“Yes, by George, they’re afraid! There’s not a dreadnaught among them that can match the guns of our flagship!”
“Nonsense,” Hood answered evenly, “they’ve slowed down for another reason. Unless I’m mistaken they’ve led our squadron into a school of submarines—”
The words were scarcely out of his mouth before a huge column of water and smoke leaped into the heavens beside the flagship, her big hull heeled on her beam’s end and she hung in the air a helpless, quivering mass of twisted steel slowly sinking.
“They’ve got her!” Vassar groaned.
Before the Pennsylvania had disappeared her three sister ships had been torpedoed. They were slowly sinking, the calm waters black with our drowning men.
The sea was literally alive with submarines. The conning towers of dozens could be seen circling the doomed ships.
The Oklahoma had been disabled by shell fire before the submarines appeared. She was running full steam now for the beach, with a dozen submarines closing in on her. The white streak of foam left by their upper decks could be distinctly seen from the shore. Utterly reckless of any danger from the after guns of the dying dreadnaught they were racing for the honor of launching the torpedo that would send her to the bottom.
Her after guns roared and two submarines were smashed. Their white line of foam ended in a widening mirror of oil on the dark surface of the sea.
At almost the same moment a torpedo found her bow and sent the huge prow into the air. She dropped and her stern lifted, the propellers still spinning. Two swift submarines making twenty-two knots an hour had circled her on both sides and brought their torpedoes to bear on her bow at the same moment. Her battle flag was flying as she sank headforemost to her grave.
The wind suddenly shifted and the men who watched with beating hearts heard the stirring strains of “The Star Spangled Banner” floating across the waters from her slippery decks. Weird and thrilling were its notes mingling with the soft wash of the surf at low tide. The music was unearthly. Its strains came from the deep places of eternity.