Orders were soon repeated for the auxiliary craft to make for the battleship again, and laying the course for Ensign MacMasters to follow. There were storm signals flying; but the steamer was to keep near the shore until she got around Hatteras. It was presumed that she would find the _Kennebunk_ within a week at the most, and the tender was well provisioned and took on extra fuel at the dock.
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."