IN THE TWILIGHT
I. HEAVY METAL
It was still dark when the battle cruisers slipped from their
moorings and began to feel their way towards the unseen entrance of
the harbour. From the bridge of each mass of towering indeterminate
shadows the stern light of the next ahead could be discerned dimly
through binoculars, and on those pin-points of light they steered.
What the battle cruiser flagship steered by, in the narrow confines
of the crowded harbour and the inky darkness, only the little knot of
figures on her forebridge knew: the admiral and flag captain, the
navigator and officer-of-the-watch, muffled in duffle coats and moving
mysteriously about the glow-worm arc of light from the binnacle and
charttable.
One by one the long black shapes slid through the outer defences, ebon
shadows in a world of shades. The voices of the leadsmen in the chains
blended their mournful intermittent chant with the rush of water past
the ship’s side; to all but the ears of the watchful figures on the
bridges the sound was swallowed by the dirge of the funnel stays and
halliards in the cold wind heralding the dawn.
The red and green lights on the gate-marking vessels winked and bobbed
in the swell caused by the passage of the grim host. It passed with
incredible swiftness; and before the troubled waters began to quiet, the
escorting destroyers came pelting up astern, heralded by the rush and
rattle of spray-thrashed steel, funnels glowing, and the roar of their
fans pouring out from the engine-room exhausts. Night and the mystery of
the darkness enfolded them. The gates closed upon their churning wakes
and the tumult of their passing. Dawn glimmered pale behind the hills
and broadened slowly into day; it found the harbour empty, save for
small craft. Beyond the headlands, beyond the mist-enshrouded horizon,
the battle cruisers were abroad, unleashed.
Once clear of their protecting minefields, the battle cruisers moved
south at high speed, with their smoke trailing astern in broad zig-zags
across a grey sky. At intervals they altered course simultaneously and
then swung back to their original path, flinging the grey seas asunder
from each gaunt, axe-headed bow as they turned.
They scarcely resembled ships, in their remorseless, purposeful rush
under the lowering sky. The screening T.B.D.’s spread fan-wise on their
flanks were dwarfed to insignificance beside these stupendous destroyers
with the smoke pouring from their huge funnels, and nothing to break
their stark nakedness of outline but the hooded guns. Men lived on board
them, it is true: under each White Ensign a thousand souls laboured out
each one its insignificant destiny. They were entities invisible like
mites in a cheese; but the ships that bore them were instruments,
visible enough, of the triumphant destiny of an empire.
As far as the eye could reach, the battle cruisers were alone on that
grey waste of water. But swift as was their passage, something swifter
overtook them out of the north as the morning wore on. It was the voice
of the battle fleet moving south in support. “Speed so-and-so, on
such-and-such a course,” flickered the curt cipher messages through
sixty miles of space. And south they came in battle array, battleships,
light cruisers, and destroyers, ringed by the misty horizon of the North
Sea, with the calling gulls following the white furrows of their keels
like crows after the plough.
A division of light cruisers, driving through the crested seas at the
speed of a galloping horse, linked the battle fleet with the battle
cruisers. Seen from either force they were but wraiths of smoke on the
horizon: but ever and anon a daylight searchlight winked out of the
mist, spanning the leagues with soundless talk.
It was still early afternoon when a trail of bubbles flickered ahead of
the flagship of the battle fleet’s lee line. It crossed at right angles
to their course, and a thousand yards abeam of the third ship in the
line something silvery broke the surface in a cloud of spray. It was a
torpedo that had run its course and had missed the mark. Simultaneously,
one of the escorting destroyers, a mile abeam, turned like a mongoose on
a snake, and circled questing for a couple of minutes. Then suddenly a
column of water leaped into the air astern of the destroyer, and the
sound of the explosion was engulfed by the great loneliness of sea and
sky. She remained circling while the battle fleet swept on with swift,
bewildering alterations of course, and later another far-off explosion
overtook them.
“Strong smell of oil; air bubbles. No wreckage visible. Consider enemy
submarine sunk. No survivors,” blinked the laconic searchlight, and the
avenger, belching smoke from four raking funnels, came racing up to her
appointed station.
As the afternoon wore on, a neutral passenger ship crossed the path of
the fleet. She was steering a westerly course, and altered to pass
astern of the battle cruisers.
The captain wiped his glasses and handed them to one of the passengers,
an amiable merchant of the same nationality as himself, and a
self-confessed admirer of all things British.
“Ha!” said the captain. “You see? The clenched fist of Britain! It is
being pushed under the nose of Germany--so!” He laughingly extended a
gnarled fist in the other’s face. The merchant was a frequent passenger
of his, and the sort of man (by reason of his aforesaid proclivities) to
appreciate the jest. The merchant stepped back a pace rather hurriedly:
then he laughed loudly. “Exactly!” he said, “very neat, my friend.” And
borrowing his friend’s glasses he studied the far-off tendrils of smoke
in silence awhile.
