“Great Scott, man! it takes a real honest-to-goodness Yankee like you to get away with such a trick.”

Veering off to port, the skipper steered a straight course for several hundred yards.  Then the Dewey cut out into a short half circle and in another moment came to a stop sixty-five feet below the surface.

“Put her up,” came the order to the navigating officer at the ship’s air pumps.

There was an interval of strained silence as the commander waited until the eye of the periscope had cleared the spray that dashed against the glass.

“There they are!” he announced.  “Light still turned on the spot where we went down a minute or so ago.  Guess they are waiting to see whether we really are done for.”

A signal to the Dewey’s engine rooms put the vessel in motion just long enough for her commander to turn the nose of the craft slightly to starboard, and then the submarine rested quietly again.

“Friends, Americans, and fellow patriots:  my compliments to the Imperial German Navy,” began “Little Mack” as he leaned forward to touch off a torpedo—–­and there was a rare smile on his lips.

For an instant the Dewey quivered as the torpedo shot from the bow of the submerged ship and raced away under the water.  Her commander hugged the periscope glass and watched for developments.

“Got him!” he shouted excitedly, dancing about wildly on the grating of the conning tower.  “It’s a hit beyond all doubt.  We struck her almost amidships.”

The German vessel had been dealt a deathblow.  She was sending up distress signals.

“She’s afire now and can’t last long,” mused the Dewey’s commander as he continued to survey the ship in distress.  “Her magazines will go in a minute.”

The chief concern of the Dewey now was the reclaiming of her sailors from the sea.

There was little likelihood of gun fire from the sinking German warship.  Her crew were bent on launching lifeboats and getting away before the final plunge that would carry the ship down to the bottom.  Accordingly, the Yankee submarine came to the surface and commenced preparations for the rescue of her own crew.  Lights were hung at the mastheads fore and aft and a huge searchlight hurriedly adjusted on the forepart of the conning tower and the electrical connections made amidships.

Out of the mist that overhung the sea burst forth suddenly a great glare.  Through the fog loomed a white mass of flame like the blast of a thousand furnaces, with tongues of fire piercing the night gloom.  The sea was rocked by an explosion that reverberated over the waters like the crash of a million guns and tossed the submarine like a piece of driftwood.

“One less warship for the Kaiser’s navy,” remarked McClure.

“And all because of your rare cunning, old boy,” countered his executive enthusiastically.