He himself was at the helm. The quartermaster, whose place he had taken, lay face downward in the welter of his blood, struck stone dead in the fulfilment of his duty.
Crouch gripped the handles of the wheel so tightly that the knuckles on his sunburnt hands showed white beneath the taut skin. The man was evidently wrought up to the very highest pitch, his iron nerves strained to the utmost. When the shells burst about his ears, he never flinched, nor moved the fraction of an inch. He kept his eyes glued to the German submarine ahead, and moved the wheel, first this way and then that, so that the bows of the "Mondavia" were ever directed straight for the U93.
The commander of the submarine saw his danger just too late. He put his helm hard a-starboard, hoping to escape across the steamer's bows, and get a broadside target for his last torpedo. The movement was fatal, for Crouch's eye was quick to see, as his hands were quick to act. The "Mondavia" swung in upon her victim, as a half-blind rhinoceros charges when brought to bay.
Jimmy Burke, forgetful of his own great danger and the extreme peril in which all on board lay, dashed down the bridge steps, crossed the forward well-deck, and raced to the forecastle-peak.
He reached this point of vantage in time to behold the consummation of this tragedy, or epic--or whatever it may be. He looked down upon the submarine, rocking on the swell, and saw a torpedo shoot into the sea and flash into nothing in the distance. He could see those of the crew who were on deck--the men who had worked the guns. They were so close he could even distinguish the whites of their staring eyes. And there, standing at the elbow of the round-faced, young commander, was Rudolf Stork--the paid servant of the Wilhelmstrasse, the man who had served the Fatherland for gold.
Rage seized him when Stork saw his danger and recognized the boy who had tracked him, half by pluck and half by chance, from the close-packed streets of New York City to the sombre desolation of the Dogger Bank. And then, fury gave place to terror--the last emotion that seizes all men who find themselves confronted by inevitable death.
There is nothing strange in that. Whatever faith we have in God, the only Over-Lord of Victory, death, standing on the threshold, must seem terrible by reason of the darkness and the mystery of the grave. All men have sinned, and this poor, desperate hireling more than most; and perhaps, at that grave, anxious moment, he saw the evil of his life take living shape and rise before him from the depths to taunt, threaten and condemn.
Be that as it may, he clasped his hands, and looked upward to the sky, as if seeking mercy there. And then, the iron bows of the steamer crashed into the U93. There was a loud bursting sound--a kind of wrench--and simultaneously a shout--human voices uplifted in anguish and dismay. And the U93 crumpled--just crumpled like a paper cap--and vanished in a thin, hissing cloud of steam, leaving upon the surface a great, glassy pool of floating oil.
[CHAPTER XXVI--The Titans]
The U93 went to the bottom like a stone. On the surface of the water a modern submarine is as vulnerable as she is deadly underneath it. These boats, when compared to ocean-going steamers, have but little stability and strength. They are the vipers of the sea--venomous snakes whose backs may be broken with the lash of a whip, whose heads can be crushed with a stone.