every
part of the ship. With every man knowing precisely what he had to do,
and how to do it, there was incredible speed without confusion. Tumbling
to their stations like hounds on a hot scent, they yet managed to avoid
getting in each other's way, even in the narrow passages and on the
ladders. The loom of the conning-tower was plain to the naked eye, now
that one knew where to look for it, but only for a few minutes. Even as
a swiftly passed shell was thrown into the open breech of the forecastle
gun, came the look-out's whine through the voice-pipe, "She's going
down, sir; she's gone!" The breech of the gun spun shut, but the eye of
the sightsetter groped along an empty horizon.

"Never mind," muttered the captain grimly. "Couldn't have croaked him
with one shot anyhow. Got something better'n shells for him. Now for
it," and his hand went back to pull the wire of a gong which gave
certain orders to the men standing-by with the depth-charges. That, a
word down the engine-room voice-pipe, and a fraction of a point's
alteration in the course--and there was only one thing left to be done.
The time for that had not quite arrived.

Because a destroyer's engine-room telegraph-hand points to "Full speed!"
it does not necessarily mean that there are not ways of forcing more
revolutions from the engines, of driving her still faster through the
water should the need arise. Such a need now confronted the _Zip_, and,
like the thoroughbred she was, her response was instant and generous.
The pulsing throb of her quickened till it was almost a hum; the
quivering insistency of it struck straight to the marrow of the bones,
drummed in the depths of one's innermost being. If there is anything to
stir the blood of a man like a destroyer beginning to see red and go
Berserk, I have yet to encounter it.

There must have been something like three miles to go from the point
where the U-boat had been sighted to the point where the inevitable
patch of grease would mark the place where it had submerged, and rather
less than twice that many minutes had elapsed when the cry of "Oil
slick--starboard bow!" came almost simultaneously from the look-outs in
the foretop and on the bridge. Over went the helm a spoke or two, and
the executive officer, in his hand a thin piece of board with a table of
figures pasted on it, moved up beside the captain. Straight down the
wobbly track of iridescent film drove the _Zip_, and when a certain
length of it h