"Yes; that is so," agreed Krauss. "We've started, so why not carry it through? I owe the kapitan a debt which I mean to pay. Furst will help. Who joins?" There was no lack of offers of assistance. The men knew that whether guilty or innocent they would have to suffer. They had no definite plan. It was merely a sudden conflagration on the part of men stifled by adverse conditions. Carried away by the unexpected turn of events, their seething discontent flared up into the red flame of mutiny. "Down with von Preugfeld!" hissed Krauss. "Come with me, brothers!" Maintaining a certain amount of caution, a dozen of the mutineers swarmed up the fore-hatch and made their way aft. Von Preugfeld, seated in the deck-chair and deep in a book, took no heed of their approach until, with a cat-like spring, Krauss leapt upon him. The chair collapsed. The kapitan and his assailant fell on the deck in a confused heap. Although a bully and a coward by nature, von Preugfeld put up a stiff fight when cornered. Recovering from his sudden surprise, he fought and struggled desperately, shouting in vain to von Loringhoven for assistance. The unter-leutnant was at that moment being held by two stalwart Frisian seamen. Over and over rolled von Preugfeld and his attacker. Punching, kicking, snarling and even biting, the two tackled each other tenaciously--the blue-blooded Prussian and the plebeian Frisian--while the rest of the mutineers looked on with evident relish, until it occurred to them that they might have a hand in the discomfiture of their hated taskmaster. It was not until half a dozen had thrown themselves upon the wellnigh breathless von Preugfeld that the unequal struggle ended. The ober-leutnant was bound hand and foot and secured to a ring-bolt--an object for derision and coarse jests from his captors. Shouting to the quartermaster to telegraph to the engine-room to stop the motors, Furst, who by common consent was acclaimed the ringleader, ordered all hands on deck. The mutineers' first council of war was about to begin. The outbreak had been spontaneous. A general mutiny of submarine crews had been thought about, and the idea was taking firm root; but this ebullition was almost unpremeditated. The men had no definite plan. They were literally and metaphorically at sea. "Let's hoist the Red Flag," suggested one. "Our comrades on the other _unterseebooten_ will join us." "Unless we meet an English ship of war in the meanwhile," added another. "I propose we hoist the White Flag and take the boat into an English port. We'll be well treated." "Yes," admitted Furst; "but what will happen after the war? Supposing the English treat us as mutineers and hand us over to Germany when peace is signed? What then?" "And I, for another, wish to get back to my wife and children," exclaimed a mutineer of timorous fibre. "I vote we alter our course for Hamburg or Wilhelmshaven."