“What happened, do you think, Jack?” wondered Amos, the gunners ready to let fly with another volley at the first sign of the enemy under-sea boat.
“Ask me something easy, please,” he was told. “They’re all hoping the submarine got her death wound, and will never come up again. I’m a little skeptical about that. It wouldn’t surprise me any to hear that before long some warship, perhaps a big one at that, had been torpedoed.”
“Those Germans are seldom caught asleep at the switch, are they?” asked Amos.
“Oh! they’re no better, no worse than others, I take it. The best of them will get caught napping sometimes. When they poked their periscope out so as to take a look around with the coming of daylight they never dreamed a sassy little destroyer was within a hundred feet of them.”
“Do you think they saw us, Jack?”
“As like as not they did, which would account for the hurry they showed at sinking again. But the shot covered every foot of the water around where we saw that spying tube. And these gunners have all been instructed just how to shoot so as to bring about the destruction of a submersible.”
“Well, they’re giving it up, you see, Jack, and once more heading toward the lights ashore. I can see them much better now, so I reckon all this firing must have aroused the campers, who are starting up their fires, thinking of breakfast.”
“Another thing you notice, Amos, we’re not going straight any longer, but with a distinct wiggle, turning first to the right and then to the left.”
“Then, after all, they’re not so sure about that submarine, and this motion is for the purpose of avoiding being struck by a torpedo,” Amos suggested, as though he considered that ample explanation for the queer movements of the destroyer.
“No, you’re wrong there,” his chum explained. “I think they’ve got in mind the Turks ashore, who must have a number of batteries mounted back yonder.”