Yet even as he sidled past the dinghy a concussion shook the M.L. from stem to stern. It was a far different concussion from that caused by her own quick-firer. This time her opponent had got one home.
M.L. 1071 stopped dead, like a man who receives a knock-out blow between the eyes. Pungent smoke enveloped her, as she rolled sullenly on the long swell. Then the pall of smoke was rent by a furious blast of red flame. An unlucky shot had struck her amidships, playing havoc in the engine-room and igniting one of the petrol-tanks.
Nor was that the worst of the business. A fire could be subdued with little difficulty by means of patent extinguishers; but the projectile, luckily without exploding, had passed completely through both sides of the wooden hull of the M.L., tearing jagged holes that were admitting volumes of the North Sea into her engine-room.
Valiantly the artificers, directly they recovered from the disconcerting effects of the projectile, strove to quench the flames until, knee-deep in water on which floated patches of blazing petrol, they were compelled to evacuate their untenable posts. Scorched and almost suffocated by the fumes from the chemicals, they gained the deck and collapsed.
"Fall in aft!" roared Wakefield. "Swing out the boat! Look lively there, men!"
The crew needed no second bidding. Every man on board, save the two unconscious engine-room ratings, who were unceremoniously dragged aft by their messmates, knew that M.L. 1071 was doomed. It was a question whether she would blow up or founder, for the flames were momentarily increasing in violence and threatening to explode the magazine, while already the waves were lapping over her foredeck.
Quickly, yet without a vestige of panic, the men swung out the dinghy and lowered her from the davits. The two casualties were then lifted in, and the rest of the crew followed—Meredith and Wakefield being the last to leave.
"She's going down with flying colours at all events," exclaimed the skipper. "Give way, lads!"
The men pulled with a will. There is a powerful incentive to do so when in the vicinity of a couple of depth-charges that might at any moment be detonated with disastrous results.
"What's Fritz doing?" inquired one of the rowers, when at length the order was given to "Lay on your oars."