"For mercy's sake," cried Jimmy, "come with me! That villain is signalling from the poop to a German submarine."
Crouch straightened like a man struck. For fully a minute, he stared at Jimmy in amazement. There was that in the expression of the boy's face that left no room for doubt. No one--and Captain Crouch less than any one--could fail to see that he had spoken what he honestly believed to be the truth.
"A German submarine!" repeated Crouch.
"What else could it be?" cried Jimmy. "No cruiser, gunboat or destroyer would dare to show up so far from home. It's a submarine, sir, sure enough. And the rascal's signalling with a shuttered lantern in the Morse code, and they have answered back."
Crouch moved quickly to the doorway, and then, coming back into the room, flung open a drawer in his writing-desk, and took out a small, nickel-plated revolver that glittered in the lamplight.
"We'll put a stop to this," he cried. "It may not be too late to save the ship." Followed by the boy, he dashed out upon the deck.
There are scenes in the lives of us all which impress us so vividly at the time that we carry them with us always in our memory, as clearly and as permanently as an impression can be made upon a photographic plate.
Jimmy Burke will never forget the moonlit scene that was presented to his view from the doorway of Captain Crouch's cabin, that was at once beautiful and terrible. On the starboard side of the ship the rocks of Cornwall arose from out of the sea in a long, dark, rugged line, in the centre of which the Lizard light flashed like a brilliant star. A full moon hung low in the heavens, tracing a broad, silvery pathway across the broken surface of the sea. The "Harlech" was moving cumbrously through the water, on a course almost due east, when, on a sudden, in the full light of the moon, there rose out of the water, like some hideous monster of the under-sea, the periscope and conning-tower of an enormous submarine, upon the side of which was just discernible the ominous and dreaded letters--U93.
[CHAPTER XIII--To the Boats!]
Even in broad daylight there is something about a submarine that is uncanny. The capacity to float half-submerged, the peculiar shape and the dull slatey colour of this latest triumph of naval science, remind one of some weird antediluvian animal--one of those strange, gigantic monsters that are known to have inhabited the world long before man made his appearance. On this fateful night the bright moonshine, scintillating on the broken surface of the water, made the German submarine seem ghost-like and supernatural. Its sudden and unexpected appearance had the effect upon Jimmy Burke of a douche of ice-cold water. For several seconds he remained standing quite motionless and breathless, staring in stupefied amazement at the dark outline of the enemy.