rget in front of him not more than six hundred yards
away.

"Give it to 'em, Mack! Give it to 'em!" cried Jack.

Again, a torpedo leaped from the bowcap of the _Monitor_ and hurled
its ton and a quarter of steel gray mass directly upon the port bow of
the German craft.

As the _Monitor_ dived away again her captain beheld the battleship
listing badly, going down by the bow at a rapid rate.

"Two strikes!" he exclaimed enthusiastically.

"Some night!" gasped Ted as he clutched the foot rail that ran up the
side of the conning tower.

"And some battle!" responded Jack at his side.

With engines slowed down the _Monitor_ ran along a hundred and fifty
yards and then turned her nose upward again for another stab at the
German fleet. As her periscopes cleft the crest of the waves again
and she emerged into the arena of activity McClure caught sight of
a destroyer off the starboard bow not more than five hundred feet away.
A searchlight on the forward deck of the German vessel swept the water
in front of the _Monitor_ with a long white finger of light that fell
in a moment upon the eyes of the American submarine.

"A destroyer driving directly at us at full tilt with all her guns in
action!" roared McClure.

At the same moment he touched off another torpedo; but, in his eagerness
for another "bull's eye" the American commander had fired too soon,
and the torpedo shot past the destroyer, missing the mark by ten yards.

In retaliation, the forward guns of the German craft belched forth a
salvo of leaden hail that followed the path of the searchlight's rays
directly upon the eyes of the _Monitor_. With unerring aim the
German gunners had found their mark. A sharp crash; a roar as the
water above the _Monitor's_ conning tower was converted into a boiling
maelstrom, and the impact of steel against steel betokened the fact
that a shot had struck home in the superstructure of the attacking sub.

"Our periscope's cutoff clean as a whistle," exclaimed McClure as he
backed away from the tube through which he had been observing the
approach of the enemy craft.

"Quick, lower away!" he commanded.

Shipping ballast in all her tanks, the _Monitor_ began dropping into
the depths.

"Look, look!" yelled Jack as he pointed to the steel dome roof of the
conning tower.

In consternation McClure and Ted followed the extended finger to a spot
in the steel casement where a jagged hole had been torn by a fragment
of the German