For several hundred feet Farrar could follow its descent, until it became a mere speck against the dark green background. Then another, and yet another missile started in its devastating career.
A cloud of smoke, dwarfed to the size of a mushroom, announced that the first bomb had got home fairly in the centre of the seaward tier of moored U-boats. Like the rending of a veil the camouflage vanished, revealing to sight seven of the modern pirates and an ominous gap in the centre.
There was plenty of activity now. Men looking like ants swarmed everywhere, emerging from the interiors of the Unterseebooten and making for the doubtful shelter of dry land. Others, hesitatingly, began to cast off bow and stern ropes, with the evident intention of taking the trapped submarines into deep water and there submerging until the danger was past.
The rapid shower of bombs completely frustrated their attempt. Long, cigar-shaped hulls were shattered asunder, the floating pontoons smashed to matchwood, as the five flying-boats manoeuvred to keep above their much-desired objective.
Once during the strafing operations Farrar glanced at the "Avenger's" skipper. Barcroft, his set features absolutely unperturbed, was steering the flying-boat as coolly as if he had the whole atmosphere to himself, notwithstanding that four other swiftly moving aircraft were describing apparently erratic circles and curves at a reduced rate of about fifty miles an hour within a radius of half a mile. It was an aerial gymkana, in which the merest collision would inevitably result in a tremendous crash, yet the strafing continued systematically and continuously.
A few bombs struck the surface of the water, but direct hits were numerous and devastating. Of the twenty-four submarines only three remained afloat. Some might have been submerged by design on the part of their crews. Even then they stood a poor chance against the enormous concussion of the powerful missiles. Even a buffer of twenty feet of water was unable to save the steel hulls from being shattered.
Ashore three distinct fires had been started, two in the sand-bagged and camouflaged workshops, the third in a large liquid-fuel store, from which the flames were mounting a couple of hundred feet in the air. Crowds of German and Austrian soldiers, sailors and workpeople, driven from their futile shelters, were running in all directions, and still the bombs dropped remorselessly and destructively.
A passive spectator Farrar felt not the slightest qualms. A woodman destroying a nest of young adders could not have shown less compunction. The cold-blooded murderous record of the U-boats had put them without the pale. Stamped with the brand of Cain, every man's hand was against them, Allies and neutrals alike, for the modern pirates, compared with whom Morgan, Lolonois, and Gramont were gentlemen, had roused the indignation and horror of the civilised world.
"No eggs left!" reported Kirkwood laconically.
Barcroft nodded. The other flying-boats had also exhausted their stocks of bombs, but their task was not yet done. Photographs showing the damage done had to be taken, from which enlargements were to be subsequently made in order to confirm the observer's reports.