commenced to climb. P'raps the bloke was stunned--dead, more likely.
Anyhow, he couldn't leave him there in his seat with the likelihood
of the machine breaking off from its nose and falling to the earth
any moment. Just as well he'd been there at the moment when it
happened; that was chance, too, in a way... Rum turn, altogether.
Foot by foot, from cross-bar to girder and girder to cross-bar he
climbed, and finally reached the point of impact. The lattice was
smashed to matchwood here, and the mast swayed dizzily above the
damaged place. Another pull and a heave enabled the rescuer to look
down on the unconscious figure who had been the puppet of so
incredible a whim of fate. He lay face upwards across one of the
wings where he had been flung by the force of the collision. His
arms were outstretched, and both legs, from his knees down, hung over
the edge of the wing into three hundred and fifty feet of space. The
machine had but to sag a couple of feet, or the unconscious figure
stir ever so little....
The able seaman took a deep breath. Far below him--perhaps half an
hour's climb--men with ropes were toiling upwards to the rescue.
Overhead the damaged mast shivered and creaked in the wind; a yard
away on the curved surface of the wing lay the pilot, spread-eagled
and motionless. "_That_ ain't no place for you!" said the
bluejacket. He knotted the rope round his body, made the other end
fast to the mast, and gingerly tested the frail platform. Would it
stand the weight of both?
Inch by inch he crawled out along the wing, stretched forth a hand,
and grabbed the pilot's gauntleted wrist. Then unfastening the rope
from his own body he tied it round the insensible figure, and slowly,
breathlessly, with many a pause and muttered oath at the tumultuous
thumping of his heart--which seemed as if it must bring down the
mast--he drew the body off the wing and regained the mast. Sitting
in the V-shaped angle of the cross-girders he lashed the boy's
shoulders securely to the nearest upright, and with the limp legs
across his lap, produced and with difficulty lit the stump of a clay
pipe. His hand shook and the perspiration trickled cold behind his
ears; but presently his lips parted, and in a not too certain voice
he began again his interrupted song:
"Laugh while you may,
There's still to-day--
You may be dead ter-morrer!"
3
CHINKS
"The Hohangho," read the First Lieutenant, turning the pages of a
three-day-old paper, "has shifted its course. It is estimated that
upwards of three-quarters of a million souls perished in the
inundation of villages." He puffed at his pipe and eyed the inmates
of the Destroyer's Wardroom with solemnity. "They give it a
four-line paragraph.... Three-quarters of a million----"
"Shortage of paper," said the Lieutenant in Command. "'Sides, they
were only Chinks. What's a million Chinese more or less? Don't
suppose anybody worried about it. When I was on the China
Station----"
"But," interrupted the First Lieutenant, "when you come to think of
it, that's about half the total British casualties so far in the War.
Wiped out--phut! In one act! Men, women, and children!
"You don't think of 'em quite like that," replied the Captain of the
Destroyer, stirring his cup of coffee. He braced his back against a
stanchion to steady himself to the roll of the ship. "There are four
hundred millions of the blighters, remember. They all look alike;
they've no religion, no ambition, no aim in life except to scratch
together enough for the next meal----"
A Signalman came tumbling down the ladder, water streaming from his
oilskins.
"Please, sir, Officer of the Watch says there's a glare ahead looks
like a ship a-fire. Shall he increase speed?"
The Captain, who had descended for a cup of coffee, and still wore
his sea-boots and duffle coat, snatched up his cap and was on the
bridge with his glasses to his eyes in fewer seconds than it takes to
write these lines.
The Destroyer was slashing her way past a head sea and the sound of
the wind and waves made speech difficult. The Gunner was on watch,
peering ahead into the darkness through binoculars.
"Oil ship, sir, by the looks of it," he shouted.
The Captain studied the far-off glare in silence for a moment, and
gave an order to the telegraph-man.
"Yes," he said presently. "Oil ship. Must have been torpedoed.
She's leaving a trail of blazing oil on the water astern of her."
For half an hour they watched the conflagration grow brighter as the
Destroyer rapidly overhauled the burning derelict. Finally the
Gunner ranged alongside his Commanding Officer. "She's making way
through the water, sir--yawing too. Best give her a wide berth."
The Lieutenant nodded. "Keep to windward. There can't be anybody
below. I expect the heat of the fire is keeping the steam pressure
up.... My ghost! What a blaze!"
