The beautiful night closed in again. O'Farrell and the engineer continued to peer out into the dark. Suddenly both of them cried out, using exactly the same words at exactly the same time, "Torpedo off the port bow, sir!" The thing had become visible in an instant. It could be seen as a rushing white streak in the dark water, and was coming towards the destroyer with the speed of an express train, coming like a bullet out of a gun. The captain uttered a quick word of command. The wheel spun, the roaring, trembling ship turned in the dark. A strange thing happened. Just as the destroyer had cleared the danger line, the torpedo, as if actuated by some malevolent intelligence, porpoised, and actually turned again towards the vessel. The fate of the destroyer lay on the knees of the gods. Those on the bridge instinctively braced themselves for the shock. The affair seemed to be taking a long time, a terribly long time. An instant later, the contrivance rushed through the foaming wake of the destroyer only a few yards astern, and continuing on, disappeared in the calm and glittering dark. A floating red light suddenly appeared just ahead and at the same moment all caught sight of the _Zemblan_. She was hardly more than half a mile away. Somebody aboard her had evidently just thrown over one of those life buoys with a self-igniting torch attachment, and this buoy burned a steady orange red just off that side on which the vessel was listing. The dark, stricken, motionless bulk leaned over the little pool of orange radiance gleaming in a fitful pool; round the floating torch one could see vague figures working on a boat by the stern, and one figure walking briskly down the deck to join them. There was not a sign of any explosion, no breakage, no splintered wood. Some ships are stricken, and go to their death in flames and eddying steam, go to their death as a wounded soldier goes; other ships resemble a strong man suddenly stricken by some incurable and mysterious disease. The unhappy _Zemblan_ was of this latter class. There were two boats on the water, splashing their oars with a calm regularity of the college crews; there were inarticulate and lonely cries. Away from the light, and but vaguely seen against the midnight sky, lay a British patrol boat which had happened to be very close at hand. And other boats were signalling--"_Zemblan_--am coming." The sloop signalled the destroyer that she would look after the survivors. Cries were no longer heard. Round and round the ship in great sweeps went the destroyer, seeking a chance to be of use,--to avenge. Other vessels arrived, talked by wireless and disappeared before they had been but vaguely seen.