A quarter of an hour later, a light cruiser altered course from the
fleet in the direction of the neutral steamer. Then it was that the
amiable merchant was struck by a sudden recollection. It was a matter of
considerable urgency and concerned an order for a large number of bolts
of calico and a customer’s credit. So pressing was the business that he
obtained the captain’s permission to send a radio telegram to his firm
while the approaching cruiser was still some miles away.
The message was duly dispatched, and, with surprising rapidity, by
methods with which this narrative is not concerned (of which, indeed,
the narrator is entirely ignorant), reached Wilhelmshaven by nightfall.
Here four German battle cruisers were raising steam preparatory to
carrying out a bombardment at dawn of a populous English watering-place.
The message that reached them had, however, nothing to do with calico or
credit, but it bade them draw fires and give the usual leave to officers
and men; orders for the bombardment were cancelled. The German battle
cruisers were not unaccustomed to rapid changes of programme of this
sort, and they asked no questions.
At nine o’clock the following morning, a British taxpayer sat down to
breakfast in a house commanding a fine view of the sea from the popular
watering-place already mentioned. It was a large house, and incidentally
offered an admirable target from the sea. The taxpayer unfolded his
morning paper, and took a sip of his tea. Then he put the cup down
quickly. “You’ve forgotten the sugar,” he said.
“No, dear,” replied his wife, “I haven’t forgotten it, but there isn’t
any.”
“Eh,” said the taxpayer, “why not? why the devil isn’t there any sugar?”
The taxpayer’s wife advanced a number of popular theories to account for
the phenomenon, while the taxpayer gloomily stirred his unsweetened tea.
“Then all I should like to know,” he replied, when she had finished,
“is, what the blazes is our Navy doing?”
“I don’t know, dear,” said the taxpayer’s wife.
II. A STRIKING FORCE
Daybreak, drawing back the dark shroud of night from the face of the
North Sea, disclosed a British minelaying submarine making her way
homeward on the surface. To the two oilskin-clad figures on the conning
tower, chilled and streaming wet in the cheerless dawn, it also betrayed
feathers of smoke above the horizon astern. The submarine promptly dived
to investigate at closer quarters, and was rewarded by the spectacle of
a German cruiser squadron, screened by destroyers, steering a
northwesterly course at high speed.
[Illustration]
The submarine did not attempt to attack with her torpedoes. She retired
instead to where the sand-fog stirs in an endless groundswell, and the
North Sea cod hover about the wrecks of neutral merchantmen. In these
unlit depths she lay for an hour, listening to the chunk of many
propellers pass overhead and die away. She knew nothing of the
mysterious chain of events which sent those cruisers venturing beyond
the protection of the far-reaching German minefields. She was as
ignorant of popular clamour in Germany for spectacular naval activity as
she was of the presence of a large convoy of laden freighters a hundred
miles away to the northward, escorted by destroyers and making for a
British port. These matters were not her “pidgin.” On the other hand,
having once sighted the German cruisers, she became very much concerned
with getting the information through to quarters where it would be
appreciated. Accordingly, when the last of the water-borne sounds
ceased, the submarine rose to the surface, projected a tiny wireless
mast above the wave-tops, and sent out the Call rippling through space.
It was addressed to a certain light cruiser squadron, lying at its buoys
with the needles of the pressure gauges flickering and the shells fused
in the racks beside each gun, waiting day and night in much the tense
preparedness with which the fire brigade waits.
Within two hours the light cruisers were out, ribands of foam and smoke
unreeling astern of them, with their attendant destroyers bucketing and
plunging on either side of them, flinging the spray abroad in the
greeting of a steep easterly swell. The last destroyer swung into
station ere the line of minesweepers, crawling patiently to and fro
about the harbour approaches, were blotted from view in their smoke
astern. Presently the harbour itself faded out of sight; in lodging,
cottage, and villa the women glanced at the clocks as the ships went
out, and then turned to their morning tasks and the counting of the slow
hours....
East into the sunlight went the slim grey cruisers, and then north,
threading their swift way through the half-known menace of the
minefields, altering course from time to time to give a wide berth to
the horned Death that floated awash among the waves. At intervals the
yard-arm of the leading light cruiser would be flecked with colour as a
signal bellied out against the wind, and each time speed was increased.
Faster and faster they rushed through the yellowish seas, fans and
turbines humming their song of speed, and the wind in the shrouds
chiming in on a higher note as if from an æolian harp.
The spray rattled like hail against the sloping gun-shields and
splinter-mats, behind which men stood huddled in little clusters or
leaned peering ahead through glasses; cinders from the smoke of the next
ahead collected in little whorls and eddies or crunched underfoot about
the decks; the guns’ crews jested among themselves in low voices, while
the sight-setters adjusted their head-pieces and the layer of each slim
gun fussed lovingly about the glittering breech mechanism with a handful
of waste....
Then suddenly, above the thunder of the waves and singing of the wind, a
clear hail floated aft from a look-out. Bare feet thudded on the
planking of the signal bridge, bunting whirled amid the funnel smoke,
and the hum of men’s voices along the stripped decks deepened into a
growl.
