lighted
_Laconia_. The torpedo had struck at 10.30 P. M. It was thirty
minutes afterward that another dull thud, which was accompanied
by a noticeable drop in the hulk, told its story of the second
torpedo that the submarine had despatched 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 a red, and
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 ragged bundle of clouds low in the distance. A rim of
blackness settled around our little world, relieved only by
general leering stars in the zenith, and where the _Laconia's_
lights had shone 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 stood
straight in the air. Then it slid silently down and out of sight
like a piece of disappearing scenery in a panorama spectacle.

Boat No. 3 stood closest to the ship and rocked about in a
perilous sea of clashing spars and wreckage. As our 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 and came to a stop opposite the boat and not
six feet from the side of it.

"What ship was dot?" The correct words in throaty English with a
German accent came from the dark hulk, according to Chief Steward
Ballyn's statement to me later.

"The _Laconia_," Ballyn answered.

"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, "men, women, and children, some
of them in this boat. She had over two hundred in the crew."

"Did she carry cargo?"

"Yes."

"Well, you'll be all right. The patrol will pick you up soon."
And without further sound save for the almost silent fixing of
the conning tower lid, the submarine moved off.

There was no assurance of an early pick-up, even tho