One of her guns was put out of commission and a shell under the stern had knocked out the propeller just as the Colodia entered the fight. She swung now to the slow current, and as the destroyer rushed past her the British crew could only cheer her on. Their work was done--and done well! But here came a cloud rolling along the surface of the sea from the south that offered shelter for the raider, the prow of which was already turned in that direction. The German had no intention of remaining to fight the battle out with the guns of the destroyer. The raider was not, of course, any match for the American naval vessel. It was the part of wisdom for her to run. Besides, she was already crippled, and it would have been but a matter of a few minutes before she would either have to capitulate or be sunk had she continued in the fight. The _Colodia_ might even have kept out of range of the raider’s guns, circled about the German, and destroyed her at pleasure. Or she could have sent a torpedo against the pirate ship and blown her to bits. Here, however, fortune helped the enemy. The cloud of fog laid along the surface of the sea offered the _Sea Pigeon_ refuge. She proved again that she was a “wary bird!” Into the cloud she dashed, and where she went after that--although the fog bank was low--the lookouts of the _Colodia_ could not tell. “If we only had a hydroplane to send up!” said Whistler Morgan to his chums. “The time will come when every destroyer will have its pair of hydroplanes for observation. From a thousand feet up, that fog would never shelter the raider. The hydroplane could signal us the raider’s position and we’d follow her just as though it were clear weather.” In this case, however, the commander of the destroyer did not wish to desert the _Ferret_ until he had learned her condition. The _Colodia_ described a wide circle and steamed back within hailing distance of the crippled British ship. Fortunately there were no women or other passengers aboard this vessel. Her wounded were few, too. The hull of the craft had not suffered. Already her machinists were at work on the propeller. They had new blades in the hold, and the end of the shaft was not injured. They proposed to sweat on the new propeller, make such other repairs as were necessary, and then attempt to limp into the Bermuda station under her own steam. “You can’t beat those fellows!” said Ensign MacMasters admiringly. “The merchant sailors nowadays have more to face than we do, and with less chance of getting safely out of a scrimmage. I wouldn’t want to be hobbling along in that cripple to the Bermudas with that German pirate in the vicinity.” Just where the _Sea Pigeon_ had gone behind the fog they could only surmise. But Commander Lang ordered a course south by west, hoping that the raider would turn up again.