The Captain of H.M. T.B.D. _Upavon_ was in a bad humour. He had
decided when he left harbour that this patrol was going to be an
uninteresting one, as the area allotted to him covered no traffic
lane, and was therefore unlikely to hold an enemy within its
boundaries. The dulness of a blank horizon had continued to confirm
him in his opinion since the patrol began. He spoke from his arm-chair
as the First Lieutenant struggled into his oilskins preparatory to
going on deck for the First Watch.
"I don't care what courses you steer so long as you work along to the
west'ard and keep the alterations logged. Beat across in twelve-mile
tacks, and tell your relief to do the same. I'll be keeping the
morning, and I'll turn round and work east at six. Got it?"
The First Lieutenant intimated that he had "got it," and, pulling his
sou'wester well down over his ears, passed out: he was none too
cheerful at the moment himself. The rain had been beating down in
heavy streams since dusk, and the long oily swell that had been with
them since leaving harbour had, although it had not wetted their
rails, made the steady rolling rather monotonous.
* * * * *
The big tramp steamer might have had a fighting chance if it had not
been for the torpedo. It hit fairly abreast her bridge, and two boats
at the port-davits broke to splinters above the explosion, while the
wireless instruments developed defects that would have taken a week to
cure. The Chief Mate never saw the periscope. The explosion, and the
sight of a hard white line stretching away to port at right angles to
their course, were impressed on his brain simultaneously. It was a
few seconds later when he rose shakily to his feet and mechanically
set the engine-room telegraphs to "stop." As he did so, the Captain
arrived with a rush on the bridge and released him from his post. He
hurried below to examine the damage, and to fight, by every means
possible to seamanship, the great Atlantic waters that he knew must by
then be flooding nearly half the hold-space of the ship. Ships have
reached harbour with worse damage than she had received, and she might
have added another name to the list of tributes to good seamanship had
not the enemy risen astern of them to complete his work. A shell
hummed over them, skimming the tilted deck from two thousand yards
away. The second shell arrived as the tramp's stern-gun fired, and the
steamer quivered to a dull rumbling shock that told of a well-delayed
fuse and a raking shot.
The tramp's big propeller threshed along, half out of water, as her
Captain rang down for speed with which to dodge and man[oe]uvre; but
the vicious shells came steadily home into her, and it was a question
only of whether the straining bulkheads forward would go before her
stern was blown in. The stern-gun could hardly be depressed enough to
get a clear view of its target, and Fritz knew it. The Chief Mate
reckoned that it was about the twelfth shell that finished them.
Following its explosion, he heard a noise that told him much,--a
hissing, rushing sound of air from beneath his feet--the sigh of
flooding holds.
There was little time, but they did what they could. The gun's crew,
wrestling with a refractory cartridge-box lid, hardly seemed to look
up as the tramp sank, carrying them down as so many British seamen
have gone down, intent only on the job in hand. In five minutes' time
the ocean was clear again save for a half-dozen bobbing heads
clustered round a small white upturned boat.
The sea, that from the deck of the tramp had seemed to be only a long
gentle swell, now appeared tremendous and threatening. With a cable's
length between their smooth crests the big hills came majestically on,
giving the numbed survivors glimpses of the empty spaces of the sea at
intervals before lowering them back to the broad dark valleys between.
For a few minutes the men simply paddled their feet in silence as they
clung with unnecessary strength to the life-lines, stem, and
stern-posts of the capsized boat; then the Chief Mate called to two of
them by name. He gave the white-bearded, semi-conscious figure he
supported into their charge and commenced diving, or rather ducking
down, under the gunwale. He was blue with cold and weariness before he
gained his object--a heavy eighteen-foot ash oar. The other two men
came to his assistance, and between them they succeeded in passing the
oar-loom across and under the boat, and in working it about until it
caught and held at the far side. It took the Chief Mate a ghastly
quarter of an hour before he could climb to the swaying keel, but
once there he easily hauled the lighter of his assistants up beside
him. With the other man steadying the loom in position, they swung
their weight back on the painter clove-hitched to the bending blade.
Time after time the oar slipped and had to be replaced, and on each
failure the cramped workers panted and shivered a while before
patiently setting to the task again. As they toiled, the send of the
swell worked the boat broadside on, and suddenly as they threw back on
the line she came sharply over, throwing them into the sea before they
could clutch the rising gunwale with their hands. Followed an hour of
heart-breaking baling with caps and hands, and then one by one the six
came aboard--the old Captain, who in the face of active work was
recovering consciousness, insisting on being at any rate one of the
last three to leave the water.
