CARRYING ON
The fresh Northern breeze sent the waves steeplechasing across the
surface of the harbour, and lapping over the hull of a British
Submarine as she moved slowly past the anchored lines of the
Battle-fleet towards the entrance.
Her Commanding Officer stood beside the helmsman, holding a soiled
chart in his hands; further aft on the elliptical railed platform of
the conning tower a tall, angular, grey-haired man, clad in civilian
garb, stood talking to the First Lieutenant. A Yeoman of Signals, his
glass tucked into his left arm-pit, was securing the halliards to the
telescopic mast, at which fluttered a frayed White Ensign. A couple of
figures in sea-boots and duffle coats were still coiling down ropes and
securing fenders, crawling like flies about the whale-backed hull. A
hundred and fifty feet astern of the conning-tower the unseen
propellers threw the water into vortices that went curling away down
the long wake.
"We'll pick up the trawler outside," said the Lieutenant-Commander,
folding up the chart and sticking it into the breast of his
monkey-jacket. "Deep water out there, and we can play about." His
face was burned by the sun to the colour of an old brick wall; the
tanned skin somehow made his eyes look bluer and his hair fairer than
was actually the case; it accentuated the whiteness of his teeth, and
gave his quick smile an oddly arresting charm.
The elderly civilian considered him with grave interest before
replying. "Thank you," he said. "That's just what I want to do--play
about!"
"The other experts are all in the trawler, with the apparatus,"
supplemented the Lieutenant-Commander. "We're under your orders, sir,
for these experiments."
"Thank you," said Sir William Thorogood, Scientist; he drew a cigar
case out of his pocket. "I feel rather like a man accepting another's
hospitality and spending the day trying to pick his brains."
The Submarine-Commander smiled rather grimly. "You mean you're trying
to find a way of cutting our claws and making us harmless?" he said.
"Well--Fritz's claws," amended Sir William.
"Same thing," replied the Lieutenant-Commander. "What's ours to-day is
theirs tomorrow--figuratively speakin', that is. If it's sauce for the
goose it's sauce for the gander--just tit for tat, this game."
"That," said Sir William, "is rather a novel point of view. It's not
exactly one that is taken by the bulk of people ashore."
The figure beside the helmsman crinkled up his eyes as he stared ahead
and gave a low-voiced order to the helmsman. "Oh?" he said. "I don't
know much about what people ashore think, except that they're all
rattled over this so-called Submarine menace. Anyone that's scared is
apt to cling to one point of view."
"That is so," replied the Scientist. "But I chose to come out with you
to-day for these experiments on the principle of setting a thief to
catch a thief."
"That's sound," said the Submarine expert. "Because, you know, in the
Navy we all look at life from different points of view, according to
our jobs. No, thanks, I won't smoke till we get outside. Now, those
fellows"--the speaker jerked his head astern to the great grey
Battleships--"those big-ship wallahs--they're only just beginning to
take Us seriously. I put in my big-ship time at the beginning of the
war--we do a year in a big ship, you know, for our sins--and the
fellows in the Mess used to jeer at Us. They talked about their
rams...." He laughed. "Rams!" he repeated. "They called us pirates.
P'raps we were, but we didn't carry bathrooms in those early boats--nor
yet manicure sets.... Port ten! ... Ease to five--steady!"
The speaker was silent for a moment, musing. "I don't know that I
altogether blame 'em." He turned to his First Lieutenant, a youth some
years his junior with preposterously long eyelashes. "'Member the
manoeuvres before the War?" The other laughed and nodded. "I
torpedoed my revered parent's Battleship," continued the speaker, "at
two hundred yards in broad daylight and a flat calm." He chuckled.
"Lor' bless me! It's like a fairy tale, lookin' back on it after two
years of war."
"Haven't they rather altered their tune since, though?" asked the
visitor.
"A bit, yes. They don't quite know how to take us nowadays. We come
in from patrol and tie up alongside them to give the men the run of the
canteen; they ask us to dinner and give cinema shows for the sailors,
bless 'em. We're beginning to feel quite the giddy heroes when we find
ourselves among the Battle-fleet."
