“I’ve got to go below to get the small camera,” answered Joe.  “I ought to have kept it on deck.  I’m going to, after this, to have it ready.”

“But, Joe, the torpedo may be on its way now—­under water!”

“That’s just what I want to get a picture of!  I guess if we’re going to be blown up, being below deck or on deck doesn’t make much difference.  I want to get that picture!”

And, seeing that his chum was very much in earnest, Blake, not to let Joe do it alone, went below with him to get the camera.  But on the way they met Charlie coming up with it.

“She’s all loaded, boys, ready for action!” cried the lanky Macaroni.  “I started down for it as soon as I heard the lookout yell!  I didn’t know what he was jabbering about, seeing I don’t understand much French, but I guessed it was a submarine.  Am I right?”

“Yes!” shouted Joe.  “Good work, Mac!  Now for a picture!”

And while Joe and his two friends were thus making ready, in the face of imminent disaster, to get pictures of the torpedo that might be on its way to sink the ship, many other matters were being undertaken.

Passengers were being called to take the places previously assigned to them in the lifeboats.  Captain Merceau and his officers, after a hasty consultation, were gathered on the bridge, looking for the first sight of the submarine, or, what was more vital, for the ripples that would disclose the presence of the torpedo.

But perhaps the most eager of all, and certainly among the most active, were the members of the gun crews.  On both sides of the vessel, and at bow and stern, the call to quarters had been answered promptly, and with strained but eager eyes the young men, under their lieutenants, were watching for the first fair sight of something at which to loose the missiles of the quick-firing guns.

“Give it to her, lads!  Give it to her!  All you can pump in!” yelled the commander of the squad on the port side, for it was off that bow that the lookout had sighted the periscope.

And while the hurried preparations went on for getting the passengers into the lifeboats, at the falls of which the members of the crew stood ready to lower away, there came from the port gun a rattle and barking of fire.

The periscope had disappeared for a moment after the lookout had sighted it, but a slight disturbance in the water, a ripple that was different from the line of foam caused by the breaking waves, showed where it had been.

And by the time Joe and Blake, with the help of Charlie, had set up their small camera, the tell-tale indicator of an undersea boat was again in view, coming straight for the steamer.

“There she is!” cried Blake.

“I see her!” answered Joe, as he focussed the lens of the machine on the object “I’ll get her as soon as she breaks!”

The mewing picture boys, as well as Charlie, had forgotten all about the need of taking their places at the stations assigned to them, to be in readiness to get into a boat.  They were sharply reminded of this by one of the junior officers.