She went to sea without the boys having had an hour of shore leave; but they did not mind that.  The fun of running on the steamer was all right; but they were getting eager now to return to the superdreadnaught.

They ran out between the Capes into what the warrant officer called “a Liverpool particular,” meaning a fog almost thick enough to cut with a cheese-knife.

Every once in a while the nose of a steel-gray ship, small or large, poked through the mist, and her growling siren warned the smaller craft to get out of the way.

These patrol boats were very plentiful off the Virginia Capes at that time.  A mine-laying enemy submarine would have small chance getting into Hampton Roads.

But that such a craft was in the vicinity the crew of the Kennebunk’s tender learned was the fact within a few hours.  Their course was southerly, and almost in sight of the coast in clear weather.  But they broke out of the fog bank the next morning to see dead ahead two boats, each pulled by four pair of oars, wearily approaching the course of the coastwise steamships.

“I smell a U-boat about!” declared Ensign MacMasters, when he had directed the steamer’s course to be changed to run down to the row-boats.

He was right.  The boats contained the crew of the schooner Hattie May, out of Baltimore, which had been shelled and sunk twenty-four hours before by a German undersea craft.

And the report of the wearied crew included a description of the submarine.  She was camouflaged by a high bow and a rail all around, as well as by a canvas smokestack to make her look like a tramp freighter.

“The craft we raised going into the Roads!” ejaculated the warrant officer.  “It’s her, for a penny!”

“No argument,” growled Ensign MacMasters.  “We fell down that time.  Although we might have had our hands full if we had tackled her with our two small guns.”

It seemed that the disguised undersea boat mounted four guns on her deck, but she was a slow sailer.  She had moved up close to the schooner before showing her teeth.

Then she dropped two shells near the Hattie May to show the skipper that she had the range of his schooner.  He had to surrender, and the U-boat moved up and gave him and his crew ten minutes to get into the boats.  Then they sank the Hattie May by hanging bombs over her sides and exploding them simultaneously by an electric arrangement.

The skipper of the schooner was taken aboard the U-boat and said he was shown all over the ship.  The German captain seemed to be inordinately proud of his craft and what she could do.

“She’s got torpedoes, but she don’t use ’em because they are expensive,” said the skipper.  “They are saved for a last resort.  But she is a mine layer, for I saw two wells and saw the mines, too.  She has been out five weeks and is numbered U-Two Hundred Fifty.”