A frightful noise over the New Year celebrations to-night. Champagne
flowing like water in the Mess. I feel the year 1917 opens badly for
me.
Weissman also went to sea again for a short trip in the Channel, and
has not reported for five days. Perhaps he has despised the Dover
Barrage once too often. If this is so, it is a great loss to the
service: he was a man of iron resolution in underwater attack.
I feel I ought to despise Zoe, but I can't. I love her too much; after
all, am I not perhaps encasing myself in the robe of a Pharisee?
She offered me all she had, save only the one thing I asked, without
which I will take nothing. I cannot reconcile her behaviour with her
character; why can't she trust me? why can't she be frank with me? I
will not believe she is that sort.
I feel I cannot go out again without a _sign_--I may not return, and I
will not leave her, perhaps for ever, with this bitterness between us.
* * * * *
At sea in U.C.47 again. Alten as surly as ever.
I decided finally to write to Zoe, but found it difficult to know what
to say. Eventually I said more than I had intended. I told her frankly
that I experienced a shock, but that I had not meant to seem so cold,
and that what I had done had been done for both our sakes. I told her
that I still loved her, and I implored her once more to leave the
Colonel and come to me as my wife.
Already I long to know what message awaits me on my return.
This will not be for three days. We left at dawn this morning to lay
mines off the channel to Harwich harbour; a nest from which submarines,
cruisers and destroyers buzz in and out like wasps. It will be ticklish
work.
_On the bottom_.
Our mines are still with us, but so are our lives, which is something.
We were approaching the appointed spot at 6 a.m. this morning, when
without the slightest warning the track of a torpedo was seen streaking
towards us about 50 yards on the starboard bow.
Before Alten (who was on the bridge with me) could do more than press
the diving alarm, the track met our ram. I breathed again, and was then
reminded by an oath from Alten that the boat was diving.
It was evident that we had only been saved by the torpedo running deep
under the cut-away part of our bow, otherwise!--well, the tangle of my
affairs would have been easily straightened.
Further procedure on the surface was suicidal, and we kept hydrophone
patrol, twice hearing the motors of the enemy submarine. At the moment
we are on the bottom waiting to come up and charge to-night, and lay
our mines at dawn to-morrow.
* * * * *
On the bottom in 28 metres and feeling none too comfortable, as there
would appear to be about a dozen destroyers overhead.
Last night, or rather early this morning, I participated in one of the
most extraordinary incidents that I have ever heard of.
It was pitch-black dark when I took over at 4 a.m., and a fresh breeze
had raised a lumpy sea, which covered the bridge with spray. We were
charging 400 amps on each, with the intention of laying one mine
directly there was sufficient light to get a fix from some of the buoys
which the English stick down all over the place here in the most
convenient manner possible. If only one could believe they never
shifted them. Alten says it never occurs to an Englishman to do a thing
like that, but I'm not so sure. However, we were proceeding along at
about five knots, crashing into the sea rather badly, when out of the
black beastliness of the night I saw a shape close aboard on the port
hand.
As I hesitated for a second as to my course of action, I was astounded
to see a large submarine which must have been British, on an opposite
course, not more than 25 metres away!
This sounds absurd, but it really wasn't further. I'm not ashamed to
confess that I was completely disorganized; it did not seem possible
that the enemy was literally alongside me.
I don't know how it struck the officer in the British boat, but I must
give him credit for doing something first, for he fired a Very's white
light straight at me as the two boats passed. It impinged on the hull,
and in the flash I caught a photographic glimpse of his conning tower,
on which was painted the letter E, followed by two numbers, of which
one was a two I think, and the other a nine.
By this time he was on my port quarter and rapidly disappearing; in a
frenzy of rage I managed to get my revolver out, and whilst with the
left hand I pressed the diving alarm, with the right hand I emptied the
magazine in his direction. When we were down, Alten practically
refused to believe me, which made me very pleased that in descending I
had trod on a pair of hands which turned out to be his, as he had
started up the ladder to the upper conning tower when he first heard
the alarm.
I presume our opponent dived as well, but evidently he had put two and
two together and used his aerial at some period, for when at dawn we
poked a periscope up, a flotilla of destroyers appeared to be looking
for something, which "something" was us, unless I am much mistaken; so
we bottomed, where we have been ever since. The Hydroplane Operator
keeps up a monotonous sing-song to the effect that "Fast running
propellers are either receding or approaching." The crew are collected
round the mine-tubes as I write, and are singing a lugubrious song, the
refrain of which runs:
"Death for the Fatherland! Glorious fate,
This is the end that we gladly await."
Why will the seamen always become morbid when possible? And there is
not a man amongst them who is not inwardly thinking of some beer-hall
in Bruges, though I suppose that like their betters they have their
romances of a tenderer kind.
