Those on board knew that it was to them a matter of life or death.
Should they surrender to the enemy they would most likely all be butchered on the spot.
"Here is work for us!" said Oscar, after surveying the chase through his glass. "We must get after those foreigners at once."
Down went the Holland XI. to a distance of fifteen feet.
Then a course was laid straight for the nearest of the Japanese warships.
The crafts soon came together and a torpedo was fastened to the enemy close to the stern.
Then the new Holland sped off to where the second Japanese warship was coming on.
Those on the first ship were in the act of planting a broadside into the merchantman when there came a rumble and a roar from the ocean, and the ship sailed skyward, blown up as the Holland XI. had already blown up so many others.
It was a frightful spectacle, that lurid flash, that thunderous report, and then the wreckage sailing in all directions and commingled with the torn and mutilated bodies of the Japanese sailors and officers.
The sight held those on the merchantman spell-bound.