A flash of light and an explosion behind him told Bell he had guessed correctly. Had he not counterpunched, the torpedo would have sunk him. Instead, it had detonated against an impervious stone pier of the Brooklyn Bridge, and he was close enough to the Holland to see its rivets. He braced for the impact by pressing hard against the helm the second before she hit the submarine just behind its conning tower. At the speed Dyname was traveling, Bell expected to shear through the Holland and cut it in half. But he had miscalculated. With her sharp bow lifting from the water as her nine propellers churned, the yacht rode up onto the Holland’s hull, perched across it, then slid off with screech of tearing steel and shearing rivets.

Dyname’s propellers were still spinning, and they pushed the yacht hundreds of yards from the collision before he could stop them. The Holland had vanished, submerged or sunk, he could not tell. Then Uncle Donny poked his head up to report, “Water’s coming in.”

“Can you give me steam?”

“Not for long,” the old man answered. Bell circled the site of the collision. He could feel the water weighing down Dyname’s hull.

Seven minutes after the Holland submerged, it reappeared a short distance away.

Bell steered to ram again. The yacht resisted the helm. He could barely coax her into a turn. Suddenly the Holland’s conning-tower hatch flipped open. Four men scrambled out and jumped into the river. The tidal current swept them under the bridge. None were Eyes O’Shay, and the Holland was circling, pointing slowly but inexorably toward the four-hundred-fifty-foot hull of the New Hampshire. At a range of less than four hundred yards, the spy could not miss.

Bell wrestled with the helm and forced the stricken yacht on a course to ram. He shoved the steam lever to flank speed. There was no response. He yelled down the voice pipe. “Give me everything you can, and get out before she sinks!”

Whatever the old man managed in the engine room caused the yacht to lumber ahead fitfully. Bell steered at the Holland, which had stopped in place, low in the water, with the East River waves lapping the rim of its open hatch. The thrashing propeller held it against the tide. Its bow was completing its turn, lining its torpedo tube up with the New Hampshire.

Isaac Bell drove Dyname into the submarine. The vessels lurched together like bloodied, bare-knuckle prizefighters staggering through their final round. The yacht bumped the heavier submarine slightly off its course and scraped alongside. As the effect of the impact receded and the submarine resumed lining up its torpedo, Bell glimpsed through the open hatch Eyes O’Shay’s hands manipulating the rudder wheels.

He jumped down from the bridge, dove over Dyname’s rails onto the submarine, and plunged through the hatch.

Chapter 56

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