“She was almost on top of me,” he explained afterwards, “coming like hell!  I had to choose between being rammed or depth-bombed.”

There was another swift commotion, another opening and closing of valves, and the arrow on the depth-gauge leaped forward.  Captain Bill was sending her down as far as he could, as fast as he dared.  Fifty feet, seventy feet—­ninety feet.  Hoping to throw the destroyer off, the Z-3 doubled on her track.  A hundred feet.

Crash!  Depth-charge number one.

[Sidenote:  Depth bombs explode near by.]

[Sidenote:  The submarine’s peril.]

According to Captain Bill, who is good at similes, it was as if a giant, wading along through the sea, had given the boat a vast and violent kick, and then, leaning down, had shaken her as a terrier shakes a rat.  The Z-3 rocked, lay on her side, and fell through the water.  A number of lights went out.  Men picked themselves out of corners, one with the blood streaming down his face from a bad gash over his eye.  Many of them told later of “seeing stars” when the vibration of the depth-charge traveled through the hull and their own bodies; some averred that “white light” seemed to shoot out of the Z-3’s walls.  Each man stood at his post waiting for the next charge.

Crash!  A second depth-charge.  To everyone’s relief, it was less violent than the first.  A few more lights went out.  Meanwhile the Z-3 continued to sink and was rapidly nearing the danger-point.  Having escaped the first two depth-charges, Captain Bill hastened to bring the boat up to a higher level.  Then, to make things cheerful, it was discovered that the Z-3 showed absolutely no inclination to obey her controls.

[Sidenote:  Anxious moments before the submarine rises again.]

“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.”