A wonderfully deep-blue sea stretched away to meet a light-blue sky,
which was dotted with soft wool-like patches of cloud. There was a
slight smooth swell from the south-west, and the air was cool and
salt-laden. Looking from the conning-tower the hull of the boat could
be clearly seen as she rose and fell to the waves, the sunlight
flashing back steel-blue from her grey side six feet below the
surface. It was a day that showed the sea at its best--a high Northern
latitude in June, and a high barometer producing conditions under
which it seemed to be a shame to be at war.
There were two men on the submarine's conning-tower. The smaller of
the two was her captain, a fair-haired man with a Prussian name which
seemed hardly to fit in with his Norse features. The other man hailed
from Bavaria--a tall, thin, large-headed individual, with wide-set
eyes and a nose and lower lip that hinted of Semitic ancestry. The big
U-boat jogged along at half speed, beating up and down in erratic
courses--keeping always to a water area of perhaps ten miles square.
The two officers leaned against a rail, their heads and shoulders
twisting and turning continuously as they watched the distant horizon.
Each carried heavy Zeiss glasses slung round the neck, and from time
to time one of them would search carefully the western sea and sky,
his doing so invariably infecting his companion into doing the same.
The U-boat was running with a little less than half her normal
cruising buoyancy--for speed of diving and not surface speed was the
important qualification for her for that day. From the open
conning-tower lid came the dull hum of the engines; while as the boat
rolled, a shaft of sunlight, shining down the tower itself, sent a
circle of yellow light swinging slowly from side to side across the
deck beneath the eye-piece of the periscope.
"Is it a big convoy this time, sir?" The First Lieutenant spoke
without checking his continual twisting and turning as he glanced at
every point of the skyline in turn.
"Yes, it is a big convoy. But there is no doubt of their course or
their speed. We shall be among them before the sunset."
"You would not then dive now? That is, if you are sure----"
"I do not dive till I am sure. And also we will want all the battery
power we have before the dark. Did I not say it was a big convoy?"
"You think there will be a big escort?"
"We will see. I know it will be an escort I do not like to take a
chance with."
The Lieutenant fidgeted awhile, his glasses at his eyes. His Captain
looked at his profile and at the glint of perspiration on the slightly
shaking hands, and yawned. His face, as he swung round again to scan the
horizon astern, looked bored and perhaps a little lonely. A submarine
is a small ship in which to coop up incompatible natures, and the
terrible losses of personnel in the Imperial submarine service had sadly
reduced the standard of officers. He felt sometimes as if he were an
anachronism, an officer of nineteen-fourteen who had miraculously lasted
four years. He felt that it had been only the fact that a misdemeanour
had caused him to be driven forth to the big ships for two years that
had saved him from sharing the unknown fate of his contemporaries. Well,
he reflected, it was only a matter of time before he would join them.
The law of averages was stronger than his luck, wonderful though the
latter had been. He extracted a cigar from his case and reached out a
hand to take his subordinate's proffered matchbox. As he did so he
glanced again at his companion's face, and a sudden feeling of
understanding, and perhaps a touch of compassion, made him ask--
"Well, Müller? You have something that worries you. What is it, then?"
The First Lieutenant turned and took a careful glance round the
circle of empty ocean. Then his speech came with a rush--
"I want to know what you think, sir. You don't seem to worry about it.
I know you can do nothing more--that one can only do one's work as
best one can and all that--but I still feel restless. How is it going
to end? We are winning? Yes--oh yes, we are winning, but we have done
that four years, and how far have we got? Before I came into
submarines I believed all they told us, but now I know that we are not
strangling England at sea, and that we never can now. What are we
going to do next? Is it to go on and on until we have no boats left?
Gott! I want to do something that will frighten them--something that
will make them understand what we are--something that will make them
scream for pity." He paused, gulped, and stared again out to the
westward. The Captain straightened himself up against the rail and
stretched his arms out in another prodigious yawn.