“Smoke on the port bow!”
A daylight searchlight chattered suspiciously--paused--flashed a
blinding question, and was silent.
Orders droned down the voice-pipes. Somewhere a man laughed--a sudden
savage laugh of exultation, that broke a tension none were aware of till
that moment. Then a fire-gong jarred: the muzzle of the foremost gun
suddenly vomited a spurt of flame, and as the wind whipped the yellow
smoke into tatters, the remaining light cruisers opened fire.
Bang!... bang!... bang!... bang!... bang!
On the misty horizon there were answering flashes, and a moment later
came a succession of sounds as of a child beating a tray. The light
cruisers wheeled to the eastward amid scattered columns of foam from
falling shells, and as they turned to cut off the enemy from his base
the destroyers went past, their bows buried in spray, smoke swallowing
the frayed white ensigns fluttering aft. In a minute they had vanished
in smoke, out of which guns spat viciously, leaving a tangle of little
creaming wakes to mark the path of their headlong onslaught.
Neck and neck raced the retreating raiders and the avenging Nemesis from
the east coast of Britain. Ahead lay the German minefields and German
submarines and the tardy support of the German High Seas Fleet.
Somewhere far astern a huddle of nervous merchantmen were being hustled
westward by their escort, and midway between the two the hostile
destroyer flotillas fought in a desperate death-grapple under the misty
blue sky.
When at length the British light cruisers hauled off and ceased fire on
the fringe of the German minefields, the enemy were hull down over the
horizon, leaving two destroyers sinking amid a swirl of oil and
wreckage, and a cruiser on her beam ends ablaze from bow to stern. The
sea was dotted with specks of forlorn humanity clinging to spars and
rafts. Boats from the British destroyers plied to and fro among them,
bent on the quixotic old-fashioned task of succouring a beaten foe.
Those not actively engaged in this work of mercy circled round at high
speed to fend off submarine attack; the light cruisers stayed by to
discourage the advances of a pair of Zeppelins which arrived from the
eastward in time to drop bombs on the would-be rescuers of their gasping
countrymen.
The bowman of a destroyer’s whaler disengaged his boathook from the
garments of a water-logged Teuton, grasped his late enemy by the collar
and hauled him spluttering into the boat with a single powerful heave of
his right arm.
All about them cutters and whalers rising and falling on the swell were
quickly being laden to the gunwales with scalded, bleeding, half-drowned
prisoners. A midshipman in the stern of a cutter was waving a bedraggled
German ensign and half-tearfully entreating his crew to stop gaping at
the Zeppelins and attend to orders. The barking of the light cruisers’
high-angle guns was punctuated by the whinny of falling bombs and pieces
of shrapnel that whipped the surface of the sea into spurts of foam. In
the background the sinking cruiser blazed sullenly, the shells in her
magazine exploding like gigantic Chinese crackers.
In the bows of the whaler referred to above the able seaman with the
boathook sat regarding the captive of his bow and spear (or rather,
boathook). “’Ere, Tirpitz!” he said, and removing his cap he produced
the stump of a partly smoked cigarette. The captive took it with a
watery smile and pawed his rescuer’s trousers.
“Kamarad!” he said.
“Not ’arf!” said his captor appreciatively. “Not ’arf you ain’t,
you-------- son of a--------!”
The second bow, labouring at his oar, looked back over his shoulder.
“’Ush!” he said reprovingly. “’E can’t understand. Wot’s the use o’
wastin’ that on _’im_?” He spat contemptuously over the gunwale.
* * * * *
The following thoughtful description of the action appeared in the
German wireless _communiqué_ next morning:
“_Our light forces in an enterprise off the English coast put to
flight a vastly superior strength of armed merchant cruisers
escorted by destroyers. English fleet on coming to the rescue was
compelled to withdraw, and our forces returned to harbour without
further molestation._”
Every man to his own trade.
III. THE LEFT FLANK
The north-east wind carried the steady grumble of gunfire across the
sand-dunes and far out to sea.
The foremost gun’s crew of a British destroyer stood huddled in the lee
of the gun-shield with their duffle hoods pulled down over their
foreheads. The sea was calm, and the stars overhead shone with frosty
brilliance. A figure groped its way forward with a bowl of cocoa, and
joined the group round the breech of the gun. They drank in turn,
grunting as the warmth penetrated into their interiors.
The distant gunfire swelled momentarily. Above the horizon far ahead
intermittent gleams marked the activity of searchlight and star-shell.
“Them’s our guns,” said one of the cocoa-drinkers. He wiped his mouth on
the sleeve of his coat, and stared ahead. It never seemed to occur to
any of them that they might equally well be German guns.
