Carr reported the request from voice tube to Captain Meredith.
"Round-to under her stern," ordered the Captain. "Don't hurry, I want to have a good look at her. Reply, 'I will take you in tow '."
The Complex was manoeuvred according to orders. Half a dozen hands went aft, ready to receive and secure the hawser to the towing-bitts. The Captain of the Holton Heath stepped to the starboard side of the bridge and waved an acknowledgment.
Presently Captain Meredith's voice-pipe whistle sounded.
"Ay, ay, sir," replied Cavendish.
"She seems jonnick," said the Skipper, in a somewhat disappointed tone. "We'll take her hawser. Pass the word for a hand to stand by the Senhouse slip, in case we want to cast off in a hurry."
The Sub leant over the bridge-rail to give the order to one of the deck-hands, when his eye caught sight of the wake of a torpedo rapidly approaching the now almost stationary Complex. It was coming, not from the Holton Heath, but from a submerged source broad on the Complex's beam.
Cavendish watched it like one in a trance. His parched throat refused to utter a warning. For days he had expected this to happen. He had hoped it would, and now, this being the first time that he had experienced the sight of a live torpedo approaching, he found that it was a totally different experience from watching a "tinfish" being discharged from the ship, and he was dumbfounded.
Too late he recalled the special orders given in anticipation of such an occurrence—orders which he and every other executive officer in the ship had countersigned—that in the event of a torpedo being sighted as fired from a submerged submarine, no effort was to be made to avoid the impact. On the other hand, the ship must be brought to meet it, so that the torpedo would strike anywhere except in the vicinity of the engine-room. In brief, the decoy ship was to sacrifice herself in the almost certain hope that, before she sank, the enemy would reveal himself and fall a victim to her guns.
Tardily, Cavendish jumped to the engine-room telegraph and rang for "easy astern". Before the order could be acted upon, the torpedo hit the Complex twenty feet abaft the bridge, against the starboard engine-room. There was a terrific report. A column of water was thrown violently into the air to a height of nearly two hundred feet, mingled with smoke, oil, and pieces of cork and shattered timber. The Complex heeled rapidly to port, then, recovering slightly, lay well over on her starboard side, and the engine- and boiler-rooms were flooded by the irresistible inrush of water.