Chapter LXI

Two days passed uneventfully; then shortly before sunset on the third day the look-out reported a periscope about a thousand yards distant and three points off the port bow. Cappy Ricks' old knees promptly commenced to knock together with excitement.

"Here's where Terence gets that torpedo if he doesn't come up out of the engine room," Mike Murphy remarked laconically, and promptly whistled Terence on the engine room speaking tube. "Come up or be blown up," he yelled.

"Divil a fear! We're comin'," Terence replied.

The chief and his crew had just reached the deck when the black shining turtleback of the submarine broke water.

"They have to come to the surface to discharge a torpedo," Murphy explained to Cappy Ricks.

"Great Godfrey! Here it comes!" shrilled Cappy, and watched, fascinated, the wake of the torpedo as it raced toward them. Just as Terence Reardon and his engine crew came panting up on the bridge, the old Costa Rica walked into it. "Me ingine room! I knew it!" cried Terence. Then the explosion came.

From where he lay on his back, half stunned, Cappy Ricks saw water and wreckage fly high in the air. The Costa Rica shivered. So did Cappy. Then the debris descended, and Cappy, choked with salt water, dimly realized that Terence Reardon had him in his arms and was carrying him down to the boat deck, where the motor lifeboat swung wide in the davits.

"Here, take the boss from me," Terence commanded, and passed Cappy to a negro fireman, who carried the old man forward and laid him on a pile of blankets, previously placed there for just such an emergency.

Then the lifeboat commenced to drop away from the towering black topside and Cappy was aware of Michael J. Murphy's face--white, anxious, terrified--gazing down at him from the ship's rail.

"I'm just suffering from the shock," Cappy called. "Mike, you 'tend to business. Remember what I told you and tell the crew to keep their mouths shut. He'll do the natural thing and walk into your hand."

Murphy, reassured, waved his hand, and with his gun crew fled aft to the little house that protected the auxiliary steering gear from the weather, where they concealed themselves. In the meantime the other lifeboats had been lowered away; the painter from the third boat was passed to the second, which in turn passed its painter to the motor boat, and the ship's company hauled clear of the shattered, sinking ship. The Costa Rica was going down by the head, and Cappy, curious as any human being, sat up to watch his decoy disappear.

The submarine steamed up to them. "What vessel is that?" her commander shouted from the conning tower in excellent English.

"The American steamer Soak-it-to-'em, of Rotten Row," Cappy Ricks replied, "carrying a cargo of post holes. She