The U-boat was still there. We still expected her to send one our way. But nothing doing for us. She sent another shell toward the steamer. The steamer had quit firing. No use. The U-boat had simply taken position beyond range of the steamer's guns and leisurely as she pleased was shelling her. Our third shell landed close to the sub. And then down she went and wasted no time at it. Before we could train and fire again she was gone.
The sub, as we learned later, had landed fifteen shells into the steamer and wounded nine of her people, of whom three were of the bluejacket gun crew.
One young bluejacket had been hit twice. He was carrying a shell to the gun when he caught the second one—a piece of flying shell in his shoulder. He laid his own shell on the deck to see how about it, and got hit again; this time in what our navy calls the stern sheets. That made him mad. He shook his fist toward the sub. "No damn' German's going to hit me three times and get away with it." He grabbed his shell off the deck and slammed it into the gun-breech. "Hand it to 'em, Joe!" he yelled to the gun-pointer. Joe did his best, but he didn't have the gun—the shot splashed where most of them had, about half a mile short of the sub.
Still pouring the black smoke out of our funnels, we leaped toward the Luckenbach and hailed her through the megaphone when we breasted her. She hailed back that she had water in her afterhold and fire in her forehold, and gave us the number of her wounded. Two of the three wounded bluejackets were injured seriously. We could see them stretched out under the gun.
We were steaming around the Luckenbach at twenty knots while we were hailing: this in case the sub took it in her head to pop up again and catch us slowed down. We did slow down and stop when it came time to clear away a whale-boat and send it over to the steamer with our senior watch-officer and the surgeon, with the needful surgical supplies.
We continued to steam circles around the steamer all the time they were aboard, with our lookouts keeping eyes skinned for the U-boat. By her manner of shelling the steamer after he had opened fire our skipper judged she was a tough one. She did show once while we were circling the Luckenbach. Her periscope popped up about a mile abeam of us. It may have popped up again—it was getting to be a nice little choppy sea good for sub work and no saying that it was not—but we only sighted it once, and then it did not linger.
The sea was growing lumpy when the whale-boat came bouncing back with our senior officer. It was right about the Luckenbach having nine injured, but all would get well. The doctor was looking after them. She was a cotton steamer. The kid who had been hit twice was all right. He was walking around deck with his cap over his port ear and proud as Billy-be-Damn'—three times wounded by German shell fire and got away with it!
The fire in the forehold? Most of it was from two old mattresses—at least that was all he found.
"Did you put the fire out?"
"Yes, sir. The steamer's crew were too tired to do any more hustling around to put any fire out, so we got out a hose and put it out."