The ship was now plainly discernible, blazing furiously from
forecastle to poop. The wind whipped pennons of flame hundreds of
feet to leeward, and from started rivets and gaping seams streams of
liquid fire poured blazing into the sea. The ship was blundering
along at a good seven knots, swerving blindly from side to side like
a wounded bull, and leaving on the troubled surface of the water a
fiery, serpentine trail of burning oil. The hissing crackle of the
flames and roar of the wind, the constant eruption of vast columns of
sparks that belched hundreds of feet into the air and floated to
leeward, made the doomed ship a terrifying and almost demoniac
spectacle.
"Can't be a soul alive on board," said the First Lieutenant. "Just
as well--ugly customer to tackle."
They ranged abeam, giving the blazing derelict a wide berth, and even
at that distance felt their cheeks scorch. Men lined the Destroyer's
lee rail, watching in shocked silence. To the seaman the fairest of
all sights is a ship upon the sea; a ship wrecked upon a lee shore or
even plunging beneath the surface with racing propellers is a sad,
though not unnatural sight, prompting the heart of every sailor to
the rescue, whatever the risk. But a ship on fire, even though
abandoned, is repellent, horrible beyond the power of description.
The Gunner suddenly emitted an oath and extended an arm and pointing
forefinger:
"Look, sir! Fore-peak! There's some men there!"
The Captain stared through his binoculars.
"Yes," he said calmly; "you're right. They'll be grilled alive if
her head falls away from the wind. Starboard ten, Quartermaster."
Obedient to her helm, the Destroyer closed that blinding hell-glare,
and presently to the naked eye a score of human figures were visible,
huddled into the eyes of the ship. The Lieutenant on the Destroyer's
bridge picked up a megaphone and bawled through it.
"Why don't they jump, the damned fools?" he demanded angrily. "They
must have seen us. They know we'll pick them up." The Destroyer
came closer, plunging and rolling in the seaway. The figures on the
bridge shielded their faces from the scorching heat as every eye
watched the hungry flames licking their way forward along the oiler's
forecastle. Her foremast fell with a crash, sending up a great
column of fire into the outraged sky. By its glare the faces of the
huddled figures were plainly visible: beardless, with high
cheek-bones, distorted with terror like the masks of trapped animals.
"God!" ejaculated the First Lieutenant. "Chinks! They're all
Chinese! No wonder they wouldn't jump! Can't swim!"
The Captain thrust him towards the ladder. "Stand by with fenders
the port side. Get the hand-pumps going. I'll run her alongside."
"Gawd 'elp us!" muttered the Gunner, and as he spoke the burning ship
yawed suddenly and came bearing down on them.
From first to last it was less than five minutes' work. With paint
blistered and scorched clothing, rails and davits bent, with cold
fear in their hearts and a sense of duty that mastered all, that
prodigy of seamanship was accomplished. Twenty-four jabbering
Chinese firemen and a dazed Scotch mate flopped down pell-mell on to
the Destroyer's upper deck, and received the gift of life at the
hands of a young man in a singed duffle coat, who said nothing, whose
breath came and went rather fast through dilated nostrils.
"Twenty-five," reported the First Lieutenant when he had mustered the
rescued and the Destroyer was racing landward, "and twenty-four of
'em Chinks. You risked your ship for a couple of dozen
yellow-bellies!"
"Maybe I did," replied his Captain. Dawn was paling the Eastern sky,
and he loosened the duffle coat about his throat. "Maybe I did. I
ain't the Hohangho."
4
A FORTY-FOOT SETTING
The tramp that had done the damage lay rolling lazily in the long,
smooth swell, blowing off steam. Her escort of two Destroyers--or
more properly a Destroyer and a half--was some distance away,
exchanging a highly-seasoned and technical dialogue through
megaphones. In the course of an unpremeditated zigzag a quarter of
an hour earlier the tramp had rammed one of her escort and cut her in
two.
The combination of misunderstandings which culminated in this mishap
was at the moment in process of review on the bridge of the tramp.
Her master, who was a Portuguese, and the mate, who hailed from
Pernambuco, in the apportioning of blame were for once in agreement;
the Chinese Quartermaster called, weeping, upon his ancestors' gods
to witness they lied. Each spake his own tongue, and the babel of
their strife mingled with the thin hiss of escaping steam, to be
engulfed by the vast blue loneliness of the sky.