"Cold feet," interposed the First Lieutenant. "That's what's behind it
all. We're It...."
Sir William laughed. "Well," he said, "what about those craft yonder?
There I suppose you have yet another point of view?"
A division of Armed Trawlers lumbered out of their path, the bow gun on
each blunt forecastle rising and dipping as they plunged in the
incoming swell.
"Ah!" said the Lieutenant-Commander, "they're different. They never
had any preconceived notions about us or their own invulnerability.
The boot's on the other foot there. We used to jeer at them once; but
now I'm not so certain...."
"You never know what the hell they'll do next," explained the
Lieutenant with the shadow of his eyelashes on his cheek-bone. "That's
the trouble. 'They knows nothin' an' they fears nothin','" he quoted,
smiling.
"The personal element comes in more, I suppose, in those craft," said
Sir William musingly. He focused his glasses on a turf cabin ashore.
"The Admiral was telling me that a London brain specialist was born in
one of those crofter's huts."
The Submarine Commander nodded. "It's not unlikely," he said. "These
Northern fishermen are a fine breed. But this patrol work has
developed a new type of seaman altogether. We've got a fellow up here
huntin' Fritzes--he's a merchant seaman with a commission in the Naval
Reserve.... There are times when he makes _me_ frightened, that
sportsman. It's a blessing the Hun can't reproduce his type: anyhow, I
haven't met any over the other side, or up the Baltic."
"Name of Gedge?" enquired Sir William dryly.
"That's the lad," was the reply. "D'you know him, sir?"
"No, but I've heard of him."
"You'll see him presently," said the other. "He's waiting for us
outside onboard his trawler. If you go onboard, have a look at the
beam of his fore-hatch: rather interestin'."
"What about it?" asked Sir William.
"A little row of notches--that's all. He adds another from time to
time, and I feel sort of sorry for Fritz when he's about."
"Like rats' tails hanging on a stable door," supplemented the First
Lieutenant in explanation.
"I see," said Sir William. "This is going to be interesting." He
pitched the stump of his cigar overboard and turned up the collar of
his ulster as the spray began to drift past their heads.
"We work together sometimes," said the Submarine Officer, "Gedge and I.
Little stunts, you know.... It's part of my job, of course, huntin'
Fritzes, but it's more than a job with him: it's a holy mission.
That's why I'm a bit frightened of him really." The speaker searched
the visitor's face with his guileless blue eyes. "I'm afraid of
meeting him one day, unexpectedly, before I can establish our
identity!" His quick smile flashed across his sunburnt face and was
gone again.
The Submarine was passing under frowning walls of cliff, and the murmur
of the surf thundering about the caverns and buttresses of that
rock-bound coast almost drowned the throb of the engines beneath their
feet. Far out to seaward a formation of Mine-sweeping Sloops crept
away to the west. Close inshore, where the gulls circled vociferously,
an insignificant trawler with a rusty funnel lay rolling in the swell.
A wisp of bunting jerked to the stumpy foremast, and a pair of
hand-flags zigzagged above the trawler's wheel-house. The Yeoman of
Signals on the Submarine's conning tower stiffened like a statue as he
read the message.
"Says, 'Will Sir William Thor-r-ogood come aboar-r-d, sir? If so,
he'll send a boat.'" His speech placed him at home in these Northern
latitudes.
"Reply, 'Yes. Please send boat.'"
A quarter of an hour later Sir William was climbing out of a tubby
dinghy over the trawler's bulwarks. A big bronzed man in a jersey and
sea-boots, wearing the monkey-jacket of a Lieutenant of the Reserve and
a uniform cap slightly askew, came forward, one enormous hand
outstretched in greeting. "Pleased to meet you, sir," he said. "My
name's Gedge."
Sir William shook hands and winced.
"I've heard of you," he said, "and I was anxious to meet you. What
d'you think of that toy?"
He nodded aft at a web of wire-coils, vulcanite levers and brass keys,
standing beneath a wooden shelter in the stern. Three or four officers
from the Fleet were gathered round it with note-books in their hands
testing and adjusting amid its intricacies.
