Jack and his men finished first, having lifted the last steel mesh clear of the prow of the Monitor, the Germans under him standing about the deck at his command as though but taking a little air on the deck of their own vessel After what seemed an eternity to the submarine commander in the conning tower, Herr Schmidt announced that the vessel was clear of the entanglements.

“Fine!” exclaimed McClure.  “Now we are going away from here.”

So saying, he rang the engine room ahead and the Monitor began to move off at moderate speed.  At the same time there was a great commotion on the German destroyer and a voice at the end of a megaphone demanded in stentorian tones where the U-boat was going.

“Tell them we are going into Ostend,” said McClure, as the German officer relayed the message into the conning tower.

Now the American officers were intent upon a safe get-away.  In order to make as small a target as possible of the Monitor the tail of the sub was turned to the destroyer and in that position she glided away into the depths.  In two minutes she was submerged, only the tips of her periscopes showing.

“They have their aft guns trained on us and are firing away as fast as they can load and reload,” said Jack as he gazed into the tube.

“Well, they’ll never get us now,” exclaimed McClure as the Monitor took in another three hundred pounds of water ballast and dived down out of sight of the German warship.

There was danger now of running into another net and the officers of the sub were fully cognizant of their peril.  As a precaution McClure stopped the engines entirely and then gave orders to submerge to one hundred feet.  Slowly but steadily the vessel dropped away into the fathoms and was soon beyond the range of guns, depth bombs or other menacing projectiles.  When at last the depth dial showed the desired depth the Monitor was headed straight out to the open sea and started ahead at eight knots an hour.

Unmolested, but feeling her way cautiously along until well out of the danger zone of nets and mines, the Monitor moved out to sea and set her course for the Strait of Dover.

By noon she had made excellent progress.

Not a vessel had yet been sighted, and with the freedom of the open sea the sub was able to cruise on the surface at full speed.  Several hours later the Monitor picked up H.M.S. Chesterton, turned over the German prisoners, and gave warning of the intended U-boat raid on the transports.  “We sank the mother ship of the submarines,” McClure told the Chesterton’s commander, “but they’ll probably get their supplies elsewhere and try to pull off the stunt.”

The world was electrified next morning by the news of a great battle between the Allied High Seas Fleet and the German submarine flotilla, in which the Germans, outnumbered and outgeneraled, were beaten off with the loss of several giant U-boats.  The Monitor played a very important part in the engagement and had the satisfaction of sinking one of the enemy ships by gunfire, coming up at close range right beside the U-boat and engaging her in an old-fashioned hand-to-hand conflict.