ips in connection with some
repairs. Even the plating did not appear to be bent or buckled. The
impression that ring of shining clean-cloven steel left on my mind was
of a cut as true and even as could have been done in dock with an
acetylene flame. This was largely imagination, of course; and yet how
photographic my mind-picture is you may judge from the fact that I have
distinct recollection of seeing the thin circle of red lead where it
showed all the way round beneath the grey of the outer paint.

"The heavily tilted main deck of the interior of this section of the
U-boat did not appear to be flooded at this juncture, though any water
that had been shipped, of course, would have been in the now submerged
bows. I have a jumbled recollection of wheels and levers and
switchboards, fittings of brass and steel, and what I took to be three
torpedoes--one on the port side, and two, one above the other, on the
starboard. The most arresting thing of all, however, was the figure of a
solitary man, the only one, strange to say, that anybody reports having
seen. He was scrambling upward toward the opening, and I have never been
quite sure whether he was 'Kamerad-ing' with his uplifted hands, or
whether they were raised preparatory to the dive it is quite probable he
intended to make into the sea.

"Whichever the attitude was, it had no chance to serve its purpose. The
stern section of the U-boat--the one most heavily damaged by the
depth-charges--was seen to sink abreast the starboard 12-pounder battery
by the crew of that gun, but the forward part--the one with the
conning-tower, which I had seen into the interior of--buoyed up by the
water-tight compartments in the bows, continued to float. Observing
this, the Captain ordered the helm put a-starboard, and as we turned,
the 4-inch gun and my 12-pounder opened up together. My very first
round, fired over the port quarter, hit and exploded fairly inside the
gaping end of the section, right where I had last seen the man with
upraised hands. That, and the two or three smashing hits by the 4-inch
gun, finished the job. A whirlpool in the sea marked the rush of water
into the severed end, and this section--for all the world as though it
had been a complete submarine--tossed its bows, with their
elephant-ear-like rudders, skyward, and planed off on an easy angle
toward the bottom. Its disappearance was complete. There were no
survivors, and practically no floating wreckage. Only a s