It would not be outside of possibility, or probability, for the crew of the Zeppelin brought down ashore to send a rescue ship to sea into a trap arranged with the usual German ruthlessness. It was possible that there had been no second Zeppelin at all, but that the _Colodia_ was steaming at her best pace to a rendezvous with a U-boat prepared to torpedo her. Tricks quite as vile had been played before by the Hun. Commander Lang, with his binoculars to his eyes, got the spot on the sea that the lookout had observed and kept his glasses trained there. It certainly was not a periscope they saw, yet it might be some wreckage held together for the special purpose of masking a periscope. The gun crews were at their stations and the men handling the depth bombs were ready on either side, and fore and aft, to drop the deadly explosives if it was found that the _Colodia_ had run into a trap. CHAPTER VIII--THE YANKEE WAY The sharp hull of the three hundred foot destroyer cut through rather than rode the waves. She was seaworthy enough, but in a cross sea like this, she rolled and dipped tremendously, as well as bucking right through the combers after the fashion of a pilot fish. One had to be well seasoned to her habit to stand such a tumbling about as the _Colodia_ gave her crew. If George Belding felt any qualms, he was able to repress them. He was a good sailor anyway, and having just come from a stiff cruise in the Bay of Biscay in his father’s transformed yacht, he proved himself to be a tolerable seaman. Belding was a manly fellow without being as rough as many of the sailors. Like the four Navy Boys, he was greatly interested by the view they all acquired very soon of the floating débris that had first been spied from the mast. The distance being so great, they could not immediately be sure whether the wreck was that of a boat or an airship. It was at first merely a blotch of darker color on the tumbling grey sea. “Looks more like a dead whale with a framework of scantling about it than anything else,” Ensign MacMasters told the boys. “It might be a whale at that,” commented Al Torrance eagerly. “They say that many a whale has been killed by depth bombs.” “Hi!” ejaculated Frenchy Donahue. “There’s a flag flying from a staff. I can see it.” “No dead whale would be likely to fly a flag,” Whistler said, smiling. “Commander Lang had better have a care,” grumbled George Belding. “This may be a trap, after all.” The _Colodia_ steamed on at undiminished speed. The outlines of the wreckage grew clearer despite the raging rainstorms that swept now and then across the gray waves. The vast hulk of a collapsed bag of silk cloth--it was never canvas--could have belonged to nothing but one of the German airships. “Half sunken Zep, sure as you are a foot high!” declared Al Torrance. “No argument on that score,” admitted another of the boys. “Do you suppose any of the poor chaps can be alive?”