Thus it was that Huerta, the Indian descendant of the Aztecs, who always went one way and came back another, got out of saluting our flag and probably saved his life. CHAPTER IX--ON A SUBMARINE CHASER Very shortly after Huerta resigned the presidency of Mexico and made his get-away, the ex-Kaiser let loose the war-dogs of Europe and here I was signed up for four years in the Navy and, I figured, didn’t stand a ghost of a chance of breaking into the fight. It seemed to me a pretty tough deal that old Huerta could resign his job while I, a free American citizen, couldn’t quit, resign, go-over-the-hill, or anything. What I wanted to do was to get over to England and _sign up_ there for it was dollars to doughnuts in my mind that there would be some small bickerings going on between the British and the German navies and it would be well worth while to see those big guns get into action. I hadn’t the remotest idea, then, that the _Imperial German Navy_, as those _boches_ so loved to call it, would be afraid to come out in the offing and put up a fight. But when it came to torpedoing unarmed passenger ships loaded with women and children, or hospital ships carrying wounded soldiers they were right there Fritzy-on-the-spot with their _blackheads_ as they called their Whitehead torpedoes. While the ex-Kaiser’s navy could not be induced to leave its mine-protected harbors and do battle with the British fleet--no, not even if all Germany starved to death--crafty, old Admiral von Tirpitz began to build up a frightful fleet of U-boats with the avowed intention of sinking every merchant ship, no matter what flag she flew, if she carried foods or munitions to England and her Allies. As the United States was shipping cargoes of both of these commodities to Great Britain and France, which was entirely within her rights according to international law, it was not long, as you can imagine, before the German U-boats were sinking our ships and killing our men. It was bewhiskered Admiral von Tirpitz who figured out and showed the ex-Kaiser that the only way left open for Germany to win the war was to sink every ship afloat that did not fly the German flag, and soon after this program was agreed to by the war-lords they seemed in a fair way to succeed, for they were sinking ships faster than the Allies and the United States could replace them. Any number of schemes to beat the U-boats were thought up and while most of them were quite impracticable there were a few that proved effective when put to the test. One way was to build more merchant ships every month than the U-boats could sink and when Uncle Sam put the job into Mr. Schwab’s hands this was done. Another plan was to hunt down the U-boats with _submarine chasers_. A submarine chaser is a small, high-speed boat carrying one or more rapid fire guns.