"GOOD HUNTING"
Oberleutnant Otto von Sperrgebiet, of the Imperial German Navy, sat on
the edge of a Submarine's conning-tower with a chart open on his knees,
and smoked a cigarette. It was not a brand he cared about
particularly, but it had been looted from the Captain's cabin of a
neutral cargo steamer on the previous afternoon. A man who relies upon
such methods to replenish his cigarette case cannot, of course, expect
everybody's tastes to coincide with his own.
As he smoked, the German Lieutenant's eyes strayed restlessly round the
circle of the horizon. They were small eyes of a pale blue, rather
close together and reddened round the rims, with light eyelashes.
The Submarine lay motionless on the surface with the waves breaking
over the hog-backed hull. Every now and again a few drops of spray
splashed over the surface of the chart, and the Naval man wiped them
off with a scrap of lace and cambric that had once been a lady's
handkerchief. He had a way with women, that German Oberleutnant.
Nothing was in sight: not a tendril of smoke showed above the arc of
tumbling waves that ringed the limit of his vision; the sun was warm
and pleasant, and the figure on the conning-tower crossed his legs,
encased in heavy thigh boots, and gave himself over to retrospective
thought.
There had been a time when Oberleutnant von Sperrgebiet possessed the
rudiments of a conscience. It could never have been described as
acutely sensitive, and it never developed much beyond the rudimentary
stage. Nevertheless, it had existed once: and in the early days of the
war it was still sufficiently active to record certain protests and
objections in his mind.
The mysterious forces that were at work in Germany, industriously
remoulding, brutalising and distorting the mind of Oberleutnant von
Sperrgebiet, together with millions of others, had not been blind to
the prejudicial effects of conscience to an evil cause. Imperial
rodomontade and the inflammatory German Admiralty War Orders had
deliberately rejected, one by one, the deep-seated principles of
humanity and chivalry in war. It had been done gradually and
systematically--scientifically, in fact, and in the majority of cases
it succeeded in producing a state of atrophy of the moral sense that
was altogether admirable--from a German point of view.
In the case of Oberleutnant von Sperrgebiet, however, these early
qualms had a trick of recurring. They pricked his consciousness at
unexpected moments, like a grass-seed in a walker's stocking.... And
now, as he sat swinging his legs in the warm June sunlight, a whole
procession of such reflections trooped through his mind.
For instance, there arose in his intelligence an obstinate doubt as to
whether the torpedoing without warning of a liner carrying women and
children at the commencement of the war had been quite within the pale
of legitimate Naval warfare. He had met the man who boasted such an
achievement, and for a long time he carried with him the recollection
of that man's eyes as they met his above a beer mug. They had drunk
uproariously together, and von Sperrgebiet heard all about it first
hand, and even fingered enviously the Iron Cross upon the breast of the
teller of the tale. But somehow those eyes had told quite a different
story: and it was that which von Sperrgebiet remembered long after the
wearer of the Iron Cross had gone out into the North Sea mists and
returned no more.
Then there had been the rather unpleasant business of the boat....
It was in mid-winter a long way North during one of the few calm days
to be expected at that period of the year. The Submarine was running
on the surface when the Second-in-Command (of whom more anon) reported
a boat on the starboard bow. They altered course a little and, slowing
down, passed within a few yards of it. It was a ship's life-boat, half
full of water; lying in the water, rolling slowly from side to side as
the boat rocked in their wash, were five dead men. A sixth sat huddled
at the tiller, staring over the quarter with unseeing eyes, frozen
stiff....
Von Sperrgebiet caught a glimpse of the ship's name on the bows of the
boat: it happened to be that of a neutral ship he had torpedoed at the
beginning of the previous week during a gale.
The German Admiralty Orders of that period contained a clause to the
effect that ships were not to be torpedoed without ensuring the
adequate safety of the crew. Which meant that those who had not been
killed by the explosion of the torpedo could be allowed to launch a
boat (weather permitting) and get into it if they had time before the
ship sank....
Von Sperrgebiet had given orders for the boat to be sunk by gunfire,
but somehow the memory of that stark figure at the helm persisted. Try
as he would, he failed to banish from his mind the staring, sightless
eyes and grey, famished face....
Altogether it was an unpleasant business. Other memories of this
nature came and went with the smoke from his cigarette. For some
reason or other he found himself wondering whether, after all, a
Belgian Relief Steamer could have been considered fair game. But he
did so hate the word "Belgium," and there was always the theory of a
mine to account for the incident.... He torpedoed her by moonlight: a
very creditable shot, all things considered.
