“Hard-a-starboard!” he croaked, and over went the helm again. He stepped to the gun control voice-pipe: “Stand by the port guns!” and as he gave the order a greenish-brown cylindrical shape, streaked with rust and spouting oil from gaping seams, appeared in the centre of the boiling scum and foam left by the explosion. Slowly it righted itself, and the hull and conning-tower of a submarine lay on the surface with a heavy list. As the yacht swung round, the port guns opened fire: a shell burst on the armoured conning-tower, shattering the periscope and blowing great fragments of steel high into the air. Another penetrated the hull and exploded internally, clouds of vapour pouring from the rents in the shell. The coxswain steadied the wheel, heading the bows straight for the great whale-like object.
Now the cunning of an old seaman is the cunning of a grey fox. The Admiral held up his hand, and the officer of the watch jerked the telegraphs to “stop.” The stern of a vessel driven at high speed is drawn down by the thrust of the propellers. The moment the engines stop, the stern rises again and the bows dip. In this case they dipped as they struck the submarine squarely just abaft the conning-tower, and clove through the rounded hull like a hatchet through a fungus.
They had a glimpse on either bow of the halves of a submarine, still kept afloat by the buoyancy of her tanks and closed compartments. It was only a momentary glimpse—of glistening, shattered machinery and mangled bodies, of hands raised in prayer or anguish.... Then both broadsides broke out, pouring a salvo at point-blank range into those smoking segments that vanished amid the flames of bursting shell and leaping water.
They rescued one prisoner—as is not infrequently the case, the captain. Him the Admiral caused to be warmed and dried and restored with hot drinks while the yacht, assisted by two destroyers, rounded up the scattered convoy. Then the Admiral interrogated his prisoner. “You are very young,” he said at the conclusion of the interview.
The Prussian clicked his heels. “It is a young man’s war,” he said.
“So they tell me,” replied the Admiral dryly.
. . . . .
His relief was waiting on the quay beside his baggage when the yacht—her dainty bows looking like the features of a professional pugilist—tripped back to harbour. He was a young lieutenant-commander, fresh from the Grand Fleet—a contemporary, in fact, of the Admiral’s son. And early the following morning the Admiral went over the side—not as he might have done ten years earlier, with guard and band, to the shrill twitter of a pipe. He paused at the gangway, and laid his left hand on the younger man’s shoulder.
“The race is to the swift,” he said, “the battle to the strong. Good luck to you, my lad. You want a bigger gun forward, if you can get ’em to give it to you, and remember she turns quicker on port helm.... She’s a good little ship.”
“Thank you awfully, sir,” said the lieutenant-commander. “She’s a ripping little ship, and I’m only sorry I’m——”