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He grunted with satisfaction as he found the first of the saps held to his satisfaction. The sentry group were quietly smoking; the sentry up at the head of the sap was watching fixedly through his periscope. The rifles and bayonets of the men rested close at hand, the Mills bombs were conveniently placed on a narrow ledge under cover. "Ha, good! All quiet here, my lads?"
But once seen there was no forgetting. Black and straight as an ebon keel, it cut through the swells with effortless grace, a torpedoing, half-defined shadow beneath it. No small, Child-bearing female this, but a magnificent bull fully thirty feet long, its knifing dorsal as tall as a man. And then the blackened knife, like a periscope, sank beneath the level of the waves, and did not reappear.
Mac had never more than swiftly surveyed the scene direct for there was a deadly accuracy in the practice of the snipers at twenty yards range but viewed its details and the Turkish parapets through a periscope. These, too, the snipers shattered with annoying frequency, though the Turks themselves had no rest whatever in the matter of being sniped at.
Before them stretched the wide sweep of water, the ocean rising slowly but surely to overwhelm them. One after another the waves surged by. Now the eye of the periscope was so close to the crest of the water that it was only a matter of another moment until they would be under. Up, up, up came the water to meet them. Ted's heart was in his mouth while he viewed this awesome spectacle.
A hundred yards away, a similar line stretched right and left, where other pessimistic miners ministered to other monstrous bellows, and Piccadilly was known as Unter den Linden. The strange stagnation of it all! Look through the periscope at the country in front. Not a sign of life in the torn-up crusted earth; not a movement between the two long lines of wire.
Blake and Joe, with Charlie to steady the machine, for the steamer was now zigzagging at high speed in an effort to escape the expected torpedo, were taking pictures of the approach of the submarine. The underwater craft was still coming on, her periscope in the midst of a hail of fire from the steamer's guns.
"Useless for us to follow them," declared McClure, as he took in the situation. "Might as well stand by this stricken Hun cruiser and pick up some of her floating crew." "There's a lot of them in the water," said Cleary, as he swung the other periscope to scan the open sea well to the sinking cruiser's stern. In a few minutes the Dewey ascended and made herself known to the British "limey."
They were surrounded by a numerous screen of destroyers and light cruisers, the former at that range through the periscope appearing as black smudges. It is not often one is permitted such a spectacle in modern war, and I could not tear myself away from the sight of those great brutes, whom I had fought when in the Derflingger at Dogger Bank and again when in the Koenig at Jutland.
For one thing the short winter day was fading and the light was already poor; for another any attempt to keep the periscope above the parapet for more than a few seconds brought a series of bullets hissing and zipping over, and periscope glasses in those days were too precious to risk for mere curiosity's sake.
The gun crew came tumbling up, but not quick enough to suit him, for as they were mustering at the gun he gave the order to dive, only, however, taking her down to periscope depth before instantly ordering surface and then "Gun Action Stations" again. This time we opened fire on the ship, which was a Norwegian barque and, being in the barred zone, liable to destruction.
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