Another moonlight picture presented itself. A boat-load of terrorised
Finns rising and falling on the swell alongside the Submarine, and,
half a mile away, an abandoned sailing ship with every rope and spar
standing out black against the moonlight. In the stern of the boat
stood a mighty Norwegian with a red beard and a voice like a bull. One
of his arms rested protectingly round a woman's shoulders, and he shook
a knotted fist in von Sperrgebiet's face as his ship blew up and sank.
The woman seen thus in the pale moonlight was young and pretty, and the
red-bearded man bellowed that she was his wife. The announcement was
not an unfamiliar one to Oberleutnant von Sperrgebiet: they usually
were young and pretty when he heard that hot rage in a man's voice.
Oberleutnant von Sperrgebiet made himself scarce forthwith, it might be
almost said, from force of habit....
The glass was falling, and it was in mid-Atlantic that they left that
boat. It blew a gale next day, and the Oberleutnant, who had an eye
for a pretty woman, sometimes wondered if the boat was picked up.
His mind revolved for a moment round certain incidents in connection
with that affair. A German sailor from the Submarine had been sent
onboard to place the bombs; he returned with cigars, a ham, and a
pretty silver clock. Also a box of sugar plums, half finished.
Von Sperrgebiet took the clock and the sugar plums. The cigars and the
ham (the labourer being worthy of his hire) he allowed the sailor to
keep.
But even Submarine warfare against unarmed shipping has its risks.
There was the ever-memorable incident of the British tug, and even now
von Sperrgebiet winced at the recollection. They had sighted a sailing
ship in tow of a tug at the entrance to the Channel; von Sperrgebiet
was proud of his mastery of the English tongue, and it was this small
vanity that led him to adopt tactics which differed somewhat from his
normal caution. He submerged until within a couple of hundred yards of
the approaching tow and then rose to the surface, dripping, like some
uncouth sea-monster. Armed with a revolver and a megaphone, and with
pleasurable anticipation in his heart, the Oberleutnant emerged from
the conning-tower with a view to a little preliminary banter with these
detested and unarmed English before administering a coup de grace. He
was just in time to see a stout, ungainly man tumbling aft along the
deck from the wheel-house of the tug. Raising a booted leg with
surprising agility, the stout man kicked off the shackle of the tow
rope, and as he did so over went the helm; the blunt-nosed tug,
released from her 3,000-ton burden, came straight for him like an angry
buffalo.
They were not forty yards apart when the tug turned, and quick as the
German coxswain was, the Submarine failed to avoid the stunning impact
of the bows. A revolver bullet crashed through the glass window of the
wheel-house; von Sperrgebiet had an instant's vision of a round face,
purple with rage, above the spokes of the wheel, and then the conning
tower's automatic hatchway closed. The Submarine was in diving trim,
and she submerged in the shortest time on record. They remained on the
bottom four hours while the sweating mechanics repaired the damaged
hydroplane gear and effected some temporary caulking round certain
plates that bulged ominously.
But von Sperrgebiet's hatred of England was real enough before this
incident. He had always hated the English, even in his youth when for
a year he occupied an inconspicuous niche in one of the less fastidious
Public Schools. He hated them for the qualities he despised and found
so utterly inexplicable. He despised their lazy contempt for detail,
their quixotic sense of fairness and justice in a losing game, their
persistent refusal to be impressed by the seriousness of anything on
earth. He despised their whole-hearted passion for sports at an age
when he was beginning to be interested in less wholesome and far more
complex absorptions.... He despised their straight, clean affections
and quarrels and their tortuous sense of humour; the affectation that
led them to take cold baths instead of hot ones: their shy, rather
knightly mental attitude towards their sisters and one another's
sisters....
All these things von Sperrgebiet despised in the English. But he also
hated them for something he had never even admitted to himself.
Crudely put, it was because he knew that he could never beat an
Englishman. There was nothing in his spirit that could outlast the
terrible, emotionless determination in the English character to win.
Von Sperrgebiet's reflections came to an end with his cigarette. He
tossed the stump overboard, and raising a pair of glasses he focused
them intently on the horizon to the eastward.
For the space of nearly a minute he sat thus staring. From the
interior of the Submarine came the strains of a gramophone playing a
German patriotic air, and with it the smell of coffee. The crew were
at dinner, and a man's deep laugh floated up the shaft of the
conning-tower as if coming from the bowels of the sea.
