The Submarine Hunters

After breakfast Vernon sent the obliging waiter to purchase a collar, for the sheep-dog was wearing none. Sticking closely to Vernon's heels, the pup followed his new master to the police station, where an inspector took down a number of particulars.

"Very good, sir; that's all I want. I don't fancy you'll hear any more about it."

"What are you going to call him?" asked Ross, as the chums were seated in a first-class carriage, with the dog at Vernon's feet, on their way to Cornwall.

"Zepp," replied Vernon promptly.

"Not patriotic," objected Ross with a laugh.

"I think so," rejoined his chum.

"Why?"

"Because, like last night's Zeppelin, he turned tail when he had a shrapnel bullet in his stern."

"That's all very well," said Ross, "but you can't explain all that to everyone. Why not call him Shrapnel?"

"All right. 'Shrap' for short," agreed Vernon. "Good boy, Shrap! Wag your tail, you little rascal."

And Shrap obeyed promptly. Evidently the choice of a name reminiscent of bodily injury troubled him not one jot.

CHAPTER XXV

Off the Belgian Coast

"A chance of seeing something exciting at last!" exclaimed Ross. "Of course we've not had altogether a dull time, but this ought to be absolutely 'it'."

Two months had elapsed since the lads saw a hostile air-ship over London. Now they were about to see what a fleet of heavily armed British ships could do—not against a practically defenceless town, but against the strongly fortified German batteries on the Belgian coast.

Trefusis and Haye were on board the Capella, lying in the outer harbour at Dover. It was not the Capella that had come off second-best in an encounter with a floating mine, but another, similar in almost every respect to the lost patrol-boat. She was manned, too, by the same officers and crew—with one exception. Sub-lieutenant John Barry had obtained his promotion, and had been appointed to H.M.S. Hunbilker in command.

What the Hunbilker was, no one on board the Capella knew. The Admiralty publications at their disposal were blank as far as that ship was concerned. Speculation ran high: some of the officers expressing their opinion that Barry's command was a subsidized cargo-boat; others that she was one of the mosquito flotilla that had been evolved out of modern naval requirements. All were wrong, as they had yet to learn something more of the type of vessel flying the White Ensign that was helping to sweep the seas of the Black Cross of Germany.

"Well, old boy, how do you think you will like the racket?" asked Vernon, stooping to pat the massive head of a healthy-looking sheep-dog. Shrap had been allowed, by the Captain's permission, to join the Capella as a mascot—the pet of both officers and crew, and of Vernon Haye in particular.

Shrap winked knowingly, then trotted off to a secluded part of the chart-room, where, under a locker, he had hidden the remains of what, half an hour previously, had been Sub-lieutenant Fox's shaving-brush.

The Capella was by no means the only craft rolling sluggishly in the vast artificial harbour. There were seven motor patrol-vessels, specially detailed for the forthcoming operations as tenders to the sea-planes.

A strong array of monitors, craft of ugly but utilitarian design, low-lying, and mounting two 14-inch guns, had assembled for the purpose of making it hot for the Hun on the morrow. Only light-draughted craft were to be employed in the attack, since they could approach within very effective range of their guns, and at the same time stand little chance of being torpedoed by a handful of unterseebooten that had been transported in sections to Zeebrugge and there fitted for service.

According to the Admiral's plan, the monitors were to approach Ostend just after daybreak. In the offing a number of empty transports were to assemble, protected by a powerful flotilla of destroyers. The appearance of these transports would be taken by the Germans as an indication of an attempted landing of a British force, and troops would be hurriedly massed to repel the threatened invasion.

The monitors were thereupon to fire a certain number of rounds, then, followed in a parallel course by the transports, make for Zeebrugge. Alternate visits to both the Belgian ports in German hands were to be made throughout the day, thereby wearing out the German troops in fruitless marching and counter-marching, and at the same time diverting a strong body of men from a section of the trenches upon which the British troops were to deliver a sudden and unexpected assault.

At four in the morning the monitors began to leave Dover Harbour. Thanks to the stringent military precautions taken in the town—precautions that could with decided advantage be imitated elsewhere—the presence of spies was almost, if not quite, a matter of impossibility. Unheralded by the Kaiser's agents, the small yet powerful vessels cleared the entrance to the breakwater and headed for the Belgian coast.