Something, glittering in the dull light, shot from beneath the fuselage of the alert Blimp. With a mighty splash the missile struck the surface of the sea and disappeared.
For five long-drawn seconds nothing appeared to happen. Unseen by the watchers on the troop-ship, a deadly aerial torpedo was worming its way through the water until it reached a depth of sixty feet.
Before the spray cast up by the impact of the missile had subsided, another and far greater column of water leapt a hundred feet or more into the air. A cloud of smoke hid the Blimp from view, while, out of the breaking spout of upheaved water, appeared a solid, dark-grey substance--the after part of a U-boat!
For a brief instant the wreckage was revealed to view. Even the horizontal and vertical rudders and the twin propellers were visible. Then, as if reluctant to sink into obscurity, the strafed U-boat disappeared from mortal ken for all time.
No need for the destroyers to tear at full speed across the ever-widening circle of oil; no need for explosive grapnels to trail over the downward path of the vertically-descending pirate craft. The diabolical Spurlos versenkt policy had recoiled with a vengeance upon yet another of the Kaiser's Unterseebooten.
A hoarse roar of cheering broke from the throats of the men. Tommies, Anzacs, South Africans, and Maoris vied with each other as to who could produce the greatest and most prolonged volume Of sound. Other vessels of the convoy took up the hearty "Hip, hip, hurrah!" until the watchers on the distant Cornish cliffs must have heard the strenuous demonstrations of exultation.
Meanwhile the destroyers, their crews grimly silent, merely "carried on". The men whose lives they were guarding might well let themselves go, but these units of the great silent navy meant business. Time for shouting when the German navy ceased to exist as a fighting force--and "The Day" was yet to come.
The Blimp, also scorning to display any indications of its triumphant success, turned and flew serenely over the convoy, outwardly indifferent to the work of destruction it had accomplished. Not until the last of the convoy passed the western end of the breakwater, and gained the security of Plymouth Sound, did the modern counterpart of the
"Little cherub that sits up aloft,
To keep guard o'er the life of poor Jack"
relinquish its task. Then, amid a farewell outburst of cheering, the Blimp flew eastwards, to disappear from view behind the lofty Staddon Heights.