Then pulling on a dry sheepskin coat and turning up the fur collar against the wintry blast, he went to the bridge. "All's secure, and no sign of trouble so far, sir," reported Lieutenant Fernald. Yet, unknown to any on the destroyer, the "Grigsby," driving ahead obliquely from port to starboard well ahead of the steamship, was heading straight toward a mine that lurked beneath the surface of the water. CHAPTER XXIV CONCLUSION "SHALL I order the helm to starboard, sir?" asked Ensign Ormsby. "We're due to sail too close to that mine-sweeper." Though the two craft were separated by several hundreds of yards, Darrin's quick, trained eye took in the fact that the mine-sweeper, by the time the "Grigsby" crossed her course, would be a safe distance ahead. "No," he decided; "keep to the course and she'll clear us." Ensign Ormsby nodded and remained silent. Neither could know of the hidden mine that lay in her path. Yet less than half a minute later a signalman raced to the stern of the mine sweeper, wigwagging frantically this message: "Hard a-starboard! We have just picked up a mine!" The little craft had slowed down; she was maneuvering around that mine to get hold and land it on her deck. Ormsby read the signal with his chief. Not even waiting, now, for Darrin's word, the watch officer changed the course. Right in the course that they had been going the mine-sweeper now blocked the way. Had her sweep been thirty feet either side she would have gone on past and the destroyer would have struck the mine. As the "Grigsby" went astern and to starboard of the little craft, then turned and darted port-wise across her bows on a new oblique, officers and men on the destroyer saw the British crew hoisting from the water the mine that would have destroyed one of the latest prides of Uncle Sam's big war fleet. It was all over, so far as that mine was concerned, and for a moment or two Darrin found himself shaking from a chill that had not been caused by his recent soaking. The thought of other probable dangers ahead caused him to steel himself once more. To his subordinate officers he presented the confident, smiling face to which they were accustomed. Several craft of the British Navy and two other American war vessels had received his S. O. S. radio message and had started on their way. But all would have been too late, for some ten minutes after the rescuing fleet started for England the "Gloucester" had lowered her nose under the water. Soon after there was a violent explosion as the sea water reached glowing furnace fires and the boilers, and the hospital ship went down, another victim of inhumane warfare that respects not even the rights of the wounded and sick. Dave Darrin did not leave the bridge until he had seen his little fleet enter the base port.