"Give it to 'em, Mack! Give it to 'em!" cried Jack.
Again, a torpedo leaped from the bowcap of the Monitor and hurled its ton and a quarter of steel gray mass directly upon the port bow of the German craft.
As the Monitor dived away again her captain beheld the battleship listing badly, going down by the bow at a rapid rate.
"Two strikes!" he exclaimed enthusiastically.
"Some night!" gasped Ted as he clutched the foot rail that ran up the side of the conning tower.
"And some battle!" responded Jack at his side.
With engines slowed down the Monitor ran along a hundred and fifty yards and then turned her nose upward again for another stab at the German fleet. As her periscopes cleft the crest of the waves again and she emerged into the arena of activity McClure caught sight of a destroyer off the starboard bow not more than five hundred feet away. A searchlight on the forward deck of the German vessel swept the water in front of the Monitor with a long white finger of light that fell in a moment upon the eyes of the American submarine.
"A destroyer driving directly at us at full tilt with all her guns in action!" roared McClure.
At the same moment he touched off another torpedo; but, in his eagerness for another "bull's eye" the American commander had fired too soon, and the torpedo shot past the destroyer, missing the mark by ten yards.
In retaliation, the forward guns of the German craft belched forth a salvo of leaden hail that followed the path of the searchlight's rays directly upon the eyes of the Monitor. With unerring aim the German gunners had found their mark. A sharp crash; a roar as the water above the Monitor's conning tower was converted into a boiling maelstrom, and the impact of steel against steel betokened the fact that a shot had struck home in the superstructure of the attacking sub.