"Fine old lash-up," soliloquised the sub as he struck out in order to avoid the embraces of a partly water-logged Genoese. "How comes it that we are still alive?"
Somehow it did not seem quite in accordance with the accepted theories that such an immense bulk of explosive had not exterminated every living thing within a couple of miles' radius.
"Hullo, Slogger!" shouted Greenwood, treading water on the outskirts of the crowd of immersed Italians. "Who's for the shore? I for one."
Just then, a boat manned by four men swept round one of the projecting heads of the jetties. Its crew consisted of the British military officers who had gone ashore from the "Timon." Scorning to take to their heels the officers had gone down to the quay to see what had become of the transport, and noticing Farrar and the A.P. putting off to rescue they had at once set to work to follow their example. It was only a lack of skilled boatmanship that prevented them acting in company with their naval confrères; as it was, they were just in time to "put the finishing touches" to the work of rescue.
Safely in the boat the sub directed his attention to the "Giuseppe." She had sunk to the bottom of the harbour, her funnels, stumpy derrick-masts, and a portion of her charred upper-works still showing above the surface.
Two cables' lengths away lay the French submarine, with a kedge anchor laid out on each side of the bows and a long grass warp from her stern to a bollard on the head of one of the jetties.
It was the ready mind of the lieutenant de vaisseau that had saved the situation. The submarine, with her propellers disabled by the result of an encounter with a U-boat off the Corsican coast, had put into Arezzo for repairs. When the "Giuseppe" took fire the submarine found herself in a helpless position, being unable to accompany the rest of the vessels to sea.
The French officer might have ordered his men to seek safety in flight, but in that case his craft was doomed to destruction. Up against a tight proposition he acted with the resource and good judgment of a worthy son of France. Ordering two anchors to be laid out well in the direction of the burning ship he kedged the submarine out of the basin until her bow tubes could be brought to bear upon the "Giuseppe." By firing a torpedo at the burning ship he ran a chance of precipitating the end should the force of the explosion be communicated to the dangerous cargo.
It was once more a case of fortune favouring the bold. The torpedo did its work effectively, without detonating the munitions on board the "Giuseppe." In less than ten minutes the inrush of water through the huge rent in the ship's side caused her to founder, and further danger was at an end.
The military officers insisted upon taking Farrar and the A.P. to an hotel to obtain the loan of some clothes while their own could be dried. The place was deserted, like almost every other building in Arezzo, but the British visitors were not to be denied. Great was the astonishment of the "padrone" when, on his return, he found the hotel in the possession of a group of English officers, two of whom were rigged out in garments that he recognised as his own.