“Two hundred fifty!” gasped Whistler to his chums, who were hanging over the rail to listen to this report.  “What do you know about that?”

“That’s the very number that man Blake used in the restaurant, talking with the skipper of the oil tender, wasn’t it?” asked Frenchy of the quick memory.

“You mean Franz Linder, the German spy!” ejaculated Torry, with emphasis.  “He spoke of this very sub.”

“You bet!” agreed Ikey.

The steamer’s wireless operator was sending out an S O S call and a destroyer quickly answered.  The steamer remained by the two boats from the sunken schooner until the fast-flying naval vessel appeared in the west.

After that the boys on the steamer kept their eyes open for sight of the camouflaged U-boat.  As the boat picked up speed again and kept to her course.  Whistler Morgan and his mates discussed the matter with much excitement.

“Do you s’pose Mr. MacMasters will let us shell the Hun?” demanded Frenchy eagerly.

“She’ll more likely shell us,” declared Torry, inclined to be pessimistic.

“I bet we can run away from her,” cried Ikey Rosenmeyer.

“Say! this tender is no sub chaser.  In a race with the S. P. 888, for instance, she wouldn’t have a chance.”

“Aw, well,” Frenchy broke in, “that U-boat will not have a speed of over fourteen knots on the surface.  We can do better than that.”

“But if she sneaks up on us as that other one did on the Kennebunk,” Whistler observed, “we might easily be potted.”

“Right-o!” declared Torry.  “Whichever way you put it, I don’t want to see that U-boat till we’re aboard the Kennebunk again—­if ever.”

After leaving the crew of the Hattie May to be picked up by the destroyer, the tender continued to run parallel with the coast.  Land was seldom wholly out of sight, for Mr. MacMasters had orders as to his course, expecting to meet the superdreadnaught on that vessel’s return from the south.

The fog in which they had run out from the Capes was the forerunner of a storm which increased as the day advanced.  The gale was behind them, however, so there was no fear of the tender being cast ashore.

The sea around Cape Hatteras is notoriously rough in a gale, and the outlook was not promising when they sighted Hatteras Light that evening.  Seaworthy as the steamer was, she pitched terrifically in the seas that threatened now to overwhelm her.

There was a pale and watery moon that evening, with wind-driven clouds scurrying across its face and quenching its light every few minutes.  The steamer pitched so that her propeller was frequently entirely out of the sea.

Phil Morgan, in his watch on deck, thought the situation was as nasty as any he had experienced since joining the Navy.  With every hatch and door battened to keep the seas from flooding her, they ran on, making scarcely five knots an hour.  Now and then they were completely overwhelmed with the seas; and always the craft plunged and kicked as though she actually had to fight for supremacy with each wave.