'Well, sir,' Colomb was chuckling, 'if your putting hadn't been so bad you'd have knocked me endways. You were shocking on the greens.'
'Yes; but you wait till I get used to that new putter of mine,' the skipper returned, not in the least offended. 'I botched every single putt, and if I hadn't done that---- Hallo!' he suddenly broke off, sniffing; 'd'you smell that?'
'That' was a pungent whiff of crude petroleum floating down from windward, and Captain Spencer knew well enough that it meant the attacking craft were somewhere fairly close. The greater number of modern destroyers consume nothing but oil-fuel in their furnaces, and in a strong wind the reek of its burning can often be smelt for several miles.
'M'yes. They're pretty close, sir,' Colomb agreed.
'Keep your eyes skinned, officer of the watch,' the captain cautioned, busy with his own glasses. 'Warn the group officers and guns' crews!'
'Ay, ay, sir,' said the lieutenant, pressing a push by his side, which caused an alarm-bell to sound at all the anti-torpedo-craft guns throughout the ship.
For some minutes there was silence, broken only by the humming of the wind through the rigging and the liquid plop of breaking seas. But all the time the smell of oil-fuel became gradually stronger; and then, quite suddenly, the flagship--two ships ahead--switched on a searchlight. She had seen something!
The powerful blue-white beam flickered out, swung round slightly, and then fell on a black phantom shape rushing through the water. She was a destroyer, and came along with the wind and sea dead astern; but even then sheets of spray were flying over her low decks and bridge.
The moment the attacker was lit up by the ray there came the loud crash of a gun, and an instant later more searchlights joined the first.
_Boomp! Bang! Boom! Boomp!_ went the guns in an irregular volley, as the first and second ships in the line got to work. Sharp stabs of red flame danced in and out of the beams of the lights. The thick smoke of the blank discharges wreathed and eddied through the rays as it drifted down the line on the wind; but the destroyers--two of them--still came on at full speed, pitching and rolling horribly.
They seemed to be about six hundred yards on the starboard bow of the flagship, travelling down the line of battleships in an opposite direction to that in which the latter were steaming, and so brilliantly were they illuminated in the glare that even the figures of the men crouching on deck round the torpedo-tubes were clearly visible through glasses. The water was washing knee-deep over their decks as they rolled, but it was not until they were nearly abeam of the flagship that a ball of red fire shot up into the air from each of them. This indicated the moment at which, if it had been the real thing, their torpedoes would actually have been discharged.