It was a tense moment. Approaching at a speed of about sixty miles an hour, the two vessels, British and German, were heading to mutual destruction. With telescoped bows and interlocked framework, they would assuredly founder together in a common and awe-inspiring dissolution.
But almost at the last moment the nerve of the German commander failed. He ported his helm in a vain attempt to avoid the despairing act of a mad Englishman. He was too late. Meredith held on.
It was true that the kapitan-leutnant of the V 199 saved the bows of his boat from being telescoped, but by giving the vessel starboard helm he had neglected the important fact that the stern would swing to starboard more rapidly than the bows would turn to port.
Almost before he was aware of the fact, the bows of Q 171 bit deeply into the German torpedo boat's quarter. The shock was lighter than the Sub expected: it was the tortional wrench that hurled him sideways against the disabled quick-firer.
Then, swinging outwards under the way carried by her opponent, Q 171 literally levered the partly severed stern away from the rest of the rammed torpedo boat. With a gurgling sound, audible above the hiss of steam from the flooding engine-room, the after-part of the Hun boat sank, leaving two-thirds of the hull floating almost motionless and kept afloat solely by the badly strained bulkheads.
Freed from the interlocking embrace, Q 171 drifted clear, but she was no longer under control. Both her propellers had fouled some of the wreckage, and the bosses were stripped clear of their phosphor-bronze blades.
The gallant mystery ship, with the White Ensign flying from her stumpy mast—how it withstood that tornado of hurtling metal was little short of miraculous—was doomed.
But the end was not yet. The second enemy torpedo boat, unable to bring her guns to bear lest she should hit her disabled consort, was manoeuvring to obtain a favourable position to deliver the coup de grâce. It seemed an easy thing to do, for Q 171 was little better than a floating scrap-heap.
Suddenly, from what appeared to be a tangle of riddled steel-plating and grotesquely twisted girders, a gleaming steel cylinder flashed in the sunlight.
Q 171 had shot her last bolt. One of the torpedo-tubes was still intact, and a grievously wounded man had seized his chance.