The Oberleutnant lowered the glasses abruptly. Rolling up the chart he
hoisted himself on to his feet and bent over the tiny binnacle to take
the bearing of a faint smudge of smoke barely visible on the horizon.
This obtained, he lowered himself through the narrow hatchway and
climbed down the steel rungs into the interior of the compartment.
"Close down!" he said curtly. The gramophone stopped with a click, and
instantly all was bustle and activity within the narrow confines of the
steel shell.
The Second-in-Command, who was lying on his bunk reading a novel, sat
up and lifted his legs over the edge. He was a spectacled youth with a
cropped bullet-head and what had been in infancy a hare-lip. His beard
of about ten days' maturity grew in patches about his lips and cheeks.
"A ship, Herr Kapitan?" he asked in a thin, reedy voice, and reached
for a pair of long-toed, elastic-sided boots that he had kicked off,
and which lay at the foot of his bunk.
His superior officer nodded and snapped out a string of guttural
orders. The sing-song voices of men at their stations amid the levers
and dials repeated the words mechanically, like men talking in their
sleep. With a whizzing, purring sound the motors started, and the
ballast tanks filled with a succession of sucking gurgles.
Von Sperrgebiet glanced at the compass and moved to the eye-piece of
the periscope. For a while there was silence, broken only by the hum
of the motors.
The Second-in-Command hung about the elbow of the motionless figure at
the periscope like a morbid-minded urchin on the outskirts of a crowd
that gathers round a street accident, but can see nothing. His stolid
face was working and moist with excitement.
"Is it an English ship, Herr Kapitan?"
The Oberleutnant made no answer, but reached out a hand to the wheel
that adjusted the height of the periscope above the water and twisted
it rapidly. For twenty minutes he remained thus, motionless save for
the arm that controlled the periscope. Once or twice he gave a
low-voiced direction to the helmsman, but his Second-in-Command he
ignored completely.
That officer moved restlessly about the Submarine, glancing from dial
to dial and from one gauge to another; for a few minutes he stopped to
talk to the torpedo-man standing by the closed tube. Finally he
returned to his Captain's elbow, moistening his marred lip with the tip
of his tongue; his face wore an unhealthy pallor and glistened in the
glow of the electric lights.
"Is it an English ship, Herr Kapitan?" he asked again in his high,
unnatural voice.
"Yes," snapped von Sperrgebiet. "Why?"
"I have a request to make," replied the Second-in-Command. "A favour,
Herr Kapitan. It concerns a promise"--he lowered his voice till it was
barely audible above the noise of the machinery--"to my betrothed."
For the first time von Sperrgebiet turned his face from the rubber
eye-piece and regarded the youth with a little mocking smile that
showed only a sharp dog-tooth.
"Don't say you promised to introduce her to me, Ludwig!" he sneered.
"No, no," said the other hastily. "But she made me promise not to
return to her unless I had sunk with my own hands a merchant ship
flying the cursed English flag."
"She is easily pleased, your betrothed," retorted the Oberleutnant, and
moved back from the periscope. "Your request is granted. But remember
I shall demand an introduction when we return.... It is a long shot.
Fire when the foremast comes on, and do not show the periscope more
than a few seconds at a time. I will give the orders after you have
fired."
The Second-in-Command took up his position in the spot vacated by the
Oberleutnant. His tongue worked ceaselessly about his lips and his
hand trembled on the elevating wheel.
"There is smoke astern," he said presently. And a moment later. "The
approaching ship looks like a liner, Herr Kapitan!"
"What of that?" said von Sperrgebiet gruffly.
The Second-in-Command looked back over his shoulder at his Commanding
Officer: his face was livid with excitement. "It means women, Herr
Kapitan," he said. "Children perhaps...."
Von Sperrgebiet shrugged his shoulders. "They are English," he
replied. "Swine, sow or sucking-pig--what is the difference? They
learn their lessons slowly, these English. We will drive yet another
nail into their wooden heads.... You will drive it, Ludwig," he added
thoughtfully: and then, as an afterthought, "for the honour of the
Fatherland."
"Thank you, Herr Kapitan," replied the youth, and turned again to the
periscope mirror. Silence fell upon the waiting men: the minutes
passed while the elevating wheel of the periscope revolved first in one
direction and then in another. At last the form of the
Second-in-Command stiffened.
