"Whichever the attitude was, it had no chance to serve its purpose. The stern section of the U-boat--the one most heavily damaged by the depth-charges--was seen to sink abreast the starboard 12-pounder battery by the crew of that gun, but the forward part--the one with the conning-tower, which I had seen into the interior of--buoyed up by the water-tight compartments in the bows, continued to float. Observing this, the Captain ordered the helm put a-starboard, and as we turned, the 4-inch gun and my 12-pounder opened up together. My very first round, fired over the port quarter, hit and exploded fairly inside the gaping end of the section, right where I had last seen the man with upraised hands. That, and the two or three smashing hits by the 4-inch gun, finished the job. A whirlpool in the sea marked the rush of water into the severed end, and this section--for all the world as though it had been a complete submarine--tossed its bows, with their elephant-ear-like rudders, skyward, and planed off on an easy angle toward the bottom. Its disappearance was complete. There were no survivors, and practically no floating wreckage. Only a spreading film of oil and a tangle of torn wakes slowly dissolving in the wash of the driving seas marked the scene of the action. It had lasted something over ten minutes. "The _Whack_ suffered considerable damage from the impact with the submarine, though not enough to give us serious worry, even in so heavy a sea. The stem was bent over to port, like a broken nose, and the buckling plates caused her to make quite a bit of water. We had no trouble coping with this, however, and made port, with the survivors of the _Amperi_ aboard, without difficulty. There we soon had the--well, not unmixedly unpleasant--news that the _Whack's_ wounds were of a nature somewhat comparable to what the Tommy in France calls a 'Blighty.' Without having any real permanent harm done her, she was still enough banged up to need a special refit, the period of which, of course, the most of us would be able to spend at home on leave. Yes, indeed," he concluded, grinning pleasedly, "that was a ripping piece of ramming in more ways than one." P---- went over and bent above the shivering "Gyro," for a moment, took a long look through his glasses at the last of the now receding convoy, and then came back and rejoined me by the rail. "There was one little thing I neglected to tell you about," he said presently, "and that was the part the _Smack_ played in that show. Although the _Whack_ got all the _kudos_ for the sinking, there is a decided possibility that a bit of a stunt the _Smack_ brought off before ever we came up may have been largely if not entirely responsible for us getting the chance we did.