[Illustration]
“That’s right,” confirmed the sight-setter. “There’s guns going like
that for ’undreds an’ ’undreds of miles. Right away up from the sea. Me
brother’s there--somewhere....” For a moment they ruminated over a
mental picture of the sight-setter’s brother, a mud-plastered stoical
atom, somewhere along those hundreds of miles of wire and bayonets that
hedged civilisation and posterity from the Unnamable. “Switzerland to
the sea,” said the speaker. He jerked the breech-lever absent-mindedly
towards him, and closed it again with a little click.
“An’ then we takes on,” said a loading number. “Us an’ these ’ere.” He
tapped the smooth side of a lyddite shell lying in the rack beside him.
“An’ this ’ere,” said the man who had brought the cocoa. He thrust
forward the cumbersome hilt of a cutlass at his hip. The starlight
gleamed dully on the steel guard.
“You won’t use that to-night, my son,” said the gunlayer. “We ain’t
goin’ to ’ave no _Broke_ an’ _Swift_ song an’ dance to-night.” He stared
out into the clear darkness. “We couldn’t never git near enough.”
Nevertheless, he put out his hand in the gloom and reassured himself of
the safety of a formidable bar of iron well within reach. Once in the
annals of this war had a British destroyer come to grips at close
quarters with the enemy; thereafter her crew walked the earth as men
apart, and the darlings of the high gods.
The night grew suddenly darker. It was the mysterious hour that precedes
the dawn, when warring men and sleeping animals stir and bethink them of
the morrow. The destroyer slackened speed and turned, the wide circle
of her wake shimmering against the darkness of the water. As they
turned, other dark shapes were visible abeam, moving at measured
distance from each other without a light showing or a sound but the
faint swish of the water past their sides. The flotilla had reached the
limit of its beat, and swung round to resume the unending patrol.
Once from the starry sky came the drone of a seaplane moving up from its
base that lay to the southward. Another followed, another and another,
skirting the coast and flying well out to sea to avoid the searchlights
and anti-aircraft guns of the shore batteries. They passed invisible,
and the drone of their engines died away.
“Our spottin’ machines,” said the sight-setter. “They’re going up to
spot for the monitors at daylight.” He jerked his head astern to the
north, and yawned. “I reckon I’d sooner ’ave this job than screenin’
monitors wot’s bombardin’ Ostend. I don’t fancy them 15-inch German
shell droppin’ round out o’ nuffink, an’ no chance of ’ittin’ back.”
“They knocks seven-bells outer Ostend, them monitors,” said another.
“_We_ ain’t knockin’ ’ell out o’ nobody, steamin’ up an’ down like one
of them women slops in the ’Orseferry Road.” The speaker blinked
towards the east where the stars were paling.
“We’re all doin’ our bit,” said the gunlayer, “an’ one o’ these
nights....” He shook his head darkly. The dawn crept into the sky: the
faces beneath the duffle hoods grew discernible to each other, unshaven,
pink-lidded, pinched with cold. Objects, shining with frozen dew, took
form out of the black void. The outline of the bridge above them, and
the mast behind, stood out against the sky; the head and shoulders of
the captain, with his glasses to his eyes, appeared above the bridge
screen, where he had been all night, watchful and invisible. The smoke
trailing astern blotted out the rest of the flotilla following in each
other’s wake. Aft along the deck, guns’ and torpedo-tubes’ crews began
to move and stamp their feet for warmth.
Away to starboard a circular object nearly awash loomed up and dropped
astern. Another appeared a few minutes later, and was succeeded by a
third. Mile after mile these dark shapes slid past, stretching away to
the horizon. They were the buoys of the Channel barrage, supporting the
mined nets which are but a continuation of four hundred miles of barbed
wire.
The day dawned silvery grey and disclosed a diffused activity upon the
face of the waters. Two great hospital ships, screened by destroyers as
a sinister reminder to the beholder of Germany’s forfeited honour, slid
away swiftly towards the French coast. A ragged line of coastwise
traffic, barges under sail, lighters in tow of tugs, and deepladen
freighters hugging the swept channel along the coast, appeared as if by
magic out of “the bowl of night”; from the direction of the chalk-cliffs
came a division of drifters in line ahead. They passed close to the
destroyers, and the figure on the leading destroyer’s bridge bawled
through a megaphone. They were curt incoherencies to a landsman--vague
references to a number and some compass bearings. A big man on board the
drifter flagship waved his arm to indicate he understood the message;
which was to the effect that one of the barrage buoys appeared to have
dragged a little, and the net looked as if it was worth examining.
The drifters spread out along the line of buoys and commenced their
daily task of overhauling the steel jackstays, testing the circuits of
the mines, repairing damage caused by the ebb and flow of the tide and
winter gales.
Half an hour later the destroyers encountered their reliefs,
transferred the mantle of responsibility for the left flank with a
flutter of bunting and a pair of hand-flags, and returned to their
anchorage, where they were greeted by a peremptory order from the signal
station to complete with oil fuel and report when ready for sea again. A
coastal airship had reported an enemy submarine in the closely guarded
waters of the Channel, and along sixty miles of watchful coast the hunt
was up.