The Captain of the rammed Destroyer (his age was twenty-five and his
vocabulary one Methuselah need not have been ashamed of) transferred
his ship's company to the other escort and made a cursory survey of
the damage.
The bulkhead forward of the gaping cavity was holding--precariously,
it is true, but still holding. Therefore the fore part of the
crippled Destroyer continued to float; the after portion, since the
sea was smooth and the swell slight, although sagged below the
surface, continued attached to the remainder by a few twisted
longitudinals of steel and some mangled plates. The unhurt Destroyer
having embarked the shipwrecked crew, ranged alongside her damaged
sister, and proclaimed her intention of passing a towing hawser.
The Captain of the cripple filled and lit a pipe while he considered
the problem from the vantage of the midship funnel of his command,
which lolled drunkenly in a horizontal posture athwart the upper deck.
"Not yet," he shouted, and turned to the Gunner, who stood knee-deep
in water where once a torpedo-tube had been. "It's that cursed
depth-charge I'm worrying about. It's still in the chute at the
stern, and set to explode at a depth of forty feet."
The Gunner nodded, and bent forward to peer through the translucent
depths at what had been, a quarter of a hour before, the
dwelling-place of both. Somewhere beneath the surface, still affixed
to the submerged stern, was the Destroyer's main anti-submarine
armament--her depth-charges. One had been in the tray, ready set for
instant release by the jerk of a lever, when the collision occurred.
"If the stern breaks off, that depth-charge'll sink with it, and
explode when it gets down to forty feet."
"That's right, sir," said the Gunner, with melancholy calm.
"And the explosion'll rip this bulkhead out of her, and down the fore
part will go. Half a ship's better'n none, Mr. Hasthorpe."
Mr. Hasthorpe agreed, but inclined to the view that he'd rather have
kept the other half, given a choice in the matter.
"There was a nice li'l drum o' paint aft there we had give us at
Taranto, sir, an' some ostridge feathers under my bunk, what I'd
promised my old woman."
A long, sleek swell passed beneath them on its unhurried path from
Africa to the Adriatic. The dark wreckage beneath the surface
stirred like weed in a current, and the deck plating under their feet
trembled ominously as the hulk rolled.
"A few more of those," said the youthful Captain, "and down goes the
after part. I shall lose my ship." The speaker had rather less than
half a ship to lose, but he scrambled down on to the buckled plating
of the upper deck, hastily unbuttoning his drill tunic.
"That depth-charge must be set to 'safe,' then it can't explode,
however far it sinks."
"It's a couple of fathoms below the surface. I ain't no Annette
Kellerman meself," said the Gunner.
His Captain waved the dinghy alongside. "That's nothing. I'll have
a shot for it--if I can only find the beastly thing in all that
tangle."
"An' if another swell passes when you're in the water, sir, likely as
not the stern'll drop off an'----" The sentence remained unfinished,
for his Captain had slipped over the side into the waiting dinghy and
was busily divesting himself of his clothes.
"You'd better get clear," he shouted to his confrère in the other
Destroyer, "till I've finished. No I'm not going to bathe!" He
explained the situation while the dinghy man rested on his oars and
musingly contemplated the big toe of his left foot round which a
shred of spun yarn was twisted. The Captain of the other Destroyer
raised his arm to show he understood; the telegraph gongs clanged,
and the Destroyer moved away from the side of the derelict. The
dinghy paddled a few strokes, and the nude pink figure in the stern
bent down and stared into the water.
"Right," he said presently. "Keep the boat there, Simmonds." He
took a few deep breaths, standing on the after thwart, and then dived.
The oarsman leaned over the gunwale and held his breath, gazing under
the boat like a man in a trance.
After all the tumult of the collision the moment was one of deathly
stillness. The tramp lay black against the sunlight half a mile
away. The Destroyer was turning in a wide circle, with a flick of
white under her stern, and close at hand, amid the wreckage of the
still floating unfortunate, the Gunner stood motionless, staring.
The dinghy man suddenly sat upright and took a stroke with one
paddle. The head and shoulders of the Lieutenant-in-Command broke
the oily surface with an abrupt splash. He gripped the stern of the
dinghy and heaved himself out of the water. Then, stark and
dripping, he stood upright, transfigured by the Mediterranean
sunshine into a figure of shining gold, and, raising his arms above
his head, semaphored two letters to the watching Destroyer--"OK,"
finishing with a triumphant wave of the hand.
