The screech and hiss of projectiles were now incessant on both sides. About the Barrill the water shot upward in a hundred geysers as the steel rain roared about her. As fast as their gunners were killed or wounded, Herc and Stanley replaced them by men rescued from the sunken Calvo. The revolvers both Americans carried proved wonderful persuaders in driving them to the guns.
“Where are their torpedoes?” asked Ned anxiously, as, after ten minutes of this hot work, no sign of one of those deadly messengers of death had appeared.
There was no time for the silent, anxious figure beside him to reply.
A sudden puff of white smoke showed low down on the Bolivar’s bow. The sunlight glinted for a breath on white metal, and then came a splash. Ned grew pale and clutched the rail desperately as he realized that five hundred pounds of high explosive had been launched at the destroyer.
He wanted to shout out, but his lips refused obedience. All he could do was to keep his wide-opened, staring eyes fixed on the line of white air bubbles which marked the path of the approaching torpedo. But while Ned stood paralyzed, the Barrill’s commander had acted. He did the only thing possible to do. Skillfully he manœuvered his vessel till her sharp bow pointed toward the oncoming torpedo.
But even as she swung, it seemed to the watchers of the approaching steel tube that the Barrill must swing herself directly in the path of the messenger of death. By some subtle wireless telegraphy the news of the peril had already traversed the decks. White under their yellow skins, the frightened crew showed twitching faces and nervous, shaky hands. Even the revolvers of Stanley and Herc seemed powerless now to drive them to duty. In their fatalistic way they argued that death was upon them, and that it was no worse to be shot by a revolver than to be blown to atoms by a striking torpedo.
Ned, ashen to his lips, leaned forward above the shattered rail and watched through his glasses the approach of the Whitehead. It was running but a short distance under the surface, and once or twice he thought he could detect a shimmering flash as it shot through a wave. The bursting bubbles marking its way were clearly apparent. It could only be a few minutes now.
Fascinated, like one in a trance, the boy kept his eyes glued on it. Below him, on the decks, he could hear the shouts and screams and prayers as the thoroughly demoralized crew rushed about, leaping over the dead and the wounded, and then stopping short, baffled at the impossibility of escape.
The torpedo was now so close that a few seconds would decide all. Without realizing it, Ned gripped the rail and braced himself with his feet. Silently he waited for the terrific impact of the explosion he knew must come when the deadly point of the gun-cotton “war-head” plowed into the steel plates of the Barrill.
But death was not destined for them at that moment. With a flash of bright steel, a whirr of her tiny propellers and a white streak of foam, the awful menace swept by, missing her prey by a hand’s breadth. Ned felt sick and weak as he realized that the Whitehead had dashed close by and gone onward. Its mission of death had proved futile.