Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/177

1917] number of the Dunraven's guns could get a good shot at the submarine should the Germans follow their usual plan of inspecting the lifeboats before visiting the sinking merchantman.

So far everything was taking place according to programme; but presently the submarine reopened fire and scored a shot which gave the enemy all the advantages of the situation. I have described in some detail the stern of the ship a variegated assortment of depth charges, shell, guns, and human beings. The danger of such an unavoidable concentration of armament and men was that a lucky shot might land in the midst of it. And this is precisely what now happened. Not only one, but three shells from the submarine one after the other struck this hidden mass of men and ammunition. The first one exploded a depth charge 300 pounds of high explosive which blew one of the officers out of the after-control station where he lay concealed and landed him on the deck several yards distant. Here he remained a few moments unconscious; then his associates saw him, wounded as he was, creeping inch by inch back into his control position, fortunately out of sight of the Germans. The seaman who was stationed at the depth charges was also wounded by this shot, but, despite all efforts to remove him to a more comfortable place, he insisted on keeping at his post.

"'Ere I was put in charge of these things," he said, "and 'ere I stays."

Two more shells, one immediately after the other, now landed on the stern. Clouds of black smoke began to rise, and below tongues of flame presently appeared, licking their way in the direction of a large quantity of ammunition, cordite, and other high explosives. It was not decoy smoke and decoy flame this time. Captain Campbell, watching the whole proceeding from the bridge, perhaps felt something in the nature of a chill creeping up his spine when he realized that the after-part of the ship, where men, explosives, and guns lay concealed in close proximity, was on fire. Just at this moment he observed that the submarine was rapidly approaching; and in a few minutes it lay within 400 yards of his guns. Captain Campbell was just about to give the orders to open fire when the wind took up the dense smoke of the fire and wafted it between his ship and the submarine. This precipitated one of the crises which