The result hardly came up to the sub's expectations. Several of the Huns on the forepart of the U-boat raised their hands high above their heads, abject terror showing itself on their blanched faces and by their trembling limbs. Two of them promptly leapt overboard, and struck out as hard as they could away from the doomed pirate craft.
The kapitan-leutnant was cast in a sterner mould. Shouting an order to the waverers he bolted into the conning tower. The hinged water-tight lid closed automatically, cutting off the retreat of the unter-leutnant and those of the crew who were still on deck.
Almost at the next moment a trail of air bubbles and a diverging wake of foam announced that the U-boat had let loose a torpedo at practically point-blank range. It was a chance shot, and fortunately the felucca had drifted just beyond the line of direction from the U-boat's fixed bow tube. Missing her stern by less than a couple of yards the powerful locomotive missile finished its run at nearly three miles from its target.
At the first indication of the firing of the torpedo, Sub-Lieutenant Farrar rapped out an order. Both four-inch guns spoke simultaneously. The shells did their work effectively and with appalling suddenness, for penetrating the base of the U-boat's conning tower they burst with disastrous results in the interior of the steel hull.
By the force of the irresistible explosion of the lyddite shells the submarine simply buckled. For a brief instant the bow and stern were lifted clear of the water, to disappear in a smother of smoke and flame. As the U-boat sank a quantity of petrol and oil was forced through the jagged hole amidships, and being lighter than water the highly inflammable fluid spread far and wide. The next instant the sea for a radius of fifty yards across the spot where the Hun craft had disappeared was a blaze of fire, the hissing flames threatening to set alight the idle sails of the felucca.
"Start up!" shouted the sub, addressing the engine-room artificer in charge of the "Georgeos Nikolaos" motor.
The order was promptly obeyed, and the felucca, gathering way, passed out of the danger zone, but not before the paint on her sides was blistered by the flames.
Declutching the propeller shafting the felucca lost way at three cables' distance from the still burning oil. Her officers and men on the look out for possible survivors, saw none; nor did the boat with its disguised crew, although she was rowed right up to the edge of the blazing patch of oil-covered water. Those of the U-boat's crew who had not gone down with the shattered hull had perished miserably in the flames.
"Hoist the recall," ordered the sub, and the boat, returning to the felucca, was hoisted on board.
For a few minutes the aerials were sent aloft, and a laconic message dispatched to the Commander-in-Chief.