"I've been lookin' at it," admitted the big man non-committally. "It
sounds like a cinch, but I understand it ain't perfect yet?"
"Not by what you might call a long chalk," was the dry reply.
The big man looked relieved. "That's all right," he said. "Because
when it is I guess I can go right along and get to bed. That little
outfit's going to finish the war, sir."
"Hardly," said Sir William. "But it's intended to help things in that
direction. Unfortunately, you see, there's still a factor--what we
call an unknown quantity----" He lapsed into technical explanations.
The other listened for a while and then shook his head.
"Maybe you're right," he said, "but I couldn't say. I'm no
scholar--ran away from school too young. But it seems to me----" He
lifted a booted foot and rested it on the low gunwale, "Workin' at long
distances, there's the pull of the tides...."
Sir William's eyeglass dropped. He recovered it and screwed it home.
"Am I right, sir?" asked the big man.
"You are," said the Scientist. "You've studied tides, too, have you?"
The Submarine Hunter chuckled. "I've learned to respect 'em," he
replied dryly. "Down the Malay Archipelago I learned something about
tides, spittin' overboard from salvage craft...." He stood upright.
"Well, sir, we'd better get to business. These gentlemen here are the
brains of the party"--he nodded at the group aft. "I'm only in the
picture to put them wise as to certain practical conditions of the
game...." He dropped his voice to a confidential undertone as they
walked aft. "The Navy scares me. It's so damned big, and there's so
much gold lace--and it's so almighty efficient...."
Half an hour's discussion settled the _modus operandi_ for the
experiment. The Submarine Commander rose from the gunwale and tossed
away his cigarette-end, then he grinned at the Submarine Hunter who
stood with one shoulder against the structure aft, shredding tobacco
into the palm of his hand.
"Gardez-vous, Old Sport!" he said, as he began to climb down into the
dinghy, where Sir William joined him.
"That's French, ain't it?" said the Submarine Hunter. "Don't speak the
lingo."
One of the Naval officers standing by the apparatus laughed. "It's a
challenge," he said. "Means 'Mind your eye!'"
The Hunter jerked his clasp knife in the direction of the fore-hatch.
"I can mind it all right," he replied grimly, and laughed with a sudden
disconcerting bark of amusement.
* * * * *
"Now," said the Submarine Commander as the pointed bows swung round for
the open sea, "we'll get away out of it. Must keep on the surface for
a while--too many short-tempered little patrol boats close in to let us
cruise with only a periscope showing." He waved his hand in the
direction of countless smudges of smoke ringing the clear horizon.
"But once we're clear of those we'll dive and hide somewhere for a
while. Give old man Gedge something to scratch his head about, lookin'
for us. Then we'll play round and test the apparatus.... You'll be
able to observe the compass all the time, and I'll give you the
distances. There's a young flood making ..."
For the space of a couple of hours the boat slid swiftly through the
waves and successive cordons of patrols passed them onwards with
flickering signals. The men onboard a line of rusty drifters leaned
over the sides of their plunging craft and waved as the jaws of their
baleful traps opened to let them pass through. Above their heads a
gull circled inquisitively, shrilling the high, thin Song of the
Seventh Sea: astern the peaks of Ultima Thule faded like opals into the
blue.
A little cluster of rocky islands rose at length out of the sea ahead;
the Submarine Commander took a swift bearing and rolled up the chart.
"That'll do," he said; "now we'll dive. There's a shoal patch
hereabouts, and we'll sit on the bottom and have lunch while old man
Gedge starts looking for us. After lunch we'll let him get near and
try a bit of daylight stalking." He glanced at the sun overhead. "Bit
early, yet awhile," he added.
One by one, led by Sir William, they descended the steel-runged ladder
into the electric-lit depths of the Submarine. A hatch closed with a
muffled clang: a few curt orders were followed by a succession of
gurgles like those of the tide flooding through a cavern; the
Commanding Officer moved from the eyepiece of the periscope, and
gravely contemplated a needle creeping slowly round the face of a large
dial. A Petty Officer, with an expression emotionless as that of a
traveller in a railway tunnel, sat by the dial manipulating a brass
wheel; a few feet away sat a Leading Seaman similarly employed. The
eyes of both men were fixed on the hesitating needle as it shivered
round. Finally the needle wavered, crept on another inch and paused,
trembling. The Lieutenant-Commander glanced fore and aft, stripped off
a pair of soiled gauntlets and made a low-voiced observation. The two
men, as if released from a spell, turned away from their dials.