A thin cheer broke out along the crowded rail, the syren sounded a
toot of congratulation, and as the resultant wisp of steam dissolved
in the air the dinghy suddenly rose, rocked on the slope of a passing
swell, and dropped down its smooth flank. The portion of the
Destroyer that remained afloat rolled twice; there was a succession
of big swirls in the water, an ugly grinding sound, and a snap. The
Lieutenant-in-Command gave a short, hard laugh.
"There go your peacock feathers," he said to the Gunner, as he
climbed on board the wrecked remnant of his command.
"Ostridge," amended Mr. Hasthorpe, and clambered forward to the
towing bollard and the preliminaries of a piece of seamanship that
brought half a Destroyer safely to the dock a hundred and seventy
miles away.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
_The foregoing are based on actual occurrences in the War, and, as
far as the author is aware, conform to fact. The characters are
imaginary; their words and thoughts those of the writer's
imagination._
IV
THE ACTION BETWEEN H.M.S. _PRIZE_
AND GERMAN SUBMARINE U93
(1917)
The German submarine U93 sailed from Emden on Friday, April 13, 1917,
on her maiden trip to the Atlantic. She carried eighteen torpedoes
and 500 rounds of ammunition for her two 3.9 mm. guns; her complement
consisted of thirty-seven officers and men, under the command of
Captain Lieutenant F. Freiherr Spiegel von und zu Peckelsheim.
A tendency on the part of the crew to regard the date as ill-omened
was met by the Commander with the assurance that the combination of
Friday and the figure thirteen would cancel any bad luck usually
associated with either.
About 8.30 P.M. (Greenwich time) on April 30 U93 was in approximately
Latitude 49° 40N, Longitude 11° 40W., making her way back to Germany
with the sinking of eleven merchant ships to her discredit.
The Commander of U93 was more than satisfied with the result of his
cruise: moreover, he had two horses running in the Berlin races
during the second week in May, and was anxious to be back in time for
the event. But on sighting the sails of a small top-sail schooner
coming over the horizon, he decided to delay his return a few hours
and complete the round dozen of ships sunk; also the size of the
schooner would, he judged, round off his tonnage figures evenly.
He opened fire on the schooner at three miles range, and, as this was
the last ship to be sunk during the trip, gave orders that all men
who could be spared from their duties below might come on deck and
witness the sinking.
The schooner in question was His Majesty's Ship _Prize_ of 200 tons,
commanded by Lieutenant William Edward Saunders, Royal Naval Reserve,
with two 12-pounders concealed in collapsible deck-houses, and one
aft on a disappearing mounting under the hatchway covers of the after
hold. She also carried two Lewis guns, and was incidentally the
first German prize (then called the _Else_) captured by Great Britain
on the outbreak of war.
In complete ignorance of these details, however, the Commander of U93
turned his submarine in a wide circle in order to close his victim
cautiously from astern, firing in a leisurely manner from his
foremost gun as he approached.
Immediately the submarine opened fire the alarm gongs sounded on
board the _Prize_. With the exception of the Commanding Officer and
Skipper Meade, R.N.R. (Trawler Section), who were concealed inside
the steel companion-cover amidships, and six hands in charge of
Skipper Brewer, R.N.R. (Trawler Section), every man threw himself
flat on the deck under cover of the bulwarks and crawled to his
action-station, where he lay awaiting orders. The two foremost guns
were in charge of the second-in-command, Lieutenant William D.
Beaton, Royal Naval Reserve, who lay at the foot of the foremast with
his ears to the voice-pipe from the Captain's observation position.
The ship's head was put up into the wind, and the six hands in charge
of Mr. Brewer, who formed what was technically known as a "panic
party," launched the small boat and abandoned the ship with every
outward symptom of haste and disorder. The time was then 8.45 P.M.
The ship's head fell away to eastward, and the enemy slowly followed
her round, still firing at her in a deliberate manner. Of two shots
that hit the water-line and burst inside the ship, one put the
auxiliary motor-engine out of action, wounding the Stoker Petty
Officer in charge; and the other shattered the wireless-room,
wounding the operator inside it. The cabins and mess-room were
wrecked, the mainmast shot through in two places, and the ship began
to make water fast.
