Outside the reef, plunging and rolling heavily, was a small steamer. She was stumpy, high bowed, low waisted, with a short black funnel. Her bridge and single deck-house were disproportionately high. She was shabby and rusty. She looked insignificant. She was swept frequently with showers of white spray. On her bow and on her funnel could be seen the white letters and numbers which proclaimed her proper business. She was a trawler. In peace times she cast nets for fish in the North Sea. Now she flew the white ensign and on her fore-deck, above the high blunt bows, she carried a gun.
There were men handling the gun amid a smother of spray and the swirl of water round their legs. The deck on which they stood was the worst of all possible gun platforms. In the course of each few minutes it was set at a dozen angles as the little steamer plunged and rolled. But the men fired. Their shot went wide of the submarine which lay in the harbour, and spluttered against the side of the cliff. The trawler staggered on towards the end of the reef. Out of the welter of grey water to windward came another trawler, then a third appeared and a fourth.
Gorman edged up close to von Moll and caught him by the elbow.
"I say, von Moll," he said, "it's jolly lucky for you that you didn't have time to shoot Smith. That ship of yours is a goner, you know. It'll be a jolly sight pleasanter for you to be a prisoner of war than to be dangling about on the end of a rope in this beastly wind. And Donovan would have seen to it that you did swing if you'd shot Smith. There's nobody so vindictive as your humanitarian pacifist, once you get him roused."
The first of the little fleet of trawlers swung round the end of the reef into the sheltered water of the bay. She fired again. Her deck was steady. The target was an easy one. One shell and then another hit the submarine, ripped her thin hull, burst in her vitals.
Half an hour later Maurice Phillips landed on the palace steps.
Von Moll, though courteously invited, refused to dine with the Queen that night. Gorman, I think, was sorry for this. He was curious to see how a German naval officer behaves as a prisoner of war. The rest of the party felt that, for once, von Moll had shown good taste. His presence would have interfered with the general cheerfulness.