"I'm damned if I know what it means, but it's obviously all right. Now then, Scarlett, the black flag with the white stripe. That means 'am successfully bringing despatches'—got it?—good!"
There was another signal from the battleship, to which we had now approached within half a mile. The smoke from her funnels had almost ceased. She was lying to and waiting.
Slowly we forged onwards. Then came a sharp order. We jumped back into the conning-tower and the sliding hatchway closed. Scarlett had gone like a flash to his torpedo tubes, and we dived. We sank in just a hundred and fifty seconds.
"Good!" said Bernard, as the periscope panted up and the battleship lay on the table before us.
The hum and tick of the electric motors began again. Bernard turned his wheel and the picture of the battleship opened out in full broadside.
"They don't know what to make of it," he remarked, to himself, rather than to me. "Now, I think—steady—steady ..."
The ship grew larger every moment, higher and higher. It seemed as if she was rising out of the water.
"Now!"—he leant over a speaking tube.
He had hardly given his order when a bell rang smartly, close by my head. I heard staccato voices below in the bows of the submarine, and then the clang and swish of the discharge. We were only three hundred yards away. A white streak appeared shooting towards the monster, like a spear of foam. It was so quick that I could hardly have followed it with my finger upon the table.