The German battle-cruisers were now close enough for their hulls to be distinguishable. The outline of each ship stood forth, clear-cut and black, against the sky-line. Each was rushing forward at its topmost speed, bearing down with inevitable precision upon the defenceless cargo ship, which, like an exhausted, hunted animal, strained every bolt, bar and rivet to save herself from unutterable disaster. Suddenly, it became apparent that, in addition to the Dreadnought cruisers, the sea was alive with a host of smaller craft--light cruisers and torpedo-boat-destroyers. There were in all--so far as they could see--six light cruisers and a number of destroyers, which were spread out on all sides like a ring of skirmishers or scouts.
In less than five minutes, the "Mondavia" was reduced to a floating wreck. She was so riddled with shell, so battered, torn and damaged, that she was no more than a sheer hulk, lying idle on the waves. Her funnel had been struck low down, and hurled piecemeal overboard, taking with it the greater part of the boat-deck and the upper davits. Both masts had been shot away, the main-mast falling forward, so that all the superstructure on the main-deck, from the companion-way to the chartroom, had been reduced to ruins. In the sides of the ship there were, at least, half-a-dozen gaping holes, each one large enough to admit the body of a man. One shell had burst in the engine-room, killing the chief engineer and wounding three of his assistants, and leaving the engines no more than a mass of scrap-iron.
How Crouch and Jimmy Burke lived in the midst of this, it is not possible to say. The dogs of war, ferocious though they be, are sometimes kind and sometimes pitifully cruel. One man will be killed by a spent bullet the very moment he comes within the sound of guns; whereas another, time and again, will live in the midst of mad, raging carnage, and come forth unscathed and still alive.
Crouch's clothes were in rags and tatters. He had been hurled to the forward well-deck when the bridge had given way, and had found himself buried beneath a heap of splintered wood and twisted brass and iron. He was bruised from head to foot, and had been, at first, a little stunned; for a moment he had not been able to remember where he was.
And Jimmy Burke was in no better plight. Indeed, he looked as if he had received a mortal wound, for he was all sprinkled with the blood of a man who had been killed quite near to him--a poor fellow who had been literally blown to pieces by an 11-inch shell that burst at his very feet.
Crouch, followed by Jimmy, dragged himself to the forecastle, which was the only point of vantage left on the demolished, shattered ship. Save these two, no one was to be seen upon the deck, in which great holes yawned like chasms. Here and there, in horrid attitudes, lay those who had given up their lives, who had been murdered--for it was nothing else but murder--under the Naval Ensign of the German Empire, for the vile cause of the Fatherland and Kultur.
The great shells still rained in fierce and venomous profusion. Sooner or later, the unhappy ship must be struck below the water-line, when nothing could save the lives of those on board; for, not one of the ship's boats remained, and they could hope for little mercy from German seamen.
Captain Crouch looked about him like a man who finds himself, upon a sudden, on the horns of a dilemma. In spite of his dishevelled and tattered garments, he appeared quite unconcerned. He took not the least notice of either the great shells or the deafening explosions which every few seconds rent the air. He stood with his legs wide parted, and both hands thrust into his trousers pockets.
"I don't know how it is we're still alive," said he; "or how the old ship isn't lying on her beam ends, at the bottom of the sea. It's a mystery that no one will ever solve. It would stump Solomon himself, or my name was never Crouch."
"It can't last," said Jimmy, with his eyes fixed upon the gigantic shadow of the "Blücher."