"My good Müller," he said, "you cannot carry the cares of Germany on
your back. Leave that to the Chancellor. One can be sufficiently
patriotic by doing one's work and not asking questions that others
cannot answer. As to the submarine war--well, blame the men who would
not let the Emperor have his way, that hindered him when he would have
built an equal fleet to the English. I do not mean the Socialists--I
mean others as well. I mean men who grudged money for the Navy because
they wanted it for the Army. Curse the Army! If we had had a big fleet
we would have won the war in a year, but now--ach! Look now,
Müller--you have read Lichnowsky's Memoirs? Yes, I know you are not
allowed to, but I know you have. Now I say that what he says at the
end is true,--that the Anglo-Saxon race is going to rule the West and
the sea, that we shall only rule Middle Europe, and we were _fools_ to
play for Middle Europe when we might have had the sea. We would now
give all the Russias and Rumania and all our gains just for Gibraltar
and Bermuda, for if we had those stations all the rest would come to
us. We fight now for our honour, but if it were not for that--and that
is everything--we would give our enemies good terms."
"But if that is true--if we can gain no more--we have lost the war!"
The Captain shrugged. "We will have won what we do not want, and lost
all that we do; but we shall have won, I suppose. It depends on our
diplomatists. If we can get but a few coaling-stations we shall have
won, for it would all come to us when we were ready again. But you
will not gain a victory by a great stroke as you say you wish, Müller.
The war is too big now for single strokes, and the English will not
scream for mercy now because of frightfulness. They are angry, and
they hate us now."
"But you yourself have sunk a liner, and you showed them as she sank
that the orders of Germany must be obeyed."
The Captain's face did not alter at all. "I did do so, and I would do
so again. My honour is clear, because I obeyed my orders. Would you
have dared to question?"
"No--by God! and I would do it gladly." The Lieutenant's face worked,
and he scowled as he glanced astern. "I would wish that every ship of
every convoy carried women."
The Captain laughed almost genially. "It is easy to see you are not a
Prussian," he said. "It does not matter whether you like or dislike a
thing. All that counts is whether or not it is to the advantage of the
State. So the Roman World-Empire was made. Myself, I doubt if killing
women pays us; there is this talk now of the boycott of Germany after
the war. They add time to the boycott for every time we fire on ships
that are helpless, and the boycott is to be by sailors. I would laugh
at such a threat if it was from any others, but sailors are not to be
laughed at. They are likely to mean what they say. It is as I said: if
we had fought to the West and to the sea, no man would have dared to
threaten us with a sea-boycott now."
"But even with our small Navy we have held the English checked. It is
not our Navy that is lacking. What is it, then?"
"It _is_ the Navy. It should have been as big as the English Fleet.
And the men--Gott! Müller. I tell you, if we had done the Zeebrugge
attack ourselves, and I had been there, I would feel that my honour
and the Navy's honour was safe, that we could stop and make peace. I
would be proud to die on such a service, and I envy the Englishmen we
buried when it was over."
"But this is--Herr Capitan, you talk as if you were an Englander----"
The Captain whirled on him, his eyes sparkling dangerously.
"_Dummkopf!_" he said. "Report me if you like. I hate the English and
I love my Fatherland, but report me if you like. Ach! You may report
me in Hell, too; for I know--I know----"
He stopped suddenly and tilted back his head to listen. The First
Lieutenant shrank back from him, his mouth open and his hands feeling
for the periscope support. A faint murmur of sound came down wind
from the fleecy cloud-banks to the west. The Captain jumped to the
opening of the conning-tower and stood, impatient and anxious by the
lip, until his lieutenant had slipped and scrambled half-way down the
ladder.
Then he jumped down himself, pulling the lid to after him.
Simultaneously there came a rush and roar of air from venting tanks, the
stem of the boat rose very slightly as her bow-gun went under, and in
twenty seconds the submarine was gone, and the bubbles and foam of her
passage were fading into the level blue of the empty sea. A minute later
she showed a foot of periscope a cable's length away, and a small
airship topped the western horizon and came slowly along towards her.