* * * * *
The boat has been rolling about on the bottom in the most sickening
manner the whole afternoon. We flooded P and Q to capacity, which gave
her 50 tons negative, but it seems to have little effect in steadying
her, and it is evident that a really heavy gale is running on top.
* * * * *
Surfaced at 10 p.m.; a very heavy sea running and impossible to do much
more than heave to. This weather has one point in its favour and that
is that the destroyers are driven in.
It got steadily worse all night, and at midnight we lost our foremost
wireless mast overboard; we have now (10 a.m.) been 48 hours without
communication. At dawn we could see nothing to fix by; not a buoy in
sight, nothing but an expanse of foam-topped short steep waves of dirty
neutral-tinted water; how different to the great green and white surges
of the broad Atlantic.
Under these circumstances Alten decided to risk it and return without
laying our mines; for once in a way I agreed with him, as it is better
not to lay a minefield at all than dump one down in some unknown
position which one may have to traverse oneself in the course of a
month or so. We are now slowly, very slowly, struggling back to
Zeebrugge.
A green sea came down the conning tower to-day, and everything in the
boat is damp and smelly and beastly. The propellers race at frequent
intervals and the whole boat shudders--I feel miserable.
Alten has started to drink spirits; he began as soon as we decided to
go back. He will be incapable by to-night, and it means that I shall
have to take her in.
What hell this is, sitting in sodden clothes, with the stench of four
days' living assaulting the nostrils, and a motion of the devil; the
glass is very low and is slowly rising, so that I suppose it will blow
harder soon, though it is about force eight at present.
I wonder what Zoe will have written in reply to my note. When I think
of what I rejected and compare it with my beast-like existence here, I
can hardly believe that I behaved as I did--what would I not give now
to be transported back to the forest! At this rate of progress we shall
take another 24 hours. I wonder if I can knock another half-knot out of
her without smashing her up.
* * * * *
The extraordinarily violent motion has upset the _Anschutz_. [1] The
bearing cone of the stabilizing gyro has cracked, and the master
compass began to wander off in circles. I was just resting for an hour
or two, wedged up on a wet settee with coats equally wet, when her
heavy pitching changed to a wallowing roll, and I heard the pilot, who
was on watch, cursing down the voice-pipe, as we had sagged off our
course.
[Footnote 1: Gyroscopic compass.--ETIENNE.]
I heard the voice of the helmsman querulously maintain that he was
steering his course by _Anschutz_, so I got up and gingerly clawed my
way into the control room, where I found by comparing _Anschutz_ with
magnetic that the former had gone to hell, the reason being obvious, as
the stabilizer was exerting a strongly biased torque. I stopped the
_Anschutz_ and asked the pilot to give the helmsman a steady by
magnetic.
As we staggered back to our course I heard a thud in the wardroom, and
on returning to my settee found that Alten had rolled out of his bunk,
where he was lying in a drunken stupor, and that he was face downwards,
sprawling on the deck, half his face in the broken half of a dirty dish
which had fallen off the table whilst I was having tea. As I couldn't
let the crew see him like this, I was obliged to struggle and get him
back into his bunk. He was like a log and absolutely incapable of
rendering me any assistance, though he did open his eyes and mutter
once or twice as I lifted him up, trunk first and then his legs. He
stank of spirits and I hated touching him. Lord! what a truly hoggish
man he is; yet I cannot help envying him his oblivion to these
surroundings.
* * * * *
Arrived in, this afternoon.
Alten quite slept off his drink, and was offensively sarcastic as I
worked on the forepart with wires, getting her into the shelters
alongside the mole.
I hastened up to Bruges, and in the Mess heard several items of news
and found two letters. The first, in a well-known handwriting, I opened
eagerly, but received a chill of disappointment when I read its single
line.
"I am here when you want me.--Z."
So she thinks to break my resolution!
No! I am stronger than she, and, now that I know she loves me, I can
and will bend her to my will. Even now, at this distance of time, I can
hardly understand my conduct the other day. I must have been given the
strength of ten. I feel that I could not do it again; had she hesitated
a second longer at the door--well, I can hardly say what I would have
done.
It is my duty to do so, for her sake and my own. But I know my
weakness, and in this fact lies my strength. Cost what it may, I shall
not permit myself to go near her until she yields.
The second letter gave me a great surprise. It was from Rosa. She has
passed some examination, and is coming _here_ of all places as a Red
Cross nurse. She says she is looking forward to going round a U-boat!
She assumes a good deal, I must say, still, I suppose I must be polite
to her; but why the deuce does she sign herself "Yours, Rosa?" She's
not mine, and I don't want her; it seems funny to me that I once
thought of her vaguely in that sort of way. Now, I feel rather
disturbed that she is coming here, though I don't quite see why I
should worry, and yet I wonder if it is a coincidence her coming to
Bruges?
