plished and
then we rested on our oars with all eyes turned on the still lighted
_Laconia_. The torpedo had hit at about 10:30 P. M. according to our
ship's time. Though listing far over on one side, the _Laconia_ was
still afloat.

It must have been twenty minutes after that first shot that we heard
another dull thud, which was accompanied by a noticeable drop in the
hulk. The German submarine had despatched a second torpedo through the
engine room and the boat's vitals from a distance of two hundred yards.

We watched silently during the next minute as the tiers of lights dimmed
slowly from white to yellow, then to red and then nothing was left but
the murky mourning of the night which hung over all like a pall.

A mean, cheese-coloured crescent of a moon revealed one horn above a rag
bundle of clouds low in the distance. A rim of blackness settled around
our little world, relieved only by a few leering stars in the zenith,
and, where the _Laconia's_ lights had shown, there remained only the dim
outlines of a blacker hulk standing out above the water like a jagged
headland, silhouetted against the overcast sky.

The ship sank rapidly at the stern until at last its nose rose out of
the water, and stood straight up in the air. Then it slid silently down
and out of sight like a piece of scenery in a panorama spectacle.

Boat No. 3 stood closest to the place where the ship had gone down. As a
result of the after suction, the small life-boat rocked about in a
perilous sea of clashing spars and wreckage.

As the boat's crew steadied its head into the wind, a black hulk,
glistening wet and standing about eight feet above the surface of the
water, approached slowly. It came to a stop opposite the boat and not
ten feet from the side of it. It was the submarine.

"Vot ship vass dot?" were the first words of throaty guttural English
that came from a figure which projected from the conning tower.

"The _Laconia_," answered the Chief Steward Ballyn, who commanded the
life-boat.

"Vot?"

"The _Laconia_, Cunard Line," responded the steward.

"Vot did she weigh?" was the next question from the submarine.

"Eighteen thousand tons."

"Any passengers?"

"Seventy-three," replied Ballyn, "many of them women and children--some
of them in this boat. She had over two hundred in the crew."

"Did she carry cargo?"

"Yes."

"Iss der Captain in dot boat?"

"No," Ballyn answered.

"Well, I guess you'll be all right. A pat