ped up--it was a coast where they had been regularly
operating--but no one was particularly expecting one.

Destroyers are bad medicine if you do not get to them quickly, and
lately the U-boats seemed to care more to get merchant ships; but this
day the lookouts were not loafing on their job on that account.

The 343 got through with her target practice, and, except for a few
gunners' mates still coddling their pet guns, the crew were taking it
easy around deck; and also, because of the smooth sea, the ship was
making easy weather of it toward port.

Seeing a periscope is oftentimes a matter of luck. When they stay up it
is easy enough, but when they are porpoising, shooting it up for just a
look around, you have to be looking right at one. What they first saw on
the 343 was the wake of this torpedo, coming on at a forty-knot clip for
the waist of the ship.

The commander of the 343 was on the bridge at the time and saw the wake
almost with the cry of the lookout. The wake was then pretty handy to
the ship, and the torpedo itself would be fifty feet or so ahead of the
wake.

There was no getting away from it then. The only hope was to take it
somewhere else than amidships. Engine and boiler compartments were
amidships. If it struck her there they might as well call it taps for
all hands. So the commander put the wheel hard over--to take it on his
quarter, where there was also a chance that it would pass under her.

Torpedoes generally strike twelve to fifteen feet under water, but just
before this one could make the 343 it broached--came to the surface of
the water--but without slacking her forty-knot speed. It was unusual and
spectacular. The sun shone on the polished sides of her as she leaped
from the sea.

She struck the 343 above her water-line and pretty well aft. Those on
her deck who saw her make that last leap out of water hoped for the
best, though waiting for the worst. But the resulting explosion was
nothing tremendous--so officers and men say, and so adding a little more
data to U-boat history. The bark of one of their own little 4-inch guns
was more impressive. There was a flame and an up-shooting cloud of black
smoke, followed instantly by another explosion, that of their own depth
charges, of which there were two of 300 pounds each in the stern. Those
who had any thoughts about it at the time were sure that if the torpedo
did not get them the depth charges would.

When they went to look they fou