THE PIRATE
SUBMARINE
PERCY F. WESTERMAN
THE CHAMPION SERIES
THE PIRATE SUBMARINE
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
--------------------------------
CAPTAIN CAIN
THE FLYING SUBMARINE
THE WINNING OF THE GOLDEN SPURS
[Illustration: EVEN AS THE MESSAGE WAS BEING SIGNALLED THE _ALERTE_
BEGAN TO SETTLE]
THE PIRATE
SUBMARINE
BY
PERCY F. WESTERMAN
[Illustration: logo]
London
NISBET & CO. LTD.
22 BERNERS STREET, W. 1
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
MORRISON AND GIBB LTD., LONDON AND EDINBURGH
P 1980
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. A PAIR OF ROGUES . . . . . . . . . . . 1
II. THE PIRATE CREW SIGN ON. . . . . . . . 13
III. THE _ALERTE_ SAILS . . . . . . . . . . 22
IV. THE FIRST HAUL . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
V. THE RENDEZVOUS . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
VI. THE LAST OF THE _IBEX_ . . . . . . . . 65
VII. THE CAPTURE OF THE _CAP HOORN_ . . . . 84
VIII. A PROPOSAL SCORNED . . . . . . . . . . 96
IX. A DASH FOR LIBERTY . . . . . . . . . .109
X. BRUTE STRENGTH . . . . . . . . . . . .123
XI. THE FIGHT WITH THE _SURCOUF_ . . . . .136
XII. HUNTED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .145
XIII. A BAFFLED QUEST. . . . . . . . . . . .157
XIV. A BROKEN REED. . . . . . . . . . . . .164
XV. THE OIL-TANKER . . . . . . . . . . . .172
XVI. THE STOWAWAYS. . . . . . . . . . . . .182
XVII. GETTING TO WIND'ARD OF PENGELLY. . . .196
XVIII. THE DESTROYER AND THE DESTROYED. . . .215
XIX. RECALLED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .232
XX. THE AFFAIR OF THE _BRONX CITY_ . . . .236
XXI. MUTINY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .245
XXII. A STERN CHASE. . . . . . . . . . . . .262
XXIII. CAIN RESUMES COMMAND . . . . . . . . .272
XXIV. THE FATE OF THE PIRATE SUBMARINE . . .281
THE PIRATE SUBMARINE
CHAPTER I
A PAIR OF ROGUES
"THAT'S done it! Scrap brass has fallen another thirty shillings a
ton, Pengelly. The slump has knocked the bottom out of the market.
We're in the soup."
Thus spoke Tom Trevorrick, senior partner of the firm of Trevorrick,
Pengelly & Co., shipbreakers, of Polkyll, near Falmouth. He was a
tall, powerfully-built man, standing six feet two and a half inches
in his socks, red-haired, florid featured, with a high though
receding forehead and a heavy protruding jaw. His rich deep voice
had a plausible ring about it--a compelling, masterful yet
persuasive tone, that had largely influenced the shareholders of
Trevorrick, Pengelly & Co. to part with their money with the
absolute certainty of a pre-war ten per cent. return.
Paul Pengelly, aged thirty-three, or three years older than the
senior partner, was of different build and temperament. Trevorrick
represented the Celtic strain of Cornishmen; Pengelly had dark curly
hair and sallow features--legacies of an Iberian ancestor, one of a
handful of survivors from a vessel of the Spanish Armada that had
been cast ashore on the rock-bound Lizard. History does not relate
why the Cornish wreckers spared the lives of the olive-featured
mariners, but it does record that the shipwrecked Spaniards took
wives of the Cornish maids, and lived and died in the country of
their adoption.
Pengelly was slow of speech, stolid in action save when roused to
anger. Of an argumentative nature, he acted as a foil to his
partner's exuberance. If Trevorrick suggested a certain course,
Pengelly almost invariably went dead against it, not that he
disapproved of the scheme, but simply as a matter of habit. He was
secretive and cautious; but he never hesitated to do an underhand
action if he felt reasonably secure from detection.
He was a man of many parts--a jack-of-all-trades and master of a
few. Given to building castles in the air, he would soar to dizzy
heights in planning fantastic schemes. Some of them might take
definite shape; then, almost without warning, he would "chuck his
hand in" and cast about for something else.
Eighteen months previously, Trevorrick and Pengelly had met for the
first time. Trevorrick had just left the Royal Navy. He had been a
lieutenant-commander attached to the Portsmouth submarine flotilla.
He had not resigned under the favourable terms offered by My Lords
to redundant officers; he had not been "axed" under the Geddes
Scheme. He had been courtmartialled and dismissed from the Service
under circumstances that could not be termed extenuating.
