The light flooded the forecastle, fell upon that material so valuable to our fighting forces which the vessel was carrying at full speed to Britain en route for the battle-fields, swept over a space of empty deck, hugged other material, and glancing from it went on to the depths beyond, almost to the bows of the vessel. There it was brought up, as it were, abruptly by the figure of a man, half-bent, facing the doorway, a man at whose feet stood a square iron box, in the lid of which was a metal plunger, a man who stared at them with wide-open eyes, startled yet full of hate, which blinked in the electric beams.
"It's—it's Heinrich!" roared Larry, darting forward and slipping a hand on his empty holster pocket. "It's the German that shot Charlie back there in the camp by the copper-mine. It's the same ugly phiz as was in the picture found in his lodgings. It's——"
With a hasty movement the man banged a fist on the metal plunger. A brilliant flash of light followed the movement, and then a hissing, sizzling noise, while smoke filled the forecastle. Steps were heard, and the door above banged as the rascal, too much concerned for his own safety to think of any further need for caution, clambered up the companion and emerged on the deck, then came a blinding flash, and Jim, seizing Bill and Larry, dragged them through the doorway.
"Back!" he shouted. "Lie down on your faces! Hi there, on the bridge!" he bellowed. "Look out for yourselves! we've come upon our man, but it's too late; he's fired his detonator, his bomb's on the point of bursting."
Before a return hail could come, almost before the three could fling themselves upon the deck, so as to escape the effects of the impending explosion, the deck above the forecastle soared into the air, there came a shattering, tearing roar of breaking woodwork, a deafening detonation, while bolts and masses of wood and iron thudded upon the decks around or splashed into the water—water made clearly visible by the flare which burst from the fore part of the vessel. As for the latter, she trembled in every timber and plate, her decks shook and rolled, she heaved and thrust her bows upward; then they came down with a souse, and for a moment it looked as though she were going under. But not yet! She lay with her stern high in the air and her forecastle slowly submerging; and as she lay there helpless, changed in one moment from a controllable dependable unit of efficiency to a shattered wreck, of a sudden a beam broke the blackness all about her—an electric beam projected from some surface vessel. This beam flooded the ship, flooded the water all about her, and threw a streak of brilliant light from a point perhaps half a mile from her.
Somewhere in that streak there appeared a tiny object, a tiny boat in which a single man rowed furiously—doubtless he was the German.