"Call the brute away, Mr. Farrar," said the commander.
Before the sub could approach the door to secure his troublesome pet, a violent concussion shook the ship from stem to stern. The electric lights on the half-deck went out, plunging the enclosed space into semi-darkness, while the sudden upheaval of some 14,000 tons of deadweight resulted in capsising almost every member of the party outside the padre's cabin.
"They've got us this time!" ejaculated the first lieutenant dispassionately.
And less than eight hundred yards away Ober-Leutnant Otto von Loringhoven was expressing similar views concerning the expected result of the impact of two Schwartz-Kopff torpedoes against the side of H.M.S. "Tantalus."
CHAPTER VIII
TORPEDOED
IT was some moments before Sub-Lieutenant Farrar realised the disconcerting fact that the cruiser had been torpedoed. He was dimly conscious of a rush of feet overhead and a confused scramble as his companions sorted themselves out in the dim atmosphere of the half-deck. He was aware that Bruno was licking his hand, and that holding on to the animal's collar was the padre—transformed into one of the coolest men of the crowd.
On the upper deck the quick-firers were barking angrily, the gun-layer letting rip at a dozen different purely imaginary objects that had resolved themselves into the periscopes of a swarm of U-boats. Barefooted seamen and booted marines were pouring through the hatchways—not under the blighting influence of panic, but rather with a desire to see what was going on.
Just as the sub gained the poop at the tail-end of a pack of wildly excited midshipmen a marine bugler sounded the "Still."