“My brother Alf,” said the sight-setter disgustedly, as he kicked off
his seaboots and prepared for an hour’s sleep, “’e may be famil’r wif
tools wot I don’t know nothin’ about. But there’s one thing about
’em--when ’e lays ’em down, ’e bloody-well lays ’em down.”
IV. THE HUNT
The _Blimp_ rose from her moorings, soaring seaward, and straightway the
roar of her propeller cut off each of the occupants of the car into a
separate world of his own silence. The aerodrome with its orderly row of
hangars dropped away from under them with incredible swiftness. Fields
became patchwork, buildings fell into squares and lozenges without
identity. Figures which a minute or two before had been noisy,
muscular, perspiring fellow-men working on the ropes, were dots without
motion or meaning, and faded to nothingness.
[Illustration]
A flock of seagulls rose from the face of the cliff, whirled beneath
them like autumn leaves, and dropped astern. The parallel lines of white
that were breakers chasing each other to ruin on a rock-bound coast
merged into the level floor of the Atlantic, and presently there was
nothing but sea and blue sky with the rushing wind between, and this
glittering triumph of man’s handiwork held suspended like a bauble
midway.
The pilot turned in his seat and grinned over his shoulder at the
observer. The grin was the only visible portion of his face: the rest
was hidden by flying-helmet and goggles and worsted muffler. The grin
said: “It’s a fine morning and the old bus is running like a witch.
What’s the odds on sighting a Fritz?”
The observer laughed and shouted an inaudible reply against the roar of
the wind. He pulled a slip of chewing gum out of his pocket, bit off a
piece, and passed the rest to the pilot. Then he adjusted the focus of
the high-power glasses and began methodically quartering out the immense
circular expanse of sea beneath them.
Half an hour had passed when the wireless operator in the rear leaned
forward and tapped him on the shoulder. His listeners were to his ears,
and he was scribbling something on a slate. “S.O.S.--S.O.S.”--a bearing
from a distant headland--“fourteen miles--S.O.S.--S.O.S.--come
quickly--I am being shelled--S.O.S.--Subma----” The operator paused with
his pencil above the slate, waited a moment, and handed the slate
forward.
The message, soundless, appealing, that had reached them out of the blue
immensity had ceased abruptly. The pilot glanced from the compass to a
small square of chart clamped before him, and slowly turned the wheel.
Then he looked back over his shoulder and grinned again.
A quarter of an hour later the pilot extended a gauntletted hand and
pointed to the rim of the horizon. A faint smudge of smoke darkened into
a trailing cloud, and presently they saw ahead of it the forepart of a
ship, driving through the water at a speed which clove a white,
irregular furrow across the surface of the sea. She was swerving from
side to side like a hunted buck, and as the dirigible dipped her nose
and the hum of the wind redoubled to a roar in the ears of the crew,
they saw away to the west a tiny cigar-shaped object. At intervals a
spurt of flame shot from it, and a little pale mushroom-shaped cloud
appeared above the steamer as the shrapnel burst.
The _Blimp_ swooped at eighty miles an hour upon that cigar-shaped
object. The observer braced his feet and grasped the bomb release lever,
his jaws still moving about the piece of chewing-gum. The sea, flecked
with little waves, rushed up to greet them. They had a glimpse of the
submarine’s crew tumbling pell-mell for the conning-tower hatchway, of
the wicked gun abandoned forward still trained on the fleeing
merchantman. The next instant the quarry had shot beneath them. A sharp
concussion of the air beat upon the fragile car and body of the airship
as her nose was flung up and round. The dirigible’s bomb had burst right
forward on the pointed bows, and the submarine was diving in a confused
circle of broken water and spray.
The _Blimp_ turned to drop another bomb ahead of the rapidly vanishing
wake, and then marked the spot with a calcium flare, while the wireless
operator jiggled a far-flung “Tally ho!” on the sending-key of his
apparatus.
The tramp disappeared below the horizon, and they caught disjointed
scraps of her breathless tale while they circled in wide spirals above
the watery arena.
Three motor launches were the first upon the scene, each with a slim gun
in the bows, and carrying, like hornets, a sting in their tails. They
were old hands at the game, and they spread out on the hunt with
business-like deliberation under the directions of the _Blimp’s_ Morse
lamp. The captain of the inshore boat (he had been a stockbroker in an
existence several æons gone by) traced a tar-stained finger across the
chart, and glanced again at the compass. “Nets--nets--nets,” he mumbled.
“The swine probably knows about those to the northwest ... He daren’t
go blind much longer. Ha!”
“Feather three points on your port bow,” winked the _Blimp_. Over went
the motor launch’s helm, and the seaward boat suddenly darted ahead in a
white cloud of spray. Bang! a puff of smoke drifted away from the wet
muzzle of her gun; half a mile ahead a ricochet flung up a column of
foam as the shell went sobbing and whimpering into the blue distance.
“Periscope dipped,” waved a pair of hand-flags from the boat that had
fired. And a moment later, “Keep out of my wake! Am going to release a
charge.”