"Fire!" he cried: his uncertain voice cracked into a falsetto note.
The stern of the Submarine dipped and righted itself again: the
Oberleutnant's harsh voice rang out in a succession of orders. The
Second-in-Command leaned against a stanchion and wiped his face with
his handkerchief.
A minute passed, and a dull concussion shook the boat from stem to
stern. Von Sperrgebiet showed his dog-tooth in that terrible mirthless
smile of his. "A hit, my little Ludwig!" he said.
The Second-in-Command clicked his heels together. "For the honour of
the Fatherland," he said. "Gott strafe England!"
"Amen!" said Oberleutnant Otto von Sperrgebiet.
The boat had been travelling in a wide circle after the torpedo left
the tube, and ten minutes later the Oberleutnant cautiously raised the
periscope. The next moment he swung the wheel round again in the
opposite direction.
"Another ship?" asked Ludwig.
"Yes," replied von Sperrgebiet. "One of their cursed Armed Merchant
Cruisers." He bent over the chart table for a minute and gave an order
to the helmsman.
"A fresh attack?" queried the Second-in-Command eagerly.
Von Sperrgebiet returned to the periscope. "When you have been at this
work as long as I have," he replied, "you will find it healthier not to
meddle with Armed Merchant Cruisers. They are all eyes and they shoot
straight. No, for the time being our glorious work is done, and we
shall now depart from a locality that is quickly becoming unhealthy."
He glanced at the depth gauge and thence to the faces of the crew who
stood waiting for orders.
"The gramophone," he called out harshly. "Switch on the gramophone,
you glum-faced swine.... Look sharp! Something lively...!"
* * * * *
At seven minutes past three in the afternoon, Cecily Thorogood, that
very self-possessed and prettily-clad young woman, was seated in a
deck-chair on the saloon-deck of a 6,000-ton liner; an American
magazine was open in front of her, under cover of which she was
exploring the contents of a box of chocolates with the practised eye of
the expert, in quest of a particular species which contained
crystallised ginger and found favour in her sight.
At nineteen minutes past three Cecily Thorogood, still self-possessed,
but no longer very prettily clad, was submerged in the chilly Atlantic
up to her shoulders and clinging to the life-line of an upturned
jolly-boat. To the very young Fourth Officer who clung to the boat
beside her with one arm and manoeuvred for a position from which he
could encircle Cecily's waist protectingly with the other, she
announced as well as her chattering teeth would allow that she
(a) was in no immediate danger of drowning;
(b) was not in the least frightened;
(c) was perfectly capable of holding on without anybody's support as
long as was necessary.
The chain of occurrences that connected situation No. 1 with situation
No. 2 was short enough in point of actual time, but so crowded with
unexpected and momentous happenings that it had already assumed the
proportions of a confused epoch in Cecily's mind. There were gaps in
the sequence of events that remained blanks in her memory. Faces,
insignificant incidents, thumbnail sketches and broad, bustling
panorama of activity alternated with the blank spaces. The heroic and
the preposterous were indistinguishable....
At the first sound of the explosion of the torpedo Cecily jumped to her
feet, scattering the chocolates broadcast over the deck. The ship
seemed to lift bodily out of the water and then heeled over a little to
port. There were very few people on the saloon deck and there was no
excitement or rushing about. The shrill call of the boatswain's mate's
pipe clove the silence that followed that stupendous upheaval of sound.
A clean-shaven, middle-aged American, wearing a collar reminiscent of
the late Mr. Gladstone's and a pair of pince-nez hanging from his neck
on a broad black ribbon, had been walking up and down with his hands
behind his back; he paused uncertainly for a moment and then began
laboriously collecting the scattered chocolates. That was the only
moment when hysteria brushed Cecily with its wings. She wanted to
laugh or cry--she wasn't sure which.
"It doesn't matter! It doesn't matter!" she cried with a catch in her
breath. "Don't stop now--we've been torpedoed!"
The American stared at the handful he had gathered.
"Folks'll tread on 'em, I guess," he replied, and suddenly raised his
head with a whimsical smile. "A man likes to do something useful at
times like this--it's just our instinct," he added as if explaining
something more for his own satisfaction than hers. "I'm not a
seaman--I'd only get in peoples' way messing round the boats before
they were ready--so I reckoned I'd pick up your candies."
