4
A FORTY-FOOT SETTING
The tramp that had done the damage lay rolling lazily in the long, smooth swell, blowing off steam. Her escort of two Destroyers—or more properly a Destroyer and a half—was some distance away, exchanging a highly-seasoned and technical dialogue through megaphones. In the course of an unpremeditated zigzag a quarter of an hour earlier the tramp had rammed one of her escort and cut her in two.
The combination of misunderstandings which culminated in this mishap was at the moment in process of review on the bridge of the tramp. Her master, who was a Portuguese, and the mate, who hailed from Pernambuco, in the apportioning of blame were for once in agreement; the Chinese Quartermaster called, weeping, upon his ancestors' gods to witness they lied. Each spake his own tongue, and the babel of their strife mingled with the thin hiss of escaping steam, to be engulfed by the vast blue loneliness of the sky.
The Captain of the rammed Destroyer (his age was twenty-five and his vocabulary one Methuselah need not have been ashamed of) transferred his ship's company to the other escort and made a cursory survey of the damage.
The bulkhead forward of the gaping cavity was holding—precariously, it is true, but still holding. Therefore the fore part of the crippled Destroyer continued to float; the after portion, since the sea was smooth and the swell slight, although sagged below the surface, continued attached to the remainder by a few twisted longitudinals of steel and some mangled plates. The unhurt Destroyer having embarked the shipwrecked crew, ranged alongside her damaged sister, and proclaimed her intention of passing a towing hawser.
The Captain of the cripple filled and lit a pipe while he considered the problem from the vantage of the midship funnel of his command, which lolled drunkenly in a horizontal posture athwart the upper deck.
"Not yet," he shouted, and turned to the Gunner, who stood knee-deep in water where once a torpedo-tube had been. "It's that cursed depth-charge I'm worrying about. It's still in the chute at the stern, and set to explode at a depth of forty feet."
The Gunner nodded, and bent forward to peer through the translucent depths at what had been, a quarter of a hour before, the dwelling-place of both. Somewhere beneath the surface, still affixed to the submerged stern, was the Destroyer's main anti-submarine armament—her depth-charges. One had been in the tray, ready set for instant release by the jerk of a lever, when the collision occurred.
"If the stern breaks off, that depth-charge'll sink with it, and explode when it gets down to forty feet."