Crouch moved quickly to the doorway, and then, coming back into the room, flung open a drawer in his writing-desk, and took out a small, nickel-plated revolver that glittered in the lamplight.
"We'll put a stop to this," he cried. "It may not be too late to save the ship." Followed by the boy, he dashed out upon the deck.
There are scenes in the lives of us all which impress us so vividly at the time that we carry them with us always in our memory, as clearly and as permanently as an impression can be made upon a photographic plate.
Jimmy Burke will never forget the moonlit scene that was presented to his view from the doorway of Captain Crouch's cabin, that was at once beautiful and terrible. On the starboard side of the ship the rocks of Cornwall arose from out of the sea in a long, dark, rugged line, in the centre of which the Lizard light flashed like a brilliant star. A full moon hung low in the heavens, tracing a broad, silvery pathway across the broken surface of the sea. The "Harlech" was moving cumbrously through the water, on a course almost due east, when, on a sudden, in the full light of the moon, there rose out of the water, like some hideous monster of the under-sea, the periscope and conning-tower of an enormous submarine, upon the side of which was just discernible the ominous and dreaded letters--U93.
Even in broad daylight there is something about a submarine that is uncanny. The capacity to float half-submerged, the peculiar shape and the dull slatey colour of this latest triumph of naval science, remind one of some weird antediluvian animal--one of those strange, gigantic monsters that are known to have inhabited the world long before man made his appearance. On this fateful night the bright moonshine, scintillating on the broken surface of the water, made the German submarine seem ghost-like and supernatural. Its sudden and unexpected appearance had the effect upon Jimmy Burke of a douche of ice-cold water. For several seconds he remained standing quite motionless and breathless, staring in stupefied amazement at the dark outline of the enemy.
Crouch, on the other hand, wasted not as much as the fraction of a second. A man who has spent a great part of his life in shooting wild and savage beasts is not easily taken by surprise. He was used to shocks. He saw at once that the peril in which the "Harlech" stood was both extreme and immediate. At such a moment it was not his business to ask himself why this calamity had come to pass. He was concerned only with the ship that he commanded, which it was his duty to save at every cost.