For an hour that relentless blindfold hunt went forward, punctuated by
exploding bombs and depth charges, and the crack of the launches’ guns
as the periscope of the submarine rose for an instant’s glimpse of his
assailants and vanished again. Twice the enemy essayed a torpedo
counter-attack, and each time the trail passed wide. Then, crippled and
desperate, he doubled on his tracks, and for a while succeeded in
shaking off the pursuit. Nets, as he knew, lay ahead, and nets were
death; safety lay to the southward could he but keep submerged; but the
water, spurting through the buckled plating and rivets started by the
bursting depth charges, had mingled with the acid in the batteries and
generated poison gas, which drove him to the surface. Here he turned, a
couple of miles astern of his pursuers, and manned both guns, a hunted
vermin at bay. As his foremost gun opened fire, a heavy shell burst a
few yards abeam of the submarine, and the captain of the nearest motor
launch raised his glasses. It was not a shell fired from a motor launch.
“The destroyers,” he said. “Now why couldn’t they have kept away till
we’d made a job of it?” On the horizon the masts and funnels of a
flotilla of destroyers appeared in line abreast, approaching at full
speed, firing as they came. The next instant a shell from the submarine
burst on the tiny forecastle of the launch, shattering the gun, gun’s
crew, and wheelhouse. The coxswain dropped over the wrecked wheel and
slowly slid to the deck like a marionette suddenly deprived of
animation. The lieutenant R.N.V.R. who had once been a stockbroker stood
upright for an instant with his hands to his throat as if trying to stem
the red torrent spurting through his fingers, and then pitched brokenly
beside the coxswain.
The captain of the submarine counted the approaching destroyers, opened
the seacock to speed the flooding of his doomed craft, gave a swift
glance overhead at the _Blimp_ swooping towards them for the
_coup-de-grâce_, and ordered Cease Fire. Then he waved his hands in
token of surrender.
V. OVERDUE
The thin light of a sickle moon tipped the crest of each swift-running
sea with silver. The rest was a purple blackness, through which the
north wind slashed like a knife, and the sound of surf on a distant
shoal was carried moaning. At intervals a bank of racing clouds trailed
across the face of the moon, and then all was inky dark for a while.
It was during one of these periods of obliteration of all things visible
that a slender, perpendicular object rose above the surface of the sea.
Gradually the dim light waxed again: a wave, cloven in its path, passed
hissing on either side in a trail of spray, and the object slowly
projected until it topped the highest wave. Presently about its base a
convulsive disturbance in the water was followed by the appearance of a
conical shape, a solid blackness against the streaked glimmering
obscurity of the water breaking all about its sides and streaming in
cascades from the flat railed-in top. A hatchway opened, and two figures
crawled out, clinging to the rail of their swaying foothold while the
full force of the wind clawed and battered at their forms. They
maintained a terse conversation by dint of shouting in turn with their
lips to each other’s ears, while the conning-tower of the submarine on
which they stood moved forward in the teeth of the elements.
[Illustration]
For half an hour they went plunging and lurching onwards, clinging with
numbed hands to the rail as a green sea swept about their legs, wiping
the half-frozen spray from their eyes to search the darkness ahead with
night-glasses. Then one pointed away on the bow.
“How’s that?” he bawled. A point on the bow something dark tumbled amid
the waves and flying spindrift. The other stared a moment, shouted an
order to the invisible helmsman through a voice-pipe, and the wind that
had hitherto been in their streaming eyes smote and buffeted them on the
left cheek. A scurry of sleet whirled momentarily about them, blotting
out the half-glimpsed buoy; the taller of the two figures put out an arm
and smote his companion on the back. They had made that buoy at dawn the
previous day, and then, according to the custom of British submarines in
enemy waters, submerged till nightfall. Now, despite the set of the
tides and currents and the darkness, they had found it again, and with
it their bearings for the desperate journey that lay ahead.
For two hours they groped their way onwards through what would have been
unfathomable mysteries to a landsman. Compass, chart, and leadline
played their part: but not even these, coupled with the stoutest heart
that ever beat, avail against unknown minefield and watchful patrols.
Thrice the two alert, oilskin-clothed figures dived through the hatchway
into the interior of the submarine, and the platform on which they had
been standing vanished eerily beneath the surface as a string of long,
dark shapes went by with a throb of unseen propellers. Once when thus
submerged an unknown object grated past the thin shell with a harsh
metallic jar, and passed astern in silence. Then it was that the captain
of the submarine removed his cap, passing his sleeve quickly across his
damp forehead, and the gesture was doubtless accepted where all prayers
of gratitude find their way.
