As the Pomona came nearer he looked at the officers on the bridge. They wore their greatcoats, but he could still make out their respective ranks by their stripes and badges.
Suddenly one of them at the starboard end of the bridge pointed excitedly into the sea and shouted. Instantly there was a loud crash, an explosion. The whole ship staggered.
"Glory be!" cried Skipper Snowling. "That's a torpedo! It struck her amidships!"
In the excitement of the next two hours Mark Redisham got a confused impression of all that happened. He saw the Pomona listing over in a cloud of smoke and escaping steam. She was sinking. The Graemsay and the Ronaldsay were putting out their boats as they closed upon her. Their engines were stopped as they took up positions about four hundred yards apart from her to give assistance.
Hardly had they stopped when there was a second heavy explosion, followed by a third. The Ronaldsay had been torpedoed under her after-magazine. The air was filled with flying wreckage, which fell among her boats.
The Dainty and her consorts, as well as the fishing smacks and steam drifters, hastened to the rescue. Already the cruisers' picket boats and cutters had picked up many survivors from the Pomona. Some were returning to the Graemsay, when she, too, was hit by a fourth torpedo from the hidden enemy.
Looking round in the direction from which, as it seemed to him, the weapons had been fired, Mark Redisham saw the submarine's two periscopes moving along the surface some three hundred yards away. Then the upper part of her conning-tower rose. The gunners on the stricken Graemsay immediately opened fire upon it, and their ship's engines were put full steam ahead with the intention of running her down. But the cruiser was badly holed below water; she heeled rapidly and finally turned keel up.
In the meantime, the light cruiser and her flotilla of destroyers were coming down at racing speed, and the smacks and trawlers were drawing nearer. There were boats in plenty to give help to those who could swim or who had managed to seize upon floating wreckage; but, unfortunately, many had been killed or hopelessly maimed by the explosions, whilst others had not been able to escape from the stokeholds and lower decks, the loss amounting to the terrible total of sixty officers and fourteen hundred men.
"Seems to me," said Harry Snowling, helping Mark Redisham to lift a wounded stoker from the dinghy to the Dainty's deck, "as there must have been a whole crowd of submarines lyin' in wait to do this. 'Taren't proper warfare, like gunfire in an open action."
"I have seen only one," returned Mark, standing up and glancing over the side. "The same one that we saw taking in petrol from that stolen trawler. She's in sight even now, Harry. I can see her plainly, waiting, I suppose, to have a shot at the light cruiser—if she's got any more torpedoes left. I can make out her number. It's the U50. There's a group of Germans on her conning-tower platform. I believe they're gloating over what they've done. One of them's a middy, with his arm in a sling. Ah! They're going below now! They're going to submerge."