There were very few women onboard, and Cecily found herself the only
woman allotted to the jolly-boat. She climbed in with the assistance
of the very young and distressingly susceptible Fourth Officer. For a
moment she found herself reflecting that his life must be one long
martyrdom of unrequited affections. The stout American followed her
with a number of other passengers. The Fourth Officer gave an order
and the boat began to descend towards the waves in a succession of
uneven jolts. The crew were getting their oars ready, and one was
hammering the plug of the boat home with the butt of an enormous
jack-knife. The stout American surveyed the tumbling sea beneath them
distastefully.
"When I get to Washington," he said, "I guess I'll fly round that li'll
old town till some of our precious 'too-proud-to-fight' party just
gnash their teeth and shriek aloud 'How can we bear it?'"
He suddenly remembered that his pneumatic life-saving waistcoat was not
inflated. Seizing the piece of rubber tubing that projected from his
pocket he thrust it into his mouth and proceeded to blow with distended
cheeks and his serious brown eyes fixed solemnly on Cecily's face.
He was still blowing when they capsized. How the accident happened
Cecily never knew: principally because she was concentrating her mind
on the bottom of the boat and wondering how soon the pangs of
_mal-de-mer_ might be expected to encompass her. But the fact remains
that one moment the boat was rising and falling dizzily on the waves
and the next, with a confused shouting of orders and a crash, they were
all struggling in the water.
Cecily's life-saving jacket brought her to the surface like a cork, and
a couple of strokes took her to the side of the capsized boat and
situation No. 2 already described. Here she was presently joined by
the American, puffing and blowing like a grampus, who was placed in
possession of statement (c) referred to above. He appeared either not
to hear, however, or to incline to the view that it was a mere theory
based upon a fallacy....
The remaining late occupants of the boat attached themselves along the
sides and awaited succour with what patience they could. Then a
muffled sound like an internal explosion came from within the stricken
hull as a bulkhead went. The great ship lurched sickeningly above them
as a wall totters to its fall. Cecily looked up and saw for a moment
the figure of the Captain standing on the end of the bridge; true to
his grand traditions he was staying by his ship to the last. She
listed over further and began to settle rapidly. Then, and only then,
the Captain climbed slowly over the rail and dived.
The stern of the ship rose slowly into the air, then swiftly slid
forward with a sound like a great sob and vanished beneath the surface.
One of the life-boats approached the capsized jolly-boat, and the
figures that clung to her were hauled, dripping, one by one into the
stern.
Then they picked up the Captain, clinging to a grating, an angry man.
He scowled round at the long green slopes of the sea and shook his fist.
"The curs!" he said. "The dirty scum.... Women on board.... No
warning...." Anger and salt water choked him.
"They wouldn't even give me a gun because I was a passenger ship.
Unarmed, carrying women, torpedoed without warning.... I'll spit in
the face of every German I meet from here to Kingdom Come!"
A little elderly lady with a bonnet perched awry on her thin grey hair
suddenly began a hymn in a high quavering soprano.
"That's right, ma'am," said the Captain approvingly, as he wrung the
water out of his clothes. "There's nothing like singing to cure
sea-sickness. And we shan't be here very long." He pointed to the
high bows of a rapidly approaching ship. "One of our Armed Merchant
Cruisers, I fancy." He waved to the other boats to close nearer.
He was no mere optimist; before a quarter of an hour had elapsed the
boats were strung out in a line towing from a rope that led from the
bows of the Cruiser. A hastily improvised boatswain's stool was
lowered from a davit, and one by one the passengers, then the crew, and
finally the officers of the torpedoed liner were swung into the air and
hoisted inboard while the Armed Merchant Cruiser continued her course.
The sea-sick Cecily, swaying dizzily for the second time that day
between sky and water, looked down at the tumbling boats beneath her
and for a moment had a glimpse of the stout American and the Fourth
Officer. They were both standing gazing up after her as she was
whisked skyward. Their mouths were open, and the expression on their
faces gave Cecily a feeling of being wafted out of a world she was
altogether too good for.
The sensation was a momentary one, however. The davit swung inboard as
she arrived at the level of the rail and deposited her, a limp bundle
of damp rags--in fact what Mr. Mantalini would have described as "a
demmed moist unpleasant body"--on the upper deck of the Armed Merchant
Cruiser. With the assistance of two attentive sailors Cecily rose
giddily to her feet; most of her hair-pins had come out, and her hair
streamed in wet ringlets over her shoulders. She raised her eyes to
take in her new surroundings, and there, standing before her with his
eyes and mouth three round O's, was Armitage.