The first gleam of dawn, however, found no submarine on the surface. It
showed a business-like flotilla of destroyers on their beat, and a long
line of net drifters at anchor in the far distance amid sandbanks. An
armed trawler with rust-streaked sides and a gun forward was making her
way through the cold, grey seas in the direction of the drifters; a
hoist of gay-coloured signal flags flew from her stump of a mast, and at
the peak a tattered German ensign. The crew were clustered for warmth in
the lee of the engine-room casing, their collars turned up above their
ears, and their hands deep in their pockets. They were staring ahead
intently at the line of nets guarding the entrance to the harbour they
were about to enter. None noticed a black speck that peeped
intermittently out of their tumbling wake thirty yards astern, and
followed them up the channel. Three or four fathoms beneath that
questioning speck, in an electric-lit glittering steel cylinder, a young
man stood peering into the lens of a high-power periscope, both hands
resting on a lever. He spoke in a dull monotone, with long intervals of
silence; and throughout the length of that cylinder, beside valve and
dial and lever, a score of pairs of eyes watched him steadfastly.
“She’s given her funnel a coat of paint since last month ... port
ten--steady! steady!... There’s the gate vessel moving.... The skipper
is waving to hurry him up.... Wants his breakfast, I suppose.... That
must be the big crane in the dockyard.... There are flags hung about
everywhere.... Starboard a touch.... It’s getting devilish light....
There’s something that looks like a battle-cruiser alongside....”
There was a long silence, then the figure manipulating the periscope
suddenly stood upright.
“We’re through,” he said quietly. “And that’s their new battle-cruiser.”
* * * * *
In the smoking-room of a British submarine depot a group of officers sat
round the fire. Now and again one or other made a trivial observation
from behind his newspaper; occasionally one would glance swiftly at the
clock and back to his paper as if half afraid the glance would be
intercepted. The hands of the clock crept slowly round to noon; the
clock gave a little preliminary whirr and then struck the hour.
“Eight bells,” said the youngest of the group in a tone of detachment,
as if the hour had no special significance. A grave-faced
lieutenant-commander seated nearest the door rose slowly to his feet and
buttoned up his monkey jacket.
“You goin’, Bill?” asked his neighbour in a low voice.
The upright figure nodded. “He’d have done as much for me,” he replied,
and walked quickly out of the room.
No one spoke for some minutes. Then the youngest member lowered the
magazine he was holding in front of him.
“Do they cry?” he asked.
“No,” said two voices simultaneously. “’Least,” added one, “not at the
time.”
The silence settled down again like dust that had been disturbed; then
the first speaker leaned forward and tapped the ashes out of his pipe.
“Well,” he observed, “they didn’t get him cheap, at all events. I’m open
to a bet that he sent a Boche or two ahead of him to pipe the side.”
The group nodded a grim assent.
“Yes,” said one who had not hitherto spoken. “I reckon you’re right. But
we shan’t hear till the war’s over. They know how to keep their own
secrets.” He puffed at his pipe reflectively.
“Anyhow, thank God I’m a bachelor,” he concluded. He lifted a
fox-terrier’s head between his hands and shook it gently to and fro. “No
one need go and tell our wives if _we_ don’t come back--eh, little
Blinks?” The dog yawned, gave the hands that held him a perfunctory
lick, and resumed his interrupted nap sprawling across his master’s
knees.
* * * * *
Among the letters intercepted shortly afterwards on their way to a South
American State from Germany was one that contained the following
significant passage:
“ ... Yesterday all Kiel was beflagged: we were to have had a
half-holiday on the occasion of the trials of the great new battle
cruiser----. Owing to an unforeseen incident, however, the trials
were not completed. Our half-holiday has been postponed
indefinitely....”
VI. “TUPPENCE APIECE”
The herring were in the bay, and the fleet of sailing smacks went
trailing out on the light wind with their eager crews of old men and
boys straining at the halliards to catch the last capful of wind. After
them came the armed guard-boat of the little peaceful fleet, a stout
trawler with a gun in her bows, fussing in the wake of her charges.
The skipper of the guard-boat was at the wheel, a tall, gaunt old man
with a fringe of grey whisker round his jaws and a mouth as tight as a
scar. He it was who located the herring and placed the fleet across
their path, and all that day the smacks lay to their nets till the
porpoises turned inshore and drove the silvery host eastward. After them
went the smacks, with holds half-full, lured on by the promise of two
quarters’ rent as good as paid. Finally, the old Trawler Reserveman
checked the pursuit.
“Fish or no fish,” he cried. “Here ye
[Illustration]
bide the night.” They had reached the limit of the safety zone in those
waters, and he rounded up his flock like a sagacious sheep-dog, counting
the little craft carefully ere he took up his position to seaward of
them for the night. At the first hint of dawn he weighed anchor and
counted again: his grim old face darkened. He turned to seaward where
the sky was lightening fast, and searched the mist through glasses.
Three smacks were discernible some miles outside their allotted area.
The burly mate stood beside his father, and watched the delinquents
hauling in their nets with a speed that hinted at an uneasy conscience.
“They’m drifted in a bit of a tide rip, mebbe?” he ventured.
The old man growled an oath. “Tide rip? Nay! They’m just daft wi’ greed.
