]
"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."
[Sidenote: 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_.
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