As quickly as one can tell it, the Germans “tailed on” to the ropes and hauled their own boat into the air. In a minute she overhung the rail of the sugar ship and the Germans swarmed out upon her deck. The forward guns of the _Colodia_ might have thrown shells into this launch, but such missiles would have imperiled the lives of the people on the _Susanne_. The _Colodia’s_ officers through their glasses could see the remaining passengers and crew of the sugar ship lined up against the rail under the threatening rifles of the Germans. There was considerable activity on the deck of the sinking ship during the next few minutes. The destroyer swerved in her course, her commander hoping to get around the _Susanne_ and mark the position of the raider before the motor launch could get away from the sinking ship. But the Germans worked so quickly that this chance was very small indeed. The destroyer was still a long shot away from the exciting scene. A number of men were seen staggering along the deck of the sugar ship bearing some heavy object. It was hoisted into the launch and then the latter was lowered quickly into the sea, most of the Germans scrambling down as best they might. “It’s the purser’s strong box!” shouted one of the lookouts in the destroyer’s top. “And they are going to shoot the poor guy, I bet, for not giving up the combination!” Other members of the _Colodia’s_ company had already observed a man’s figure, with his hands tied behind him, standing at the farther rail of the _Susanne_. The four last men from the raider’s launch, all ready to descend into the boat, raised their rifles and fired across the deck at the victim. The man fell, and the murderers swarmed down the rope into the launch. All this the excited crew of the destroyer saw while they were yet too far away to be of any help. Commander Lang might have ordered his guns to open fire; but the danger of hitting the _Susanne_ was too great. The officer commanding the German launch was too sharp to give the coming destroyer any safe chance of making a hit without damaging the sugar ship. He steered his motor-boat right along the hull of the crippled _Susanne_, under the shower of flaming débris that had begun to fall, and went out of sight in a cloud of smoke that had settled upon the sea. This smoke offered a splendid bit of camouflage for the raider and the launch. Up to this point the lookouts in the destroyer’s tops had caught no glimpse of the _Sea Pigeon_. She was a very wary bird indeed! The smoke cloud from the burning ship spread across the sea and supplemented the fast dissolving fog in hiding the German craft. But suddenly a lookout hailed the _Colodia’s_ quarter: “Steamship’s top, sir! Six hundred yards abaft the sinking ship, sir!” Orders snapped to the forward gun crews. They could see nothing but fog and smoke astern of the _Susanne_; but their knowledge of elevation, distance, and other gunnery lore, encouraged them to hope for a “strike.”