The chase had lasted half an hour.
The most audacious and curious were on the decks and believed their salvation already sure as they saw their ship leaving its enemy behind.
Suddenly a black line had cut the sea, something like a long thorn with splinters of foam which was advancing at a dizzying speed, in bold relief against the water....

Then came a blow on the hull of the vessel which had made it shudder from stem to stern, not a single plate nor screw escaping tremendous dislocation....

Then a volcanic explosion, a gigantic hatchet of smoke and flames, a yellowish cloud in which were flying dark objects:--fragments of metal and of wood, human bodies blown to bits....

The eyes of the narrator gleamed with an insane light as he recalled the tragic sight.
"A friend of mine, a boy from my own country," he continued, sighing, "had just left me in order to see the submersible better and he put himself exactly in the path of the explosion....

He disappeared as suddenly as if he had been blotted out.