Now Cecily had gone through a good deal since seven minutes past three
that afternoon. But to be confronted, as she swayed, with her wet
clothes clinging to her body like a sculptor's model, deathly sea-sick,
red-nosed for aught she knew or cared, with the man who but for her
firmness and mental agility would have kept on proposing to her at
intervals during the past eighteen months, was a climax that
overwhelmed even Cecily's self-possession.
She chose the only course left open to her, and fainted promptly.
Armitage caught her in his arms, and as he did so was probably the
first and last Englishman who has ever blessed a German Submarine.
She recovered consciousness in Armitage's cabin, with the elderly lady
who had sung hymns in the boat in attendance; she lay wrapped in
blankets in the bunk, with hot-water bottles in great profusion all
round her, and felt deliciously drowsy and comfortable. But with
returning consciousness some corner of discomfort obtruded itself into
her mind. It grew more definite and uncomfortable. With her eyes
still closed Cecily wriggled faintly and plucked at an unfamiliar
garment.
Then, slowly, she opened her eyes very wide. "What have I got on?" she
asked in severe tones.
"My dear," said the elderly lady, "pyjamas! There was nothing else.
They belong to the officer who owns this cabin. I think the name was
Armitage. And the doctor said----"
Cecily groaned. A knock sounded, and the ship's doctor entered
carrying something in a medicine glass.
"Well," he asked brusquely, "how are we?"
"Better, thanks," said Cecily faintly.
"That's right. Drink this and close your eyes again."
Cecily drank obediently and fell asleep. Twenty-four hours later the
Cruiser was moving slowly up a river to her berth alongside a wharf.
Cecily, clothed and in her right mind, stood aft in a deserted spot by
the ensign-staff and stared at the dingy warehouses and quaysides
ashore as they slid past.
Armitage came across the deck towards her; Cecily saw him coming and
took a long breath. Then, woman-like, she spoke first:
"I haven't had an opportunity to thank you yet," she said prettily,
"for giving up your cabin to me--and--and all your kindness."
Armitage stood squarely in front of her, a big, kindly man who was
going to be badly hurt and more than half expected it.
"There is a curious fatality about all this," he said. "It was no
kindness of either yours or mine." He glanced over her head at the
rapidly approaching wharf ahead and then at her face.
"For eighteen months," he said, speaking rather quickly, "I've been
like the prophet Jonah--looking for a sign. I looked to you for it,
Miss Cecily," he said, "and I can't truthfully say it showed itself in
a single word or look or gesture." He took a deep breath. "I'm not
going to let you tell me I'm labouring under any misapprehensions. But
this"--he made a little comprehensive gesture--"this is too much like
the hand of Fate to disregard. Miss Cecily," he said, "little Miss
Cecily, you've just twisted your fingers round my heart and I can't
loose them."
"Please," said Cecily, "ah, no, please don't...." Some irresponsible
imp in her intelligence made her want to tell him that it wasn't Jonah
who looked for a sign.
"Listen," said Armitage. He was literally holding her before him by
the sheer strength of his kindly, compelling personality. "When this
racket started--this war--I told them at the Admiralty my age was
forty-five. It was a lie--I am fifty-two. I've knocked about the
world; I know men and cities and the places where there are neither.
But I've lived clean all my life and I was never gladder of it than I
am at this moment...."
Cecily had a conviction that unless she could stop him she would have
to start crying very soon. But there were no words somehow that seemed
adequate to the situation.
"I know, dear," he went on in his grave quiet voice, "that at your age
money, and all the things it buys, seem just empty folly. But, believe
me, there comes a time when being rich counts a lot towards happiness.
I'm not trying to dazzle you, but you know all mine is yours--you shall
live in Park Lane if you care to--or I'll turn all wide Scotland into a
deer forest for you to play in...."
He paused. "But there is one thing, of course, that might make all
this sound vulgar and sordid." He considered her with his clear blue
eyes. "Are you in love with anyone else?" he asked.
Cecily clutched recklessly at the alternative to absurd tears.
"Yes," she said.
Armitage stood quite still for a moment. His calm, direct gaze never
left her face, and after a moment he squared his big shoulders with an
abrupt, characteristic movement.
"Then he is the luckiest man," he said quietly, "that ever won God's
most perfect gift."
He gave her a funny stiff little inclination of the head and walked
away.
