The ship on the eastern wing of the Teuton line was in flames. The fire burst out of the gun deck ports, lapping up over the boat decks in long red curling tongues. Her cannon fire had ceased, and from what Leonard could see, he thought the English ships had quit firing at her. She still fled southward, however. Smoke began to roll out of her turrets, and her crew came swarming out on her deck like a disturbed ant's nest. Through his glasses, Madden saw them hunched against the fire, working to launch a boat, when of a sudden there was a blinding flare; a huge cloud of smoke leaped from the sea, and after four or five minutes, a thunder heavily audible even amid the roar of battle rumbled in Madden's ears. It was the solemn note of a battleship destroyed by its own magazines. When the smoke cleared away there was left nothing save tossing waves and bits of flotsam here and there.
The horror of the tragedy was lost for Leonard in another, more appalling scene. The right central battleship had lost control of her steering gear, and now she ran wildly amuck in the fleeing line like a drunken giant of steel.
Through accident, or by the last shift of seamanship, she veered about broadside on, her huge guns still belching defiance. In crazy flight, she barely missed one of her own squadron, then rounded back in a great circle for the English line. No doubt her crew did not try to stop her, hoping that her unguided charge might work some damage to the enemy.
On she came, against the focussed storm of English cannon, her prow, forward turrets, bridge, masts, fairly disintegrated under a bastinado of twelve and fourteen-inch shells. Yet it seemed as if she would survive it all and ram some English cruiser, when a cloud of steam broke out of her hold. A lucky shot had exploded her boilers. Her wild charge ceased instantly, but her sub-calibre guns still chattered defiance at the crushing odds. Giant shells were now pounding her at point-blank range. At some stroke of a cruiser to the right of the Panther, the German ship heeled heavily on her starboard side.
Through his glasses, Madden could see the sailors still struggling to work the guns, though scores of them were wiped from the deck at every English shell. Amid clouds of smoke the black cross of the German battle flag fluttered undaunted.
In a few minutes the enemy listed until her guns were at such a high angle they could no longer be trained against the enemy. Her forward turret was completely blown away. Bursting shells kept a constant glare around her. Her boiler and furnace rendered her hold untenable, for her crew came out of the smoke and formed orderly platoons on her crippled deck. Shells swept gaps through their files, but they closed again in regular formation, standing oddly erect on the tip-tilted deck. There was not a gun they could man, not a blow could they strike, yet the men stood firm in the steel cyclone sweeping across their shattered deck. Then Madden turned his lens on a group a little to one side of the main formation, and his eye caught the gleam of silver horns, the rise and fall of a drummer's arm, the fierce beating of a director with a baton. It was the ship's musicians. The band was playing, the men were chanting the battle hymn of the empire; out of the heart of the foundering cruiser, out of the souls of the passing warriors rose triumphantly, "Die Wacht am Rhein."
Sudden tears filled the eyes of the American and dimmed the splendid sight. He turned impulsively to his friend.
"Caradoc! My God!" he screamed in his ear, "why don't they quit firing!"
"Their flag is still flying—no doubt the halyards are shot away!"
Even while Smith screamed, a sudden and startling attack was launched from the Panther's rapid fire and machine guns. They sounded a shrill treble amid the profound shaking bass of the giant cannon. The boys looked sharply about to see the object of this abrupt attack, when they suddenly heard the shrill whistling of steel all about their ears.