In spite of this heavy punishment and the intensity of the strain,
the guns' crews remained motionless on the deck while the submarine
drew closer. She was invisible to all on board the schooner except
the two figures inside the companion, who through slits in the
plating were able to watch her movements and communicate the closing
range to the guns.
With unrelaxed caution, however, the submarine continued to approach
slowly from astern, and it was on this precise bearing that none of
the schooner's guns would bear. The leaden minutes dragged by like
an eternity. The Commanding Officer of the _Prize_ several times
left his place of observation and crawled on hands and knees from man
to man, steadying them and impressing on them the necessity for
keeping out of sight. One of the port foremost gun's crew, a lad of
eighteen, twitched uncontrollably with excitement like a galvanised
frog as he sprawled face-downwards.
"What are you tremblin' about?" demanded the gun-layer in a hoarse,
contemptuous whisper. "You can only die onest."
Twenty minutes passed thus in almost intolerable suspense. Then the
crew of the after gun, straining their ears for the slightest sound,
heard the fitting to which the patent-log line was attached splinter
as it was wrenched away from its screws. The submarine had closed
until she fouled the schooner's log-line and carried it away.
The next moment U93 put her helm to starboard and glided out on to
the port quarter of the schooner at seventy yards' clear range.
It was then 9.5 P.M., and Lieutenant Saunders, satisfied at last that
his guns would bear, shouted, "Down screens! Open fire!" At the
same moment the White Ensign was hoisted.
The Shipwright, whose duty it was to release the after-gun screen,
knocked the catch and the hatchway cover slid back like the front of
an American roll-top desk. With the jerk of a lever the gun rose
into position and opened fire two seconds later.
The foremost gun's crew leaped to their feet, and the deck-houses
collapsed simultaneously, unmasking the foremost twelve-pounders.
The enemy was not easily taken by surprise, however. As the White
Ensign appeared above the bulwarks of the _Prize_, the submarine
fired two rounds from her guns. One hit the schooner's
superstructure, and the other the water-line. This shell burst in
the interior of the ship, severely wounding the Shipwright, who had
rushed below to fetch one of the Lewis guns which were kept at the
bottom of the ladder.
The Commander of the submarine put his helm hard over with the
intention of ramming the schooner, but realising that she was inside
his turning circle, reversed his helm and tried to escape. The next
moment a shell from the schooner's after gun struck the foremost gun
of the submarine, blowing it to atoms and annihilating the crew.
The Commanding Officer of the _Prize_, on realising that the
submarine was heading away from him, rang down the order for full
speed to the engine-room. Unknown to him, however, one engine was
completely disabled, and the other, after driving the ship for about
one hundred yards, also stopped. There was practically no wind, and
the ship lay motionless on the water.
In the meanwhile, however, the gunlayer of the after gun had hit the
conning tower of the submarine with his second shot, and demolished
it; a deckhand at the same time raked the remainder of the survivors
off her deck with the Lewis gun. A third shot from the after
twelve-pounder struck the submarine in the vicinity of the
engine-room and disabled her, but she continued to carry her way
until about 500 yards from the _Prize_, when she came to a
standstill, slewing broadside on to her vanquisher. There were no
survivors visible, and a dull red glare from internal fires showed
through the rents in her hull. At the thirty-sixth round she sank
stern first, four minutes after the commencement of the action.
The "panic party" in the boat were then ordered to pull over the
scene of the action and search for survivors. Darkness was falling
fast, but they succeeded in picking up the Commander of the
submarine, who had been knocked overboard by one of the bodies blown
from the foremost gun, the Navigating Warrant Officer, and a Stoker
Petty Officer. No other survivors could be found, and the boat
returned with the prisoners, conscientiously "covered" by a Browning
pistol in the fist of the Trawler Skipper at the helm.
While the search for survivors was being carried out by the ship's
boat a survey of the damage on board the schooner revealed a serious
state of affairs. The water was pouring through the shot-holes and
stood a foot deep between decks. It continued to gain in spite of
the employment of every available man on pumping and bailing, and the
temporary plugging of the holes with hammocks and blankets.
Fortunately the sea was calm, with very little or no wind. The ship
was put on the port tack and every possible device employed to list
her to starboard, all the damage she had received being on the port
side. The boat was swung out at the starboard davits and filled with
water, coal and water shifted to the starboard side, and both cables
ranged along the starboard scuppers. By these means sufficient list
was obtained to lift the shot-holes clear of the water and to enable
them to be temporarily patched.