The Chief Mate collapsed at once across the after-thwart. He had been
working with the strength of desperation, and the effort had been
great. The others knelt or sat on the thwarts, staring around them as
they swung periodically on the crests of the waves in hungry desire
for the sight of help. One man faced aft and began swearing, cursing
the cold, the Germans, the war, and, in a curious twist of
recollection, the ship's cook, who had died twenty minutes before, but
who had done so suffering under the accusation of having stolen the
swearer's sugar ration. The Captain rose, steadying himself by a hand
on the gunwale: "Stop that swearing, you," he said; "lay aft here and
rummage these lockers. You other hands, muster the gear in the boat
and clear away the raffle. Mr Johnson, you and I will bail for an
hour; the boat is leaking, and we'll take the first spell. We want
warming, I think."
The Chief Mate raised his head from against the thwart--"I can't bale,
sir; let the men do it. I'm done."
"Mr Johnson, I'm sixty-five years old and I'm going to bale, and I'm
captain of this ship."
The Chief Mate clawed himself up to a kneeling position, and taking a
sodden cap from the stern-sheets set feebly to work. As he went on he
warmed a little, and the deadly feeling of despair began to leave him.
The movements of men about him as they hunted for missing masts and
oars roused him at length to an oath at a seaman who lurched against
him.
An hour later the dusk closed down, and with two men baling wearily
the boat rose and fell to what was undoubtedly a threatening sea,
tugging and jerking at her sea anchor. The other four crouched in the
stern-sheets, huddled together to find warmth beneath the beating rain.
"If the sail wasn't gone, sir, would you 'ave tried to make land?" A
seaman spoke, his cheek against the Chief Mate's serge sleeve.
"I would, Hanson; and if we had two sound oars, I'd use those too,"
said the old Captain. "But even like this, I'm not going to give in or
stop trying."
One of the balers dropped his cap and leaned sideways across the
stern-sheets. "Tell 'em the truth, sir," he said. "I know, and both
you officers know. If we had sails and oars too and a fair wind, we
couldn't make land under a week. We'll not live three days in this
cold and on this ration, and there's no traffic here. For Gawd's sake
stop shammin', an' let's take our medicine quiet."
The Chief Mate swore and started to rise, but the Captain checked him.
"One moment, Mr Johnson," he said, and turned to the ex-baler: "Listen
now, my lad; it's not that you're afraid, it's just that you haven't
got guts, that's your trouble. I'm an old man and I've got to die soon
anyhow, so it oughtn't to matter to me. But I tell _you_ that I'm
going to work till I freeze stiff on this job, and I'll never stop
trying if every one of you does. It's true, there isn't much chance
for us, but there _is_ a chance, and I won't let go of it. If we were
told to come this route, it means some one else may be told to use
it. There may be a ship just over the horizon now. I tell you, I
don't want some one to pick me up drifting about and say, 'They
haven't been dead an hour yet; if they'd used a bit more pluck they'd
have pulled through. No, by God, the man that sank my ship thinks he's
finished me, but as long as I can lift a hand I'll try to beat him.
I'll sail ships yet in his dirty German teeth, and I'll take you with
me in my fo'c'sle. Now get on and bale till your watch is up."
The man reached forward to the floating cap and without a word continued
to use it, ladling the icy water overside in pitifully small quantities.
The white-bearded captain subsided again beside the Chief Mate.
* * * * *
The _Upavon_ was still rolling heavily as her Captain came on the
bridge for the morning watch. She rolled a little uneasily now, and
there was a suspicion of a "top" to the seas as they lifted her. The
Captain glowered at the crescent moon--having lost none of his
ill-humour in the night,--while the Sub-Lieutenant nervously turned
over the watch to him.
"And we're to turn east at six, and the First Lieutenant said to be
careful to log all alterations----"
The Captain dismissed him abruptly and turned away. As if he didn't know
his own orders! Nice thing to be told them by a young cub like that! He
would alter round just when he liked, of course. Damn the rain! He'd
alter course now and run down before the wind. If those young beggars
thought he was going to spend the next two hours facing the rain, they
were very much mistaken. Why, when he'd been their age he'd faced more
rain than they were ever likely to meet, so--he spoke an order, and the
ship came slowly round through ten points of the compass.
"Steady, now. How's her head? South? All right; put that in the
log--time, four-twenty...."
It was six-thirty, and the dawn and two cups of cocoa had removed a
good deal of the Captain's temper. He lit a cigarette and faced to
windward to look at the coming weather.
"M'm," he soliloquised; "and it's going to breeze up a bit too.
There'll be some breaking seas by noon."
As he was turning to continue his pacing of the bridge, he started and
fumbled for his binoculars. He stared a while to windward, and then,
without lowering the glasses, spoke--
"Starboard fifteen, quartermaster.... Steady, now.... Steer for that
white boat on the port bow,--see it?... _Messenger!_ go down and tell
the First Lieutenant I want him; and call the surgeon, too."