"Well," Jack continued, "I followed Captain Ames aboard the Falcon and
we put to sea immediately. It was the following night the, we found
ourselves mixed up in the German mine fields and so close to the
fortress itself that we were in range of the land batteries as well as
the big guns of the German fleet. Our main fleet came far behind us,
for the big ships, of course, would not venture in until we had made
sure of the position of the mines."

"Right," said Frank. "I can see that -"

"Look here," said Jack, "who's telling this story?"

"You are," said Frank hastily. "Go ahead."

"All right, but don't interrupt me. As I said, we'd been searching
mines for the battleships. Better to lose a dozen or two of us little
fellows than one of the dreadnoughts, so we steamed ahead like a fan
with nets spread and a sharp lookout. We lost a few craft by bumping
mines, but we destroyed a lot of the deadly things by firing into the
fields and detonating them.

"We could generally tell when we were getting close to a field, which
at this point was protected by the land batteries, for the batteries
would redouble their fire. Might better have saved their powder and
let us run into the fields and be blown to bits, you will say. Not at
all. They would consider that a waste of good mines. Nobody wants to
waste a whole mine on a poor little torpedo boat destroyer -- and
twenty to forty men. There's no profit in that.

"We were sneaking along slowly, feeling our way and sitting on the