There’s no wit nor dacency in their sodden heads. An’ I’ll larn ’em
both. By God I’ll larn ’em to disobey my orders.” ... He watched the
far-off craft hoisting sail, with eyes grey and cold as flints beneath
the bushy brows. “Aye,” he said threateningly, “I’ll larn ye ...” and
clumped forward to the wheel-house.
The sun had not yet risen, and the thin morning mists wreathed the face
of the waters. As the trawler gathered way a sudden flash of light
blinked out of the mist to the northward. The report of a gun was
followed by the explosion of a shell fifty yards on the near side of the
most distant fishing-smack.
The trawler skipper measured the distance from the flash to the fishing
fleet, and thence to the truants bowling towards them on the morning
breeze.
“Man the gun!” he roared. “Action Stations, lads!” He picked up a
megaphone and bellowed through it in the direction of his charges: “Cut
your warps an’ get ter hell outer this!” Then he wrenched the telegraph
to full speed and put the wheel over, heading his little craft towards
the quarter from which the flash had come. The gun’s crew closed up
round the loaded gun, rolling up their sleeves and spitting on their
hands as is the custom of their breed before a fight.
“There’s a submarine yonder in the mist,” shouted the skipper. “Open
fire directly ye sight her and keep her busy while the smacks get away.”
Astern of them the small craft were cutting their nets away and hoisting
sail. Three or four were already making for safety to the westward
before the early morning breeze that hurried in catspaws over the sea.
Bang!
The trawler opened fire as the submarine appeared ahead like a long,
hump-backed shadow against the pearly grey of the horizon. The breech
clanged open and the acrid smoke floated aft as they reloaded.
“Rapid fire!” shouted the skipper. Shells were bursting all about the
fleeing smacks. “Give ’em hell, lads. Her’ve got two guns an’ us but the
one....” He glanced back over his shoulder at the little craft he was
trying to save, and then bent to the voice-pipe. “Every ounce o’ steam,
Luther. Her’ll try to haul off an’ outrange my little small gun.”
Smoke poured from the gaily-painted funnel; the “little small gun”
barked and barked again, and one after the other the empty cylinders
went clattering into the scuppers. A shell struck the trawler somewhere
in the region of the mizzen mast, and sent the splinters flying. A
minute later another exploded off the port bow, flinging the water in
sheets over the gun’s crew. The sight-setter slid into a sitting
position, his back against the pedestal of the gun-mounting, and his
head lolling on his shoulder. They had drawn the enemy’s fire at last,
and every minute gave the smacks a better chance. Shell after shell
struck the little craft as she blundered gallantly on. The stern was
alight: the splintered foremast lay across a funnel riddled like a
pepper-pot. The trawler’s boy--a shock-headed child of fourteen who had
been passing up ammunition to the gun--leaned whimpering against the
engine-room casing, nursing a blood-sodden jacket wrapped about his
forearm.
The mate was at the gun, round which three of the crew lay. One had
raised himself on his elbow and was coughing out his soul. The other
two were on their backs staring at the sky.
In the face of the trawler’s fire, the submarine turned and drew out of
range, firing as she went. One of the British shells had struck the
low-lying hull in the stern, and a thin cloud of grey smoke ascended
from the rent. Figures were visible running aft along the railed-in
deck, gesticulating.
“Ye’ve hit her,” shouted the skipper from the wheel. “Give ’em hell,
lads----”
A sudden burst of flame and smoke enveloped the wheel-house, and the
skipper went hurtling through the doorway and pitched with a thud on the
deck.
The mate ran aft and knelt beside him. “Father,” he cried hoarsely.
The inert blue-clad figure raised himself on his hands, and his head
swayed between his massive shoulders.
“Father,” said the mate again, and shook him, as if trying to awaken
someone from sleep. “Be ye hurted terrible bad?”
The grim old seadog raised his head, and his son saw that he was blind.
“Pitch the codes overboard,” he said. “I’m blind an’ stone deaf, an’ my
guts are all abroad under me, but ye’ll fight the little gun while
there’s a shell left aboard....”
The mate stood up and looked aft along the splintered, bloody deck,
beyond the smoke and steam trailing to leeward.
“The gun’s wrecked,” he said slowly, as if speaking to himself. “The
little smacks are clear o’ danger.... The destroyers are comin’ up....
Ye have fought a good fight, father.” The submarine had ceased fire, and
as he spoke, she submerged and vanished sullenly, like a wild beast
baulked of its prey.
* * * * *
An old woman sat knitting beside the fire in the heart of a Midland town
next day. The door opened and a girl came in quickly, with a shawl over
her head and a basket on her arm.
“There’s a surprise for supper,” she said.
The old woman looked inside the basket. “Herrin’!” she said. “What did
they cost?”
“Tuppence apiece,” replied the girl lightly, as she hung up her shawl.
“They was cheap,” said the old woman as she fell to larding the
frying-pan.
But all things considered, perhaps they were not so very cheap after
all.
[Illustration]