tain, have
revealed anything to belie the impression I had laid myself out to
convey--that M.L. ---- was an explosion-riven, burning, and even
already, probably a sinking ship. Besides the gay gush of flames from
the fire-raft, which must have appeared to be roaring amidships, lurid
tongues of fire were also spouting out of the forrard and after hatches,
and from several of the ports; while a thirty-degree list to starboard
might well have indicated that she was about to heel over and go down. I
had looked at her that way from a periscope myself, while I was studying
the effect of some 'stage property' flares in comparison with ordinary
gasoline 'blow-torches,' and knew how much she looked like the real
thing even when you knew she wasn't. The list? Oh, that was a very
simple matter. This class of M.L.s is never on an even keel for long,
anyhow, and the installation of a couple of tanks made it possible to
pump water back and forth and give her any heel we wanted. We put her
almost on her beam ends when we were experimenting on the thing, and
without upsetting things much outside of the galley, which we had
neglected to warn of what devilry was afoot.

"If we didn't look helpless and harmless enough for any Fritz to run
right up alongside and 'gloat over,' I'll eat my hat; and that was what
I was counting on this fellow doing. Indeed, I'll always think that was
just what he _did_ intend to do eventually; only it was the way he went
about doing it that was near to upsetting the apple-cart. It seemed
reasonable to suppose that he would come up and do his gloating on the
side he approached from, and so that was the side I had prepared to
receive him on. The heavy list she was under to starboard would have
made it possible to bring the gun to bear on him until he was almost
under the rail, and then there would be a chance for a lance-bomb. If he
came up on the other side by any chance, I had figured that the game
would be all up; for there was the fire-raft to give it away, while the
list would be on the wrong slant to give the gun a show. Well, whether
it was accident or intent, that is just what he did--broached abeam to
port, about half a cable's length off the sizzling tank of flaming
kerosene.

"That next minute or two" (D---- sat up in bed in the excitement of the
memory of that stirring interval, and I felt one of his gesticulating
fists come with a thump against the bottom of my mattress) "called for
some of the q