The periscope vanished again, and forty feet below the surface the
captain watched a gauge needle beside the periscope creep round its dial
inch by inch till it quivered and steadied at the forty-metre mark.
"Diving hands only. Fall out the rest. Remain near your stations.
Lower the periscope." The First Lieutenant barked out a repetition of
each order as the Captain spoke. There was a shuffling of feet, some
guttural conversation that spoke of a flicker of curiosity among the
men of the crew, and then all was quiet but for the hum of motors and
the occasional rattle of gearing as the hydroplane wheels were moved.
The Captain moved forward to the wardroom, removing his scarf and
heavy pilot-cloth coat as he walked. "Order some food, Müller," he
said. "I'm hungry--that airship was farther ahead of them than usual."
He threw himself down in a long folding-chair and stretched out his
sea-booted legs. "I won't come up to look now until I hear them.
Relieve the listeners every half-hour, Müller. I want to have good
warning. We should hear a big convoy like this at twenty miles
to-day." The curtain rings clashed and a seaman spoke excitedly as he
entered. The Captain nodded and reached out to the table for his
coffee-cup. "Just the bearing we expected," he said, "but if they
sound as faint as he says there's time to get something to eat first."
* * * * *
It was a big new standard ship which drew the unlucky card in the game
of "browning shots." The torpedo hit her well forward, its tell-tale
track being unperceived in the slight running swell until too late. A
big bubble of water rose abreast the break of the forecastle till it
reached deck-level, then it broke and flung a column of spray, black
smoke, and fragments skyward. As the ship cleared the smoke-haze, she
was obviously down by the head and steering wildly. Two auxiliary
patrol vessels closed on her at full speed, and the nearest freighter
increased speed and cut in ahead of her in readiness either to tow or
screen. The torpedoed ship, after yawing vaguely for a few minutes,
steadied back to the convoy's course, slowing her engines till she
only just retained steerage way. There was a rapid exchange of
signals between her and the escort vessels, and then an R.N.
Commander on an adjacent bridge gave a sigh of relief. "Good man
that," he said. "We'll have him in dry dock to-morrow. It hasn't
flurried him a bit, and I like his nerve."
The explosion had caused more than the salvage vessels to leap into
activity. The white track of the torpedo showed clearly after it had
gone home, and the first to take action was a tramp, across whose bows
the track passed. The tramp was a ship of the early 'nineties, and her
full speed was at the most nine knots, but her skipper at once jammed
her helm hard over to steer along the torpedo-wake with a somewhat
optimistic hope of ramming. Two destroyers and an armed auxiliary did
the same thing, with the result that the tramp skipper found himself
suddenly in the cross-wash of the warships as they passed him at a few
yards' distance at twenty knots. Somebody on the bridge of one of them
screamed a profane warning at him through a megaphone, and the
skipper, after a hurried glance at the quivering destroyers' sterns,
jumped to the telegraph and stopped his engines. A couple of seconds
later his ship shook to a great detonation, and a mighty column of
water rose and broke close ahead of him. He starboarded his helm and
swung round after the rest of the convoy, his ship shaking to
successive explosions as more escorting vessels arrived at the spot
where he had turned.
* * * * *
As his torpedoes left the tubes the U-boat captain barked out an
order. The attack had been fairly simple, but his hardest problem was
only beginning. The boat's bow dipped sharply in answer to the tilted
hydroplanes, and she began her long slide down to the two-hundred-foot
mark. She had got to fifty before a sound like a great hammer striking
the hull told them of a successful torpedo-run. The Captain looked up
from his watch and smiled. A moment later he was watching the gauges
with a grave and impassive face. He knew that the fact of his torpedo
hitting would mean greater difficulty for him in the next few hours
than he would have known had he missed altogether. At a hundred feet
the first depth-charge exploded, smashing gauge-glasses, electric
lamps, and throwing a couple of men off their feet. The boat rocked
and rolled under the shock, while orders were roared through
voice-pipes for more emergency lights to be switched on. More charges
exploded as the boat slid downwards, but each charge was farther away
than the last. The half-light of the hand-lamps round the periscope
showed the source of a sound of pouring waters--two rivets had been
blown right out of the inner hull close before the conning-tower. The
Captain shouted orders, and the submarine levelled off her angle and
checked at the fifty-metre line, while two men began frantically to
break away the woodwork which stretched overhead and prevented the
rivet-holes being plugged. At that depth the water poured in through
the holes in solid bars, hitting the deck, bouncing back and spreading
everywhere in a heavy spray which drenched circuits and wires.
