesser and the remainder of the _Pelikan's_ crew were increasing the distance between them and their foes. Without delay steps had to be taken to bring the treacherous Germans to bay.