The submarine's peril.
According to Captain Bill, who is good at similes, it was as if a giant, wading along through the sea, had given the boat a vast and violent kick, and then, leaning down, had shaken her as a terrier shakes a rat. The Z-3 rocked, lay on her side, and fell through the water. A number of lights went out. Men picked themselves out of corners, one with the blood streaming down his face from a bad gash over his eye. Many of them told later of "seeing stars" when the vibration of the depth-charge traveled through the hull and their own bodies; some averred that "white light" seemed to shoot out of the Z-3's walls. Each man stood at his post waiting for the next charge.
Crash! A second depth-charge. To everyone's relief, it was less violent than the first. A few more lights went out. Meanwhile the Z-3 continued to sink and was rapidly nearing the danger-point. Having escaped the first two depth-charges, Captain Bill hastened to bring the boat up to a higher level. Then, to make things cheerful, it was discovered that the Z-3 showed absolutely no inclination to obey her controls.
Anxious moments before the submarine rises again.
"At first," said Captain Bill, "I thought that the first depth-bomb must have jammed all the external machinery; then I decided that our measures to rise had not yet overcome the impetus of our forced descent. Meanwhile the old hooker was heading for the bottom of the Irish Sea, though I'd blown out every bit of water in her tanks. Had to—fifty feet more, and she would have crushed in like an egg-shell under the wheel of a touring-car. But she kept on going down. The distance of the third, fourth, and fifth depth-bombs, however, put cheer in our hearts. Then, presently, she began to rise; the old girl came up like an elevator in a New York business block. I knew that the minute I came to the surface those destroyer brutes would try to fill me full of holes, so I had a man with a flag ready to jump on deck the minute we emerged. He was pretty damn spry about it, too. I took another look through the periscope, and saw that the destroyer lay about two miles away, and as I looked she came for me again. Meanwhile, my signal-man was hauling himself out of the hatchway as if his legs were in boiling water."
The Stars and Stripes signal to the destroyer.
"We've got her!" cried somebody aboard the destroyer, in a deep American voice full of the exultation of battle. The lean rifles swung, lowered. "Point one, lower." They were about to hear "Fire!" when the Stars and Stripes and sundry other signals burst from the deck of the misused Z-3.
"Well, what do you think of that!" said the gunner. "If it ain't one of our own gang. Say, we must have given it to 'em hard."
"We'll go over and see who it is," said the captain of the destroyer. "The signals are O.K., but it may be a dodge of the Huns. Ask 'em who they are."
In obedience to the order, a sailor on the destroyer's bridge wigwagged the message.