I'm almost inclined to think it isn't. After all, every girl wants to
get married, and without conceit my family, circumstances and, in the
privacy of the pages of this journal I may add, my personal
appearances, are such as would appeal to most girls--except Zoe,
apparently!
I'll have to be on my guard against Miss Rosa.
I heard to-day that I am likely to be appointed to the periscope school
in a few weeks' time, and meanwhile I am to be attached as
supernumerary to the operations division on old Max's staff.
* * * * *
The work here is most interesting. I feel glad that I am one of the
spiders weaving the web for Britain's destruction.
The impasse with Zoe still continues, and my peace of mind has been
still further disturbed by the actual arrival of Rosa. She rang me up
within twelve hours of her arrival, and, of course, I was obliged to
call. That was the day before yesterday. Rosa is at the No. 3 Hospital
here, and was horribly effusive. Some people would, I suppose, call her
good-looking, but to me, with my mind's-eye in perpetual contemplation
of my darling Zoe, Rosa looked like a turnip. Her first movement after
the preliminary greetings was to offer me a cigarette! I then noticed
that her fingers were stained with nicotine, unpleasant in a man,
disgusting in a woman.
Her nose was shiny and greasy--horrible. After a little talk she
volunteered the statement that yesterday was her afternoon off, and she
was simply longing to have tea in the gardens.
I endeavoured to make some feeble excuse on the grounds of the weather
being unsuitable, but I am no good at these social lies, and I was
eventually obliged to promise to take her there. I was the more annoyed
in that her main object was obviously to be seen walking with a U-boat
officer.
Accordingly, yesterday, I found myself walking about with her at my
side. My feelings can better be imagined than described when I suddenly
saw Zoe, accompanied by Babette, in the distance. I hastily altered
course, and pray she didn't see me.
In the course of the afternoon Rosa had the impertinence to say that at
Frankfurt they were saying that I was interested in a beautiful widow
at Bruges, and could she (Rosa) write and say I was heart-whole, or
else what the girl was like. I'm afraid that I lost my temper a little,
and I told Rosa she could write to all the busybodies at home and tell
them from me to go to the devil.
These women in the home circle, and especially aunts, are always the
same; firstly, they badger one to get married, and then if they think
one is contemplating such a step they are all agog to find out whether
she is suitable!
* * * * *
Three more boats, two of which are U.C.'s, are overdue. It is
distinctly unpleasant not knowing how or where they go, though the U.B.
boat (Friederich Althofen) made her incoming position the day before
yesterday as off Dungeness, so it looks as if the barrage at Dover
which got Weissman has got Althofen as well. I wonder what new devilry
they have put down there.
How one wishes that in 1914, instead of seeking the capture of Paris,
we had realized the importance of the Channel Ports to England, and
struck for them!
It would not have been necessary to strike even in September, 1914. We
could have walked into them. Dunkirk, at all events, should have been
ours; however, we must do the best with things as they are, not that I
would consider it too late even now to make a big push for the French
coast.
It would seem, as a matter of fact, that all the pushing is to be at
the other end of the line, in the Verdun sector, from the rumours I
hear, though I should have thought once bitten twice shy in that
quarter.
* * * * *
Saw Zoe again in the distance, and I think she saw me; at all events
she turned round and walked away.
This girl whom I cannot, and would not if I could, obliterate from my
thoughts, is causing me much worry.
She shows no sign of giving in, and I for one intend to be adamant. I
shall defeat her in time. The male intellect is always ultimately
victorious, other things being equal. I was reading Schopenhauer on the
subject last night. What a brain that man had, though I confess his
analysis of the female mentality is so terribly and truthfully cruel
that it jars on certain of my feelings.
Zoe's resolution in this conflict, this sex war one might call it, only
adds to her charm in my eyes; she is, I feel, a worthy mate for me,
both intellectually and physically, and she shall be mine--I have
decided it.
Met Rosa to-day at old Max's house, where I went to pay a duty call.
Her Excellency is as forbidding a specimen of her sex as any I have
ever met. She quite frightened me, and in the home circle the old man
seemed quite subdued.
I escorted Rosa home, and on the way to her hospital she gave me a
great surprise, as after much evasive talk she suddenly came out with
the news that she was engaged to Heinrich Baumer, of U.C.23. I was
quite taken aback, and will frankly confess that not so very long ago I
imagined, evidently erroneously, that she was disposed to let her
affections become engaged in another quarter. However, I was really
very glad to hear this news, and congratulated her with genuine
feeling.
The knowledge that she was a promised woman quite altered my feelings
towards her, and before I quite meant to, I had told her a considerable
amount about Zoe. It gave me much relief to be able to unburden myself,
and confide my difficulties elsewhere than in the pages of this
journal.