"Müller! where the devil are you? Start the pumps--I can't help it if
they hear us. Start the pumps, fool!"
"But you will come up? You will----"
"_Schweinhund! Gehorsamkeit!_ Go!"
The pumps began to stamp and clatter as they drove the entering water
out again, but above the noise of the pumps the Captain could hear the
roaring note of propellers rushing far overhead. If it had not been
for those infernal rivets, he thought, he would have been at three
hundred feet by now, but he could not risk the extra wetting which a
pressure of a hundred and thirty pounds to the inch on the entering
water would give to his circuits. The weight of extra water in the
bilges was nothing--he could deal with that--though the thought of the
six hundred odd fathoms of water between him and the bottom was a
thing to remember anxiously in case of his getting negative buoyancy;
but if this continual spray of salt water reached his motor circuits
it would be fatal. He cursed the men who were vainly trying to block
the rivet-holes with wood wedges, and jumping on the periscope table
he tried to guide the end of a short plank--intended as a
baffle-plate--across the stream. As he stood working, a terrific
concussion shook the U-boat from stem to stern. The bows rose till men
began to slip aft down the wet deck, and from aft came a succession of
cries and shouted orders, "Close all doors! the after-hatch is falling
in--Come up and surrender--Lass uns heraus!" The Captain rose from the
deck beneath the eye-piece, shaky from his fall from the table. He
hardly dared look at the gauge, but he kept his head and his wits as
he gave his orders. With the motors roaring round at their utmost
power and an angle up by the bow of some fifteen degrees, the U-boat
held her own, and as tank after tank was blown empty, she slowly
gained on the depth gauge and began to climb. As she rose, she was
shaken again and again by the powerful depth-charges that were being
dropped on the broken water left by the air-bubble from her after
compartment--a surface-mark now a quarter of a mile astern.
Beneath the conning-tower more and more men were gathering, some calm,
some white, trembling, and voluble. The boat broke surface with her stem
and half her conning-tower showing, then levelled a little and tore
along with the waves foaming round her conning-tower and bridge. From
inside they could clearly hear the shells that greeted her, and in a
moment there was a rush of men up the ladder. Among the first few the
Captain saw his First Lieutenant's legs vanish upwards, and at the sight
a sneering smile showed on his sunburnt face. The first man to open the
lid died as he did so, for a four-inch shell removed the top of the
conning-tower before he was clear of it. The escort was taking no
chances as to whether the boat's appearance on the surface was
intentional or accidental, and they were making the water for a hundred
yards around her fairly boil with bursting shell. As the boat tore
ahead, holding herself up on her angle and her speed, a few men
struggled out of her one by one past the torn body of the first man to
get out. Two of them leaped instantly overboard, but the next clawed his
way up to a rail, and while others scrambled and fought their way
overside, and shells crashed and burst below and around him on water and
conning-tower casing, he stood upright a moment with arms raised high
above his head. At the signal the firing ceased as if a switch had been
turned by a single hand, and he subsided in a huddled heap on the bridge
as the riddled submarine ran under. Down below the Captain still smiled,
leaning with his elbows on the periscope training-handles and watching
the hurrying men at the ladder's foot, until the great rush of water and
men, that showed that the end had come, swept him aft and away across
the border-line of sleep.