"There we are," said the Captain cheerfully, "sitting snug on a nice
sandy bottom in ten fathoms of water. What's for lunch?" He led the
way forward to a folding table between the polished mahogany bunks.
"Fried chops, ain't it?" he enquired, sniffing.
They took their seats on camp stools while a bluejacket dealt out tin
plates like playing cards. Sir William turned from a scrutiny of the
tiny book-shelf over the port bunk. At the head of the bunk was nailed
the photograph of a girlish face, and in close proximity to it one of a
lusty baby exploring a fur rug apparently in search of clothes.
"Not much of a library, I'm afraid," said the host, seating himself.
"I'm not much of a reader myself. The Sub's the bookworm of this boat."
The First Lieutenant of the Submarine shot a swift glance of suspicion
at his Commanding Officer as he helped himself to a chop. The look,
however, appeared to pass unnoticed.
"Some months ago," continued his Captain, speaking with his mouth full,
"we were caught in shallow water over the other side----" he jerked his
head upwards and to the South East. "We were sitting on the bottom
waiting for it to get dark before we came up and charged batteries. I
was having a stretch-off on my bunk here, and the Sub, of course, had
his nose in a book as usual. From subsequent developments it appears
that a Hun seaplane saw us and proceeded to bomb us with great good
will but indifferent success."
"We ought never to have been there," interrupted the First Lieutenant
coldly. "Bad navigation on the Captain's part."
"Granted," said the Lieutenant-Commander. "The first bomb was rather
wide of the mark, but it woke me, and I saw the Sub's eyelids flicker.
After that I watched him. The Hun bombed us steadily for a quarter of
an hour (missing every time, of course), and the Sub never raised his
eyes from his book."
"I was interested," said the First Lieutenant shortly; his eyes, in one
swift glance captain-wards, said more.
"Quite. I was only trying to prove you were a book-worm."
"What was the book?" enquired Sir William.
"Oh, Meredith, sir. Richard something-or-another. Topping yarn."
The guest steered the conversation out of literary channels.
"Were you over the other side much?" he asked blandly.
"Pretty well all the war, till we came up North," was the
Lieutenant-Commander's reply. "You'll have to use the same knife for
the butter; hope you don't mind. We get into piggish ways here, I'm
afraid.... Amusin' work at times, but nothing to the Dardanelles; we
never got out there, though; spent all our time nuzzling sandbanks off
the Ems and thereabouts. Of course, one sees more of Fritz in that
way, but I can't say it exactly heightens one's opinion of him. We
used to think at the beginning of the war that Fritz was a
sportsman--for a German, you know. But he's really just a dirty dog
taking very kindly to the teaching of bigger and dirtier dogs than
himself."
Sir William pondered this intelligence. "That's the generally accepted
theory," he said.
"They may have had some white men in their submarines at one time, but
we've either downed them or they've got Prussianised. They've
disgraced the very word submarine to all eternity." The speaker shook
his head over the besmirched escutcheon of his young profession.
"They're cowards, all right," added the Lieutenant. "'Member that
Fritz we chased all the way to Heligoland on the surface?"
"Yep. Signalled to him with a flashing lamp to stop and fight: called
him every dirty name we could lay our tongues on. Think he'd turn and
have it out? Not much! ... Yet he had the bigger gun and the higher
speed. Signalled back, 'Not to-day, thank you!' and legged it inside
gun-range of the forts. Phew! That made us pretty hot, didn't it,
Sub?"
"Nerves," said the Lieutenant. "Their nerves are just putrid. There
was another night once----" he talked quickly between spoonfuls of rice
pudding. "In a fog ... we were making a lightship off the Dutch coast
to verify our position.... Approached submerged, steering by sound of
their submarine bell, and then came to the surface to get a bearing.
