The man ran for'ard and was lost to sight beyond the break of the conning-tower.
Ten seconds later, impelled by a swift and invisible force, the conning-tower and the raised superstructure glided forward along the rails, leaving exposed in all their stark aggressiveness three large objects resembling exaggerated drain-pipes.
"Torpedo-tubes, by Jove!" exclaimed Wakefield.
"Guess you've never seen the type before," remarked the lieutenant-commander of Q 171. "They are shorter than the standard pattern, and, as you might observe, are not exactly parallel. Discharge all three torpedoes simultaneously, and they run on slightly divergent courses."
"Doesn't give Fritz much of a chance," observed Meredith.
"Not a dog's chance, old thing," rejoined Morpeth. "They're only 14-inch torpedoes, but they're just some. Blow a hole in a battleship's hull large enough to take a stage-coach, so you can imagine what happens when Fritz stops one—perhaps two, and very occasionally three. In a way a fellow can't help feeling sorry for Fritz, but he's asked for it all along the line. If he'd played a straight game with his U-boats we would have given him credit for what he'd done, and taken our chances. That chap who torpedoed our Cressy, Hogue, and Aboukir early in the war did a smart thing, and the Navy admitted it; but now all the decent U-boat skippers have packed up, or else have degenerated into low-down curs."
"Precisely," agreed Wakefield. "Hospital ships, and all that sort of business."
"Unarmed merchantmen—that's why we've had to take on the Q-boat stunt. Hardly seems proper jonnick to lure a Fritz within range, and then blow him to bits, but, as I said before, he's asked for it."
"Bagged many?"
"A few," admitted the R.N.R. man modestly; then, pleased at a sudden recollection, he squared his massive shoulders and burst into a hearty roar of laughter. "That reminds me of the last Fritz we scuppered. We had information that a U-boat was knocking around off Bass Rock, playing Old Harry with small coasting craft out of Arbroath and Granton, so we sent out the old s.s. Niblick—one of the Pink Funnel Line. She had been sold to a firm of ship-breakers, but when the pinch came they fitted her out again. Well, we followed an hour after the Niblick left Montrose, got within range, and started firing at her, or rather putting shells into the sea within a hundred yards or so. Presently we sighted a periscope. Fritz couldn't quite understand things, since he imagined he was the only U-boat sculling around. But after a while he couldn't resist the temptation of joining in the pursuit, and he blew ballast-tanks and came to the surface at a cable's length broad on our starboard beam. Before he could get to work on the Niblick with his bow quick-firer, he went to the bottom for good and all. It required only one of our torpedoes for that job."