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At the same moment was heard the whirr of an airplane motor overhead and very shortly a hand bomb crashed to earth not more than two hundred yards up the canal towpath, exploding with a terrible detonation and tearing up a fearful hole in the ground. "The German guns are all in action now," said Ted as he watched the airplane circling above the U-boat base. Jack was soon told of the situation.
It was an official order announcing the appointment of Jack as an ensign with an assignment to the captured U-boat as executive officer under Lieutenant-commander McClure! Jack could scarce believe what he read and was so dumbfounded he could not speak for some minutes. "And our friend Wainwright is to be with us, too," continued McClure. "You mean Ted Wainwright?" asked Jack.
He was accused of having approved some of the drastic methods especially the U-boat campaign which the Germans subsequently employed, because in the year 1912, when he was writing on the subject, France believed that she herself possessed the best submarines, and she meant to employ them.
At that time there were great fears in England as to whether, and how, the U-boat could be paralysed. No one in London knew whether the new means to counteract it would suffice before they had been tried, and it was only in the course of the summer that the success of the anti-submarine weapons and the convoy principle was confirmed.
From his vantage point behind the conning tower of the captured U-boat Jack kept tabs on the struggle until all firing had ceased and he was sure the Germans had been completely subjugated. The cheering of his rescuers apprised him of the defeat of the enemy. Walking out on the deck of the U-boat, he pulled off his hat and welcomed his deliverers with a lusty yell.
In the first place, both England and France must keep the larger part of the gold they have to maintain issues of their paper at par; and, in the second place, the German U-boat has made the shipping of gold a dangerous procedure even if they had it to ship.
If, in, spite of many scruples, Your Majesty yielded to Germany's wish and consented to allow the Austro-Hungarian Navy to take part in the U-boat warfare, it was not because we were converted by the German arguments, but because Your Majesty deemed it to be absolutely necessary to act with Germany in loyal concert in all quarters and because we were firmly persuaded that Germany, unfortunately, would never desist from her resolve to begin the unrestricted U-boat warfare.
Officers and crew of the U-boat had betrayed profoundest consternation upon the advent of that destroyer, presumably a warship of a neutral nation. And that same ship had without hesitation fired upon the submarine. Was it possible, then, that the United States had already declared war on Germany?
She had not then enough men in her steam department to keep her engines warm, so she reported. But now she had steam enough. She was wide and high, a huge hulk of a ship, and here she was now charging charging was the word like a motor-boat at where somebody said the U-boat had just submerged. Whether she got her U-boat, I don't know; but she certainly did cut through the water for about a mile.
The captain was wise enough to stop at the first signal of the commander of the U-boat, and he thereby saved the lives of his crew, who escaped with their belongings after the steamer was peacefully sunk.
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