There must have been half a dozen Fritzes round that light, all lost
and fluttering like moths round a candle. We bagged one, sitting, and
blew him to hell.... The rest plopped under like a lot of seals and
simply scattered. Fight? 'Not to-day, thank you.' They're only good
for tackling unarmed merchantmen and leaving women in open boats." The
speaker wiped his mouth with his napkin. "By God! I wouldn't be a Hun
when the war's over. They're having a nice little drop of leave now to
what they'll get if they ever dare put their noses outside their own
filthy country."
"Amen," said Sir William.
The Captain of the boat rose from his seat, glancing at his watch.
"Now then," he said to the Scientist, "Come to the periscope and let's
have a look round. Gedge ought to be over the horizon by now."
The men moved quietly to their stations and the tanks were blown.
Slowly the gauge needles crept back on their appointed paths. The
Submarine Commander motioned his guest to the periscope and gave him a
glimpse of flying spray and sun-kissed wave tops. A mile or so away
lay the group of islands they had seen before lunch, and close inshore
a mass of floating débris bobbed among the waves.
"Baskets, I think--jettison of sorts. I'm going to get amongst it and
go down with the tide, keeping the periscope hidden: it's an old dodge.
You can just see the smoke of Gedge's bus coming over the horizon.
We'll give him a little game of Peep-bo!"
Sir William drew his watch from his pocket and walked over to the
compass. "In four minutes' time," he said, "I shall start making
observations: according to our arrangements Gedge should start the
experiment then."
"That's right," said the Lieutenant-Commander with his eyes pressed
against the eye-piece of the periscope. "Oh, good! It's bales of hay
floating, not baskets. Better still: no chance of damaging the
periscope. There's Gedge----!"
"Ha! Ha! Ha! Hee! Hee! Hee!
I see you, but you can't see me!"
He slewed the periscope through a few points and back to the original
position. "Hullo!" he said presently, "what's he up to? He's altered
course.... Thinks he sees something, I suppose. You're wrong, my lad.
We're not in that direction."
The minutes passed in silence. Forward in the bow compartment a man
was softly whistling a tune to himself. The feet of the figure at the
periscope moved with a shuffle on the steel plating.
"How's the time?" he asked presently.
"He ought to have started the apparatus," said Sir William, standing,
watch in hand, by the compass. "What's he doing?"
"Legging it to the Northward at the rate of knots--eight points off his
course, if he thinks he's going to get anywhere near us ... Ah! Now
he's coming round.... Humph! You're getting warm, my lad!" Another
prolonged silence followed, and suddenly the Lieutenant-Commander spoke
again.
"Sub," he said in a curiously restrained tone, "just come here a
minute."
The Lieutenant moved obediently to his side and applied his eye to the
periscope.
"Well?" said the Captain after a pause. "Well, Sister Anne?"
The Lieutenant turned his head swiftly for an instant and looked at his
Commanding Officer. "Have we got any boat out on this patrol to-day?"
he asked.
The other shook his head. "Not within thirty miles of this. 'Sides,
he wouldn't come through here submerged, with only his periscope
dipping."
"It's a Fritz, then," said the Lieutenant, an ominous calm in his
voice. He stepped aside and relinquished the eye-piece.
"It is," said the other. "It's a naughty, disobedient Fritz. He's
coming through in broad daylight, which he's been told not to do. He
hasn't seen us yet--he's watching old man Gedge. Gedge thinks it's us
and is pretending he hasn't seen him.... Lord! It's like a French
musical comedy."
Sir William put his watch back in his pocket and stood looking from one
speaker to the other. Finally he removed his eye-glass and began to
polish it with scrupulous care.
"Do I understand----" he began.
The voice of the Lieutenant-Commander at the periscope cut him short.
"Stand by the tubes!" he shouted.
There was a swift bustle of men's footsteps down the electric-lit
perspective of glistening machinery.
"Fritz must be in a tearing hurry to get home," commented the First
Lieutenant. "P'raps they've all got plague or running short of food
... or just tired of life?"
