ld be a safe distance
ahead.

"No," he decided; "keep to the course and she'll clear us."

Ensign Ormsby nodded and remained silent. Neither could know of the
hidden mine that lay in her path.

Yet less than half a minute later a signalman raced to the stern of the
mine sweeper, wigwagging frantically this message:

"Hard a-starboard! We have just picked up a mine!"

The little craft had slowed down; she was maneuvering around that mine to
get hold and land it on her deck.

Ormsby read the signal with his chief. Not even waiting, now, for
Darrin's word, the watch officer changed the course.

Right in the course that they had been going the mine-sweeper now blocked
the way. Had her sweep been thirty feet either side she would have gone
on past and the destroyer would have struck the mine.

As the "Grigsby" went astern and to starboard of the little craft, then
turned and darted port-wise across her bows on a new oblique, officers
and men on the destroyer saw the British crew hoisting from the water the
mine that would have destroyed one of the latest prides of Uncle Sam's
big war fleet.

It was all over, so far as that mine was concerned, and for a moment or
two Darrin found himself shaking from a chill that had not been caused by
his recent soaking.

The thought of other probable dangers ahead caused him to steel himself
once more. To his subordinate officers he presented the confident,
smiling face to which they were accustomed.

Several craft of the British Navy and two other American war vessels had
received his S. O. S. radio message and had started on their way. But all
would have been too late, for some ten minutes after the rescuing fleet
started for England the "Gloucester" had lowered her nose under the
water. Soon after there was a violent explosion as the sea water reached
glowing furnace fires and the boilers, and the hospital ship went down,
another victim of inhumane warfare that respects not even the rights of
the wounded and sick.

Dave Darrin did not leave the bridge until he had seen his little fleet
enter the base port.

Then, pausing for only a word with Belle, he ordered a launch lowered and
went direct to the British admiral, reporting his work for the afternoon
in greater detail, for he had already sent in the main facts in a radio
code message.

"You have done magnificently, Mr. Darrin," exclaimed the admiral. "It was
a wonderful performance to keep the 'Gloucester' afloat under