The U-boat had come to the surface so that her captain could take a look around and see if there was a ship in sight that was worth sinking. Seeing nothing but our little boat the U-boat came _awash_, that is her conning tower projected above the water and her deck was just level with the surface of the sea. The captain of the U-boat was evidently observing us through a port from the inside of the conning tower and seeing that our guns were manned and that we were making for her at full speed he had ordered her guns to be brought into action. Each gun was mounted on her deck in a gun-well and was hoisted into place together with its gunner by a plunger worked by compressed air. We closed in on her and then the shells began to fly. A high sea was running so that it was well nigh impossible for her gunners to hit us or for ours to hit her, but soon a shell, bad luck to it, carried away one of our masts and my aerial with it. I rushed up on deck and there I saw eight or ten of our little chasers heading for the U-boat, which was the _U-53_, the largest submarine that Germany had turned out with the exception of the _Deutschland_. As each chaser came up the fight got hotter but the U-boat stayed in the game until her captain saw our destroyer coming and then he concluded it was time to submerge her. We knew her captain had given the order to his wheelsman to make her dive for her guns and gunners began to disappear in the deck-wells and in a few seconds the covers closed down on the latter watertight. Her hatches were closed and her engines, which had been started, propelled her slowly through the water which must be done to make her dive at the proper angle. [Illustration: “A BRIGHT FLASH OF BLUE FIRE SHOT UP THROUGH THE HOLE”] Just as her bow submerged Bill put over a shell with a _bow trajectory_, that is, he aimed his gun so that when he fired the projectile shot high into the air and seemed as if it would go far over the U-boat. But Bill knew what he was doing and the shell fell squarely on the U-boat’s deck just aft her conning tower. Having found the range he planted three more shells on her with marvelous accuracy; the last one went through her bow and must have exploded in her torpedo room for a bright flash of blue fire shot up through the hole for fifty feet and this was followed by a dense greenish smoke that rolled out as though she was a blast furnace. After a couple of misses Bill landed another shell on her stern and this one ripped an awful hole in her; the water poured into her and amid a series of explosions that threw steaming water into the air like young geysers, with much sizzling and hissing she went down stern-end on never to rise again. A great hurrah went up from all hands on our boat and our Commander commended Bill on his excellent shots. “Three cheers for big Bill,” I shouted and the gobs responded with mighty lung-power.