* * * * *
Otto von Sperrgebiet did not raise the periscope above the surface
again for some hours. The Submarine, entirely submerged, drove through
the water until night. After nightfall they travelled on the surface
until the first pale bars of dawn appeared in the eastern sky. Von
Sperrgebiet was on the conning-tower as soon as it was light, searching
the horizon with his glasses.
"It is strange," he said to his Second-in-Command. "We ought to have
sighted that light vessel before now." At his bidding a sailor fetched
the lead line and took a sounding. Together they examined the tallow
at the bottom of the lead, and von Sperrgebiet made a prolonged
scrutiny of the chart. "H'm'm!" he said. "I don't understand."
Submerging again, they progressed at slow speed for some hours and he
took another sounding. The sky was overcast and no sights could be
taken.
This time von Sperrgebiet returned from comparing the sounding with the
chart, wearing a distinctly worried expression.
The hawk-eyed seaman beside him on the bridge gave an ejaculation and
pointed ahead.
"Land, Herr Kapitan!" he said.
"Fool!" replied his Captain. "Idiot! How can there be land there
unless"--he glanced inside the binnacle half contemptuously--"unless
the compasses are mad--or I am."
He raised his glasses to stare at the horizon. "You are right," he
said. "You are right.... It is land." He gnawed his thumbnail as was
his habit when in perplexity.
The next moment the seaman pointed again. "The Hunters," he said.
Von Sperrgebiet gave one glance ahead and kicked the man down through
the open hatchway of the conning-tower. He himself followed, and the
hatch closed. The helmsman was standing, staring at the compass like a
man in a trance.
"Herr Kapitan," he said, as von Sperrgebiet approached, "it is
bewitched." Indeed, he had grounds for consternation. The compass
card was spinning round like a kitten chasing its tail, first in one
direction, then in another.
"Damn the compass!" said von Sperrgebiet. "Flood ballast tanks--depth
thirty metres--full speed ahead!"
He thrust the helmsman aside and took the useless wheel himself.
"Ludwig," he said, "to the periscope with you and tell me what you see."
The Second-in-Command waited for no second bidding; he pressed his face
against the eye-pieces. "There are small vessels approaching very
swiftly from all sides," he said. And a moment later, "They are firing
at the periscope..."
"Down with it," said von Sperrgebiet. "We must go blind if we are to
get through." His face was white and his lip curled back in a
perpetual snarl like a wolf at bay. As he spoke there was a splutter
and the lights went out.
The voice of the Engineer sounded through the low doorway from the
engine-room. "There is something fouling our propeller, Herr Kapitan,"
he shouted. "The engines are labouring at full speed, but we are
scarcely making any headway. The cut-outs have fused."
Von Sperrgebiet cursed under his breath. "Stop the engines," he said.
"If we can't swim we must sink." He gave the necessary orders and the
boat dropped gradually through the water till she rested on the bottom.
"Now," said von Sperrgebiet. "Turn on the gramophone, one of you, if
you can find it."
There was a pause while someone fumbled in the darkness, and a click.
Then a metallic tune blared forth bravely from the unseen instrument.
"That's right," said von Sperrgebiet in a low voice, speaking for the
last time. "'_Deutschland unter Alles!_'" His laugh was like the bark
of a sick dog.
Twenty fathoms over their heads, under the grey sky, and blown upon by
the strong salt wind, a large man in the uniform of a Lieutenant of the
Naval Reserve was standing in the bows of an Armed Trawler; his gaze
was fixed on something floating upon the surface of the water ahead;
but presently he raised his eyes to the circle of Armed Trawlers around
him riding lazily on the swell. In the rear of the gun in the bows of
each craft stood a little group of men all staring intently at the
floating object. The Lieutenant waved an arm to the nearest consort.
"They reckon they'll take it lying down," he said grimly. "Well, I
don't blame 'em!" He nodded at the figure in the wheel-house.
"Full speed, skipper!" The telegraph clinked, and they moved ahead,
slowly gathering way. Then the Reserve-man turned, facing aft.
"Let her go, George," he said, raising his voice. The trawler fussed
ahead like a self-important hen that has laid an egg. There was a
violent upheaval in the water astern, and a column of foam and wreckage
leaped into the air with a deafening roar.
The Reserve Lieutenant pulled a knife out of his pocket, and, bending
down, thoughtfully added another nick to a long row of notches in the
wooden beam of the trawler's fore hatch.