Three hours previously to this a torpedo-boat, with Paolucci and Rossetti on board, had sailed from Venice; and at ten o'clock in the evening, as Paolucci tells us,[4] he and his companion, after a certain amount of embracing, handshaking, saluting and loyal exclamations, plunged into the water. The first obstacle was a wooden pier upon which sentries were marching to and fro; this was safely passed by means of two hats shaped like bottles, which Paolucci and Rossetti now put on. The bombs were submerged, and thus the sentry saw nothing but a couple of bottles being tossed about by the waves. A row of wooden beams, bearing a thin electric wire, had then to be negotiated, and the last obstacle consisted of half a dozen steel nets which had laboriously to be disconnected from the cables which held them. It was now nearly six o'clock; the two men cautiously approached the _Viribus Unitis_ and fixed one of their bombs just below the water-line, underneath the ladder conducting to the deck. Paolucci simply records, without comment, that the ship was illuminated; perhaps he and his friend were too tired to make the obvious deduction that the hourly-expected end of the War had really arrived. A number of officers from other ships had remained on the _Viribus Unitis_ after the previous evening's ceremony; but the look-out, seeing the Italians in the water, must have thought it was eccentric of them to come swimming out at this hour to join in the festivities. A motor-launch soon picked them up and they were brought on board the flag-ship. "Viva l'Italia!" they shouted, for they were proud of dying for their country. "Viva l'Italia!" replied some of the crew to this pair of allied officers. When they were conducted to Captain Vuković they told him that his vessel would in a short time be blown up. The order was given to abandon ship, and Paolucci and his friend relate[5] that when they asked the captain if they might also try to save themselves he shook them both by the hand, saying that they were brave men and that they deserved to live. So they plunged into the water and swam rapidly away, but a few minutes later they were picked up by a launch and taken back, the captain having suddenly begun to suspect, they said, that the story of the bomb was untrue. They were again made to walk up the ladder, under which lay the explosives. It was then 6.28. The ladder was crowded with sailors who were also returning to their ship. "Run, run for your lives," shouted Paolucci. At last his foot touched the deck, and then he and Rossetti ran as fast as they could to the stern. Hardly had they got there than a terrific explosion rent the air, and a column of water shot three hundred feet straight up into the sky. Paolucci and Rossetti were again in the water, and looking back they saw a man scramble up the side of the vessel, which had now turned completely over, with her keel uppermost. There on the keel stood this man, with folded arms.