Then commenced a stern chase, for the _Galicia_, seeing the imminent danger that she was in, sought refuge in flight. Placing her stern towards the oncoming submarine, she fled down Channel, hoping thereby to save her precious cargo of wounded heroes. "Donner and blitz!" exclaimed the commander to his lieutenant. "We have missed her. That will never do. We must sink her now at any cost, or the American cables will be full of the affair, and the anger of the neutral world will be turned against us once more." "What shall we do, mein herr?" asked the lieutenant of the submarine. "She can do twenty-five knots and we can only do seventeen while we are submerged." "We must run her awash, and give her three-inch shells with the deck guns. The transports and patrols are some distance off now." "She will be calling back the destroyers by now with her wireless, mein herr." "Gott in Himmel! but we must risk it. There may just be time. I wish we had let the blamed hooker go by." Then, with a few round oaths, he switched down the periscope, pulled over the lever that drove the water out of the ballast tanks, and, as the boat came to the surface, he had the hatch unshipped, and ordered his gun crew to stations, calling them dachshunds, and a few more vile names. As soon as the submarine came to the surface, the electric motors were stopped, and the surface engines started so that every knot could be got out of them. "All clear!" had been reported to him by the lieutenant, and as regards the narrow horizon which can be surveyed from the periscope of a submerged vessel, all was indeed clear, for they had not seen the hornet which was buzzing overhead, silently dipping and nose-diving with her engines shut off, and rapidly manoeuvring like an angry wasp, waiting but an opportunity to get at its victim. So intent was the submarine commander upon his prey, with one eye on the hospital ship and another on the horizon, watching for the patrol boats, which he knew would be sure to return, that he had even got his deck-gun to work, and was firing rapidly at the _Galicia_, when to his dismay he heard, just over his head, the whir-r-r-r-r of the aeroplane, as Dastral started his engine again. "Mein Gott, was ist das?" he cried. "Ach, Himmel, but we are lost!" came the cry from the gunners and the ober-lieutenant. "Dachshunds!--you verdomt fools, turn the gun on the aeroplane!" yelled the irate commander, but he realised that he had lost the game. Nearer and nearer came that dreaded enemy, with its angry buzz, till but a hundred feet above the broad, whale-like back of the submarine, for Dastral, having but the two twenty-pound bombs in his carrier, determined not to miss his chance. "Be careful, Jock!" he shouted. "Drop it right on her conning-tower. Take no risks." "Right-o, old fellow!" Jock had replied, his hand on the bomb release. "She's giving us shrapnel, though. Look out!"