Instantly there was a wild scramble on the part of the three officers to
gain the deck, all other topics of interest vanishing before the
all-important information.
A cable's length on the port beam the _Carse o' Gowrie_ was backing
gently astern in order to close with her consort. The _Dimpled Lassie_
was pitching sluggishly. Way had been taken off her, while over her
squat counter the wire hawser attached to the Lucas grapnel was
"straight up and down" under the steady strain of some heavy and still
submerged object.
From the destroyer's bridge a signalman was semaphoring rapidly by means
of hand-flags. The _Dimpled Lassie_ replied. The man had just finished
delivering the message to Lieutenant-Commander Crosthwaite when Sefton
and the other officers gained the bridge.
"There's no doubt about it now," declared Crosthwaite breezily.
"They've just reported that the thing is two fathoms off the bottom.
The _Carse o' Gowrie_ is going to help take the strain."
"Hope it won't carry away, sir," remarked Sefton.
"Never fear! Where the patent grapnel grips, it holds. What water have
we?"
A cast with the lead gave 19 fathoms, the tide having risen 7 feet. The
tidal current was setting south-east a half east, with a velocity of
1-1/2 knots.
"Tide'll be slacking in half an hour," said the skipper. "The less
strain we get the better. Signalman!"
"Sir?"
"Ask the _Dimpled Lassie_ to report the state of the dynometer."
Promptly came the reply that already the strain on the grapnel hawser
was 2-1/2 tons.
"And the breaking strain is four, sir," Sefton reminded his chief.
"We'll get it all right," reiterated Crosthwaite. "Never fear."
His optimism was justified when forty-five minutes later the grapnel
sullenly bobbed above the surface, holding in its tightly-closed jaws
the bight of a large submarine electric cable.
"Let's hope we've hooked the right one," muttered the
engineer-lieutenant.
"You atom of despondency!" exclaimed Stirling.
"I state a possibility, not a probability, Pills," rejoined Boxspanner.
"It's a three-to-one chance, you know."
Already a number of artificers, who had been temporarily detailed for
duty on board each of the trawlers, were hard at work in connection with
the retrieved cable. What they were doing in connection must remain a
matter of conjecture, but the fact was patent that the success or
otherwise of unremitting toil depended upon the next few minutes.
Impatiently the young lieutenant-commander of the _Calder_ awaited a
further signal announcing the result of the investigations. When it
came it was highly satisfactory.
"Thanks be for small mercies!" ejaculated Crosthwaite fervently.
"Signal M'Kie and tell him to take due precautions in case a ground
swell sets in from the east'ard."
The cable was one of three that in pre-war time connected the little
Norfolk fishing-village of Bacton with the German island of Borkum. Two
more ran from Borkum to Lowestoft, the whole system being partly British
and partly German controlled.
Immediately upon the declaration of war the telegraph cables had been
severed, both in the neighbourhood of the British coast and in the
vicinity of the German island fortress. To all intents and purposes it
seemed as if the cables were nothing more than useless cores of copper
encased in gutta-percha, rotting in the ooze on the bed of the North
Sea.
Yet in spite of the most stringent precautions on the part of the
British Government to prevent a leakage of news, the disconcerting fact
remained that, thanks to an efficient and extensive espionage system,
information, especially relating to the movements of the Grand Fleet,
did reach Germany.
Various illicit means of communication were suspected by the
authorities, and drastic, though none the less highly necessary,
regulations were put into force that had the effect of reducing the
leakage to a minimum.
Simultaneously a campaign was opened against the use of wireless
installations. Undoubtedly wireless played its part in the spies' work,
but its efficacy was doubtful. It could be "tapped"; its source of
agency could be located. However beneficial in times of peace, it was a
two-edged weapon in war.
For a long time the British Government failed to unravel the secret,
until it was suggested that the submarine cables had been repaired. And
this was precisely what had been done. The Huns had promptly repaired
their end of one of the Bacton-Borkum lines, while a German trawler,
disguised as a Dutch fishing-boat, had grappled the severed end just
beyond the British three-mile limit.
To the recovered end was fixed a light india-rubber-covered cable. This
would be sufficiently strong to outlast the duration of the war, the
scarcity of gutta-percha and the enormous weight of the finished cable
being prohibitive. It was paid out from the trawler with considerable
rapidity, the end being buoyed and dropped overboard some miles from the
spot where the original cable used to land. In the inky blackness of a
dark winter's night a boat manned by German agents disguised as British
fishermen succeeded in recovering the light cable and taking it ashore.
Here it was a brief and simple matter to carry the line to a cottage on
the edge of the low cliff, burying the land portion in the sand.
For nearly eighteen months the secret wireless station had been in
active operation. News culled from all the naval bases by trustworthy
German agents was surreptitiously communicated to the operators in the
little unsuspected Norfolk cottage and thence telegraphed to Borkum.
For the task of recovering the cable the utmost skill, caution, and
discretion were necessary. The vessels detailed for the work were sent
from a far-off Scottish port with orders to make no communication with
the shore; while to protect them from possible interference the _Calder_
had been detached from the rest of the flotilla to stand by and direct
operations.
The _Dimpled Lassie_ was indeed fortunate in finding the cable in a
comparatively short space of time, and, what was more to the point, in
locating the right one of the three known to be in close proximity.
Contrast this performance with that of the cruiser _Huascar_ in the
Chilean-Peruvian War. That vessel tried for two days in shallow water to
sever the cable at Valparaiso. The officer in charge had himself
assisted to lay that particular cable, but picked up the one
communicating with Iquique and severed that by mistake.
The only "fly in the ointment", as far as Lieutenant-Commander
Crosthwaite was concerned, was the anticipated fact that the _Calder_
would have to dance attendance upon the trawlers for an indefinite
period. Once the mild excitement of grappling for the cable was over,
the _Calder_ was in the position of those who "serve who only stand and
wait". It was a necessary task to "stand by", but with vague rumours in
the air of naval activity on the part of the Huns, the officers and crew
of the destroyer would infinitely have preferred to be in the thick of
it, rather than detained within a few miles of the Norfolk and Suffolk
coast.
When at length interest in the proceeding had somewhat abated,
Sub-lieutenant Sefton went below to make up long arrears of sleep.
He had not turned in many minutes when Doctor Stirling gave him a
resounding whack on the back.
"Wake up, you lazy bounder!" exclaimed the surgeon. "Didn't you hear
'Action Stations'? We've got the whole German fleet coming for us."