Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/214

 came awash, that is her conning tower projected above the water and her deck was just level with the surface of the sea. The captain of the U-boat was evidently observing us through a port from the inside of the conning tower and seeing that our guns were manned and that we were making for her at full speed he had ordered her guns to be brought into action. Each gun was mounted on her deck in a gun-well and was hoisted into place together with its gunner by a plunger worked by compressed air.

We closed in on her and then the shells began to fly. A high sea was running so that it was well nigh impossible for her gunners to hit us or for ours to hit her, but soon a shell, bad luck to it, carried away one of our masts and my aerial with it. I rushed up on deck and there I saw eight or ten of our little chasers heading for the U-boat, which was the U-53, the largest submarine that Germany had turned out with the exception of the Deutschland.

As each chaser came up the fight got hotter but the U-boat stayed in the game until her captain saw our destroyer coming and then he concluded it was time to submerge her. We