Presently General Wood re-entered the cabin.
“I have a wireless from Commodore Tower saying that everything is ready. Before it is too late I appeal to Your Imperial Highness to prevent the destruction of these splendid ships and a horrible loss of life. Will Your Highness say the word?”
General Wood turned to the cabin window and nodded to the assistant pilot, who dropped overboard a signal smoke ball that left behind, as it fell, a greenish spiral trail. Straightway, the Commodore’s seaplane, a mile distant, broke out a line of flags whereupon six flyers from six different points leaped ahead like sky hounds on the scent, shooting forward and downward towards their mighty prey. The remainder of the sky fleet circled away at safe distances of three, four or five miles, waiting the result of this first blow, confident that the _Moltke_ was doomed.
Doomed she was. In vain the great battleship turned her guns, big and little, against these snarling, swooping creatures of the air that came at her like darting vultures all at once from many sides, but swerved at the twelve hundred yard line and took her broadside on with their torpedoes, fired them and were gone.
Six white paths streaked the ocean beneath us marking the course of six torpedoes and three of them found their target. Three of them missed, but that was because the gunners were excited. There is no more excuse for a torpedo missing a dreadnought at a thousand yards than there is for a pistol missing a barn door at twenty feet!
The _Moltke_ began to sink almost immediately. Through our glasses we watched her putting off life boats and we saw that scarcely half of them had been launched when she lurched violently to starboard and went down by the head. Her boats, led by one flying the admiral’s flag, made for the sister dreadnought, but had not covered a hundred yards when Commodore Tower signalled again and six other seaplanes darted into action and, by the same swift manosuvres, sank the _Kaiser Friedrich_.
Now General Wood, white-faced, re-entered the cabin.
“Has Your Imperial Highness anything to say?” asked the American commander.
Silent and rigid sat the heir to the German throne, his hands clenched, his nostrils dilating, his lips hard shut.