Just then a bell clanged. The Lieutenant-Commander's voice could be heard ordering the ballast tanks to be blown.
"I must be off," exclaimed Devereux. "It's action stations. Something's up."
Dick was out of his bunk in a trice, but before he gained the door he heard the order being given to charge both tubes.
The submarine was about to attack yet another victim.
CHAPTER XVII
Within Sight of Constantinople
Instinctively Dick Crosthwaite made his way to the conning-tower, where Lieutenant-Commander Huxtable was standing by the bowl of the periscope. The latter took no notice of his involuntary guest; his whole attention was centred upon the ill-defined patch of light that, momentarily growing brighter, showed that the submarine was on the point of rising to launch her fatal missiles.
The meaningless blurr upon the periscope bowl merged into detail, for the eye-piece was now above water. The period of exposure was but a few brief seconds, but it was sufficient to show a large Turkish transport moored alongside the Galata Quay, and in the act of shipping troops as fast as the men could pass along the gangways.
Huxtable rapped out an expression of annoyance. He had made the discovery that the submarine was in the clutches of a strong current. The chance, then, of "getting home" with a torpedo was doubly difficult, for already the British craft was well on the transport's quarter.