He reported that the _Pelikan_ was being prepared for surrender; that her garb of palms was being removed, but as far as he knew no attempt had been made to throw overboard the remaining guns, or to destroy the stores and munitions. "And to-morrow," remarked Stirling to his chum--"to-morrow we will redeem these." And he held out Kapitan von Riesser's receipt for the gold that he had taken from the three subs when they were captured on the _Nichi Maru_. CHAPTER XXIII How the _Pelikan_ Surrendered As soon as darkness set in the monitors switched on their searchlights, the _Crustacean_, which was farthest up-stream, training her projectors on the channel in the direction of the distant _Pelikan_, while the _Paradox_ swept both banks with her powerful beams. In the lagoon the _Eureka_ and the _Simplicita_ directed their searchlights upon the shore. About one bell in the middle watch the look-out on the _Crustacean_ noticed two dark objects drifting down-stream. At first he thought them to be a pair of hippopotami, but as their relative distance seemed constant and there was no sign of propulsion, he reported the matter to the officer of the watch. "It's only a part of the boom, smashed by our shell fire," he remarked casually. "We'll get a lot of wreckage down with the ebb-tide." Nevertheless he gave orders for the helm to be starboarded. The monitor, sheering to port under the force of the current until her cable was hard athwart her stem, missed the barrels, for such they were, by a good twenty yards. Steadily they drifted by, eventually stranding in the mud at a distance of two hundred yards from the _Paradox_. In half an hour they were high and dry, lying directly in the rays of the larger monitor's searchlight. Twenty minutes later another pair of barrels came drifting down. The officer of the watch of the _Crustacean_ executed a similar manoeuvre, but before the monitor sheered out of the track of the derelicts, the barrels were hung up one on either side of the bows. "I can hear something ticking, sir," reported a seaman leaning over the low freeboard. The officer hastened for'ard and listened. "Nonsense!" he declared. "It's the bull-frogs on shore that you can hear, or else the lap of the water. They're only waterlogged barricoes. Push them clear with a boat-hook." Three or four seamen tried to free the bows from the obstruction but without success. The barrels afforded little or no grip, and pinned down by the rush of tide refused to be thrown clear. "Away sea-boat!" ordered the officer of the watch. Quickly the boat was manned, and rowing well ahead of the _Crustacean_, was allowed to drop stern foremost until the coxswain was able to bend a rope to one of the barrels. "Can you hear anything, Sanders?" asked the officer of the watch. "No, sir," replied the petty officer.