"P'raps," conceded the Lieutenant-Commander. "Anyhow, that's as may
be.... The beam torpedo tube will just bear nicely in a minute." The
white teeth beneath the rubber eye-piece of the periscope showed for an
instant in a broad grin. "Won't old man Gedge jump!"
"Starboard beam tube ready!"
Sir William replaced his eye-glass. A sudden bead of perspiration ran
down and vanished into his left eyebrow.
"The Lord," said the Lieutenant in a low voice, "has placed the enemy
upon our lee bow, Sir William."
"Has he?" said Sir William dryly. "Then I hope He'll have mercy on
their souls."
The motionless figure at the periscope gave a couple of low-voiced
orders, and in the ensuing silence Sir William felt the artery in his
throat quicken and beat like a piston. Then--
"Fire!"
The boat rolled to port, and all her framework shook like the body of a
man shaken by a sudden sob. Back she came to her original trim, and
the Lieutenant, standing by the beam tube, raised his wrist watch and
studied it intently. The seconds passed, throbbing, intolerable, and
merged into Eternity. A sudden concussion seemed to strike the boat
from bow to stern, and as she steadied the motionless figures, standing
expressionless at their stations, suddenly sprang into life and action.
There was the metallic sound of metal striking metal as the hatchway
opened, a rush of cool, sweet air, and the Scientist found himself
beside the two officers, without the slightest recollection of how he
got there, standing in the wind and sunlight on the streaming platform
of the conning-tower. The boat was heading with the waves tumbling
away on either side of them in the direction of a cloud of grey smoke
that still hung over the water, slowly dissolving in the wind. As they
approached a dark patch of oil spread outwards from a miniature
maelstrom where vast bubbles heaved themselves up and broke; the air
was sickly with the smell of benzoline, and mingled with it were the
acrid fumes of gas and burnt clothing. A dark scum gathered in
widening circles, with here and there the white belly of a dead fish
catching the sun: a few scraps of wreckage went by, but no sign of a
man or what had once been a man.
"Pretty shot," said the First Lieutenant approvingly, and leaned over
the rail to superintend the dropping of a sinker and buoy. The
Commanding Officer said nothing. Beneath the tan his face was white,
and his hand, as he raised his glasses to sweep the horizon, trembled
slightly.
The Yeoman of Signals turned to Sir William and jerked his thumb at the
water. "Eh!" he said soberly, "yon had a quick call!"
"I ask for no other when my hour strikes," replied the Scientist.
"Maybe juist yeer hands are clean," said the Yeoman, and turned to
level his telescope at the trawler which was rapidly approaching with a
cloud of smoke reeling from her funnel and the waves breaking white
across her high bows.
"Here comes Gedge," observed the Lieutenant-Commander, speaking for the
first time, "foaming at the mouth and suffering from the reaction of
fright. Hark! He's started talking...."
Amid the cluster of figures in the trawler's bow stood a big man with a
megaphone to his mouth. The wind carried scraps of sentences across
the water.
"... Darned bunch of tricks aft.... How was I to know.... Scared
blue ... torpedo ... prisoners.... Blamed inventors...."
"Translate," said Sir William. The Lieutenant-Commander coughed
apologetically. "He's peevish," he said. "Thought it was us blowing
up at first. Wants to know why we wasted a torpedo: thinks he could
have captured her and taken the crew prisoners if we'd left it to him."
"Silly ass!" from the First Lieutenant. "How could we let him know he
was playing round with a Fritz? If we'd shown ourselves Fritz would
have torpedoed us!"
"I appreciate the compliment," began Sir William, "that he implies to
my device, but, as a matter of fact, I hardly think the apparatus is
sufficiently perfect yet----"
The Lieutenant-Commander laughed rather brutally. "He isn't paying
compliments. He went on to say he didn't want the assistance
of--er--new inventions to bag a Fritz once he's sighted him."
The First Lieutenant came quickly to the rescue. "Of course," he said,
"that's all rot. We're only too grateful to--to Science for trying to
invent a new gadget.... Only, you see, sir, in the meanwhile, _until_
you hit on it we feel we aren't doing so badly--er--just carrying on."