"Have the men slide a torpedo into one of the forward tubes."
Eager to witness this operation, Irving sprang to the stairway and was soon down on the lower deck. There he saw several members of the crew remove the safety attachment from the nose of a sixteen-foot phosphor-bronze torpedo, which was seventeen or eighteen inches in diameter, and slide it into a tunnel-like hole in the midst of a maze of operating machinery. A minute or two later the order was given to "shoot," and out it went, under initial propulsion from a compressed air engine.
Then the order to submerge was given again, and away they went southward at full speed under three fathoms of water. Ten minutes afterward the periscope peeped up over the surface of the sea once more, and Capt. Bartholf had his eye glued eagerly to the glass.
A moment later he gave a yelp of delight, and Irving knew that a hit had been scored.
"We've hit 'em both fine!" the commanding officer exclaimed. "One of the other boats must have fired a torpedo about the same time we did. Both of those ships are going down."
It was not regarded safe to show the hulks of the submarines above the water yet, however, for fear lest the convoy hit one or more of them with a shell as a last living act of revenge. But they did not have to wait long, however, for the doomed vessels sank rapidly.
Then all three submarines showed themselves on the surface and Irving was delighted to observe that apparently all of the sailors, soldiers and nurses that had been on the hospital ship and the convoy were now in lifeboats, which were being rowed with frantic desperation away from the U-boat-infested spot.
"Follow them up and let's see what they look like," Capt. Bartholf ordered, with a kind of gloating glee.
All three captains seemed to be of like mind, for all three U-boats took the same course and ran up close to the crowded lifeboats. Several officers and members of the crew of each of the submarines appeared on the outer deck to view the results of their uncontested victory.
Suddenly there came from one of the boats a call that thrilled and chilled Irving with a sense of awed familiarity.