The dawn came very slowly--a faint glow in the sky spreading until
first the streaming forecastle and then the dirty-yellow seas could be
seen. The destroyer was steaming slowly along the coast with the wind
just before the beam. She made bad weather of it, lurching at
extraordinary angles from side to side, yawing from two to four points
off her course, and throwing her stern up as each wave passed under
her, until the water spouted in the wake of her slowly-moving
propellers. The wind and the mist had come together, and the
visibility extended to perhaps three or four foaming wave-crests away.
They knew within a dozen miles where they were, but a dozen miles is
too vague a reckoning to make a mine-guarded harbour from, and her
captain, with the greatest respect for the fact that he was on a dead
lee shore, and a most inhospitable and rocky shore at that, was
feeling for the land with an order for "Hard-over" helm running
through his head. Occasionally he ceased his staring out on the lee
bow to look back along the deck. The sight each time made him frown
and tighten his lips. The beam-sea was sweeping across the ship
regularly every half-minute. The water shot across her 'midships three
feet deep, and foaming like a Highland burn in spate. The squat
funnels showed through the turmoil of water and spray, streaked
diagonally upwards with crusted white salt, through which showed
patches of red funnel-scale; from them came a steady roaring note--the
signal of suppressed power below them. Battened-down as she was, he
knew that the hatches were not submarine ones; built as they were on a
foundation little thicker than cardboard, they could not keep out such
seas, and he visualised the turmoil and discomfort there must be
beneath him on the flooded decks. He, personally, had not seen in
what state she was below, having been on the bridge for the last nine
hours, but he felt he would like to take a look at his own cabin and
see if his worst foreboding--a foot of water washing to and fro across
a sodden carpet--was true.
He glanced at his wrist-watch, and then to the east. Half-past seven
and full daylight. Well, he thought, it might as well be just dawning
still for all the light there was. Air and sea were the same colour, a
creamy dull white, and they merged into one at a range of perhaps five
hundred yards. If only he could--he raised his head sharply and turned
to face out on the beam. Bracing his feet and gripping the rail with
wet-gloved fingers he held his breath in an intensity of listening
concentration. Yes, it was clearer that time, a faint high whine broad
on the beam. He walked, timing the roll so that he had no need to
clutch for support, to where the helmsman crouched over a wildly
swinging compass-card, and gave an order. The destroyer came bowing
and dipping round till she met the full drive of the sea ahead. With
a roar and a crash the water tumbled in over the forecastle, shaking
the bridge, and falling in tons over the ladders on to the upper deck.
The destroyer still turned, shaking from end to end, until she had the
sea on the other bow. The telegraph reply-gongs rang back the
acknowledgment of an order, and easing to barely steerage-way, the
ship settled in her new position--hove-to in the direction from which
she had come overnight. The faint sound he had heard had seemed too
distant for the captain to be assured of his position, and until he
could hear it clearly and from fairly close he was not going to risk
taking a departure from it. He knew that hove-to as she was the
destroyer was going to be driven closer in, and with a steep-to shore
he could allow her to accept the leeway for some time. He moved across
and stood on the other side of the bridge, looking out to leeward, his
attitude less strained and anxious now, as the ship was making fairly
easy weather of it. The motion, it is true, was far more
uncomfortable. She sidled, dived, and wallowed in a way that would
have thrown a man unaccustomed to T.B.D.'s completely off his feet;
but far less water was coming aboard, and the amount that did so
arrived on a bearing from which she was better fitted to receive it.
At the end of twenty minutes the captain began to resume his rigid
attitude. There was something wrong somewhere. Sounds came erratically
through fog, but this could not be counted on. He knew he had made no
mistake in the sound he had heard. It was certainly the high note of
the lighthouse, and not a steamer's whistle. The low note should have
been heard in between the high ones, but the fact of not having heard
the low was not surprising to him. One seldom heard both notes in a
fog. But this silent gap was a nuisance, considering the rate at which
they must be closing the land. At half an hour from his first hearing
the sound he turned uphill to gain the wheel again, but froze still as
the voice of the fog-horn came afresh, this time with no possibility
of doubt. A great thuttering roar broke out, as it seemed, almost
overhead, a deep bass note that made the air quiver. The captain
jumped amidships and barked an order. The wheel spun hard down and the
telegraphs whirred round, bringing the destroyer diving and leaping
back head to sea. Looking aft, the captain had a glimpse of three
pinnacle rocks showing a moment in the trough between two seas, and
then the fog shut down over them again, leaving only the regular deep
roar of the fog-signal, that grew gradually fainter astern. Two points
at a time he eased the ship round till she was hove-to on the opposite
tack, then he called to another oilskinned figure that stood swaying
to the roll by the helmsman. "Will you take her now?" he said; "I am
going to look for some breakfast. Hold her like this half an hour, and
then turn her down wind for the run in. The tide's setting us well
round the point now. All right?"
"Yes, sir. I'll lay it off again on the chart before I turn. That was
a queer hole in the fog, sir."
"Yes, quite a big blank. Glad it wasn't much bigger. Still, we could
see four cables under the land, and the land's alright if you've got
your stern to it."
With a huge yawn of relief he stretched his arms back and up, then
started down the thin iron ladder on his perilous trip to the
inevitable chaos and confusion of his cabin.