“You want to forget it, Benson.  The thing you want to remember is that men who serve in navies sign their lives away when they enter the service.  All must be sacrificed, at the first instant of need, to the service and to the Flag!”

“That idea would frighten some mothers, wouldn’t it?” smiled Captain Jack Benson.

“Fighting battles is not a woman’s business,” replied Danvers, soberly and reverently.  “Her task is to rear sons who shall be unafraid, and to leave the rest to the God of Battles.”

The “Hastings” now drifted so lazily over the waters that Eph stood by the wheel, one hand resting indolently against the uppermost spokes.

The “Thor” had headed off, after watching the explosion of the torpedo, and was now considerably off the “Hastings’s” port beam.  The “Oakland,” on the other hand, was heading up for an official view of what wasn’t there in the shape of a derelict.

As she came in close the gunboat sounded three long, hoarse whistles.

“There are your congratulations from the board, Benson,” laughed the naval lieutenant, then walked over to port.  Jacob Farnum slipped out on the platform deck to hear any hail that might come from Uncle Sam’s gunboat.

Danvers was no longer interested in the scene.  Whatever was to come, he felt, would be tame compared with what he had recently seen.

So he stood, looking out dreamily over the waters at port.  He saw the “Thor” head for the “Hastings,” as though intending to come up.  Then she veered off, heading eastward.  At this instant the naval officer happened to have his glass to his eyes.  He had just counted the number of people in sight on the Rhinds craft.

“All but one of the Rhinds crowd on deck,” thought Mr. Danvers.  “I don’t make out that fellow, Radwin.  He must be taking the engine trick.”

Jack Benson also sauntered over to port side, though not with any intention of addressing the naval officer.  Benson was not thinking of anything in particular as he glanced out over the waves.

Then, all of a sudden, the young submarine commander sprang alert with suspicion—­next, certainty and horror!

Out there on the water something was moving—­something headed toward the “Hastings.”  It came on with a swift, cleaving movement.  There was a suspicion of a fin throwing up a little spray in the path of motion.

It was horrible—­unbelievable!

The mere suspicion galvanized him into action.

Captain Jack’s feet barely seemed to touch the deck as he leaped forward.

Eph was at the wheel, but there was no time to shout a frenzied order that might be misunderstood.

Besides, in the instant that he was in the air, young Benson had no sharply defined plan of what he was going to do.

But that fin over to port was the half-visible upper part of a moving torpedo!  It was headed so as to intercept the “Hastings” on her slow, forward course.