All four of the Allied gifts for Fritz functioned with terrific effect. The _Corsair_, charging ahead at full speed to avoid being hoisted herself, was shaken as though she had hit a reef. The sea was violently agitated in a foaming upheaval. The men asleep below decks came spilling up through the hatches, convinced that the ship had been blown up. One of the French fishermen vowed that he had a glimpse of the shadowy shape of the submarine as it passed directly under the _Corsair_. It seemed reasonable to assume that the four depth charges had been placed where they would do the most good. Nothing could survive the destructive effect of the solid wall of water impelled by these explosions. And the submarine had been near enough, in all probability, to receive the force of these rending shocks. The _Corsair_ moved ahead for five minutes, along the track which the U-boat had taken when it submerged. There was the hope that it might rise to the surface disabled, but the moonlit surface of the sea was unbroken. The mist had cleared and the sky was bright. Swinging about, the _Corsair_ retraced her path on the chance of finding some sign or token of a shattered U-boat. Soon she ran through a spreading oil slick, a patch of greasy calm amid the glinting waves, and the smell of mineral oil was strong. They sniffed it greedily aboard the _Corsair_ and the French fishermen forgot to mourn the _Eugene Louise_. It was their belief that the glorious American Navy had evened the score with the Boche. The bluejackets were of the same opinion and felt confident that the _Corsair_ would be awarded a star to display on her funnel, the _Croix de Guerre_ of the sea, to show that she had bagged her submarine. The officers were not quite so cock-sure. Daylight might have disclosed some bits of _débris_, enough wreckage to substantiate the claim beyond a shadow of doubt, but the mere presence of floating oil was no longer admitted as final proof either by the American Navy Department or the British Admiralty. Submarines were apt to leak a certain amount of fuel oil, or to blow it through the exhaust when running on the surface, and it was suspected that Fritz had learned the trick of opening a valve in order to delude the pursuers into the belief that they had crippled or smashed him. In this instance, however, the circumstantial evidence was very strongly in favor of the _Corsair_, even though officials ashore might decline to give her documentary credit. The submarine had been unusually close aboard, almost under the ship, when four depth charges were let go and all exploded perfectly. Commander Kittinger was so reluctant to claim too much that he presented no more than the terse facts and let the matter rest with that. Earlier in the war, destroyers had been granted the star on a funnel for evidence no more conclusive than this—depth charges dropped within a fatal radius and the presence of abundant fuel oil as the aftermath.