Trevorrick was at a loose end when he encountered Pengelly. He had a
limited amount of capital. So had Pengelly. The latter's latest
scheme appealed to the ex-lieutenant-commander. Just then, hundreds
of ships of all sizes were being sold out of the Service for
breaking-up purposes. There was money to be made out of the
business, with very little capital required for plant, while surplus
destroyers and submarines could be bought at a flat rate of one
pound per ton, subject to the condition that they had to be broken
up.
Of the hundreds, nay, thousands of people who patronise the little
steamers plying between Falmouth and Truro--or Malpas, according to
the state of the tide few are likely to notice a small creek on the
starboard hand of the picturesque river Fal. Fewer still know it by
name.
Its entrance is narrow, between steeply rising, heavily wooded
ground. Although barely twenty-five yards in width across its mouth,
it carries nearly thirty feet of water at Springs. Two hundred yards
up, the creek widens out. One bank retains its precipitous,
tree-clad nature. The other dips, forming a wide bay, with a flat
belt of ground between the shore and the high ground beyond.
On this site, hidden from the Fal by a bend in the channel, stood a
derelict shipyard. A century ago, when Falmouth was at the height of
its prosperity as a packet-station, the shipyard teemed with
activity. It enjoyed a brief and illusory spell of life during the
Great War, when it again sank into obscurity and neglect. The two
slipways were left to rot, two tidal docks were allowed to silt up.
The buildings were ruinous and leaky. The whole concern was in the
hands of the Official Receiver.
To the delectable spot came Trevorrick and Pengelly. They looked at
it. Trevorrick lost no time in declaring that it was "the" place;
Pengelly asserted that it was not. The big man had his way, and thus
the Polkyll Creek Shipbreaking Company came into being.
They started modestly upon their enterprise. The heaviest item for
plant was the purchase of an oxygen-acetylene apparatus. At first,
ten hands were engaged. Pengelly wanted to obtain them locally.
Trevorrick, as usual, overruled him, and as a result inserted in a
Plymouth paper an advertisement for ex-Naval and Mercantile Marine
men. They received shoals of replies and could pick and choose,
without having to pay Trade Union rates.
"We'll have unmarried men," declared the senior partner. "They won't
be wanting to run away home every five minutes."
"Married men are more likely to stick to their jobs," objected
Pengelly.
"No one but a born fool would chuck up a job nowadays," retorted
Trevorrick. "They are none too plentiful."
In due course, the shipbreaking yard began to function. A destroyer
and a submarine were purchased at Devonport and towed round to
Falmouth and up the Fal to Polkyll. The scrap metal was sent up to
Truro in barges and thence transferred to goods train for the Welsh
smelting works. So profitable was the venture that three more
vessels were bought for demolition, twenty additional hands taken
on, and the firm of Trevorrick and Pengelly became a limited
liability company.
So far, things were going smoothly. The two principals got on
amicably, which was rather to be wondered at, since Trevorrick was
apt to boast that he had had heaps of friends and had never been
able to keep one of them. No doubt, the totally dissimilar physical
and mental characteristics of each kept them in a state of mutual
docility; but already Pengelly was tiring of the monotonous work,
and Trevorrick was scheming to get away to a livelier spot than the
dead-and-alive Polkyll Creek.
Then, slowly but surely, came the slump. The shareholders had their
first dividends--ten per cent.--paid out of the capital. Another
dividend was shortly due and there was no possible chance of it
being forthcoming, unless Trevorrick and Pengelly drew upon their
capital--a step that each was firmly determined not to take.
"Are we in the soup?" asked Pengelly, in reply to his partner's
pessimistic declaration. "What do you suggest?"
"Pack up and clear off," replied the senior partner. "Lay hands on
all the ready money we can possibly get hold of, and make ourselves
scarce."
"How about the shareholders?" asked Pengelly. Trevorrick shrugged
his shoulders.
"Shareholders have lost money before to-day," he remarked. "That's
their affair."
"That's all right as far as we are concerned, if they take it lying
down," objected the other. "S'posing they don't? What then? We
wouldn't be safe for twenty-four hours in this country. We might try
our luck abroad."
It was Trevorrick's turn to offer objections.
"Don't fancy the idea, especially with a warrant hanging over my
head. Fellows who issue fraudulent balance sheets (Pengelly winced)
get it in the neck pretty badly when they're caught. I've no fancy
for seven years behind prison bars. And there's another thing. How
long could either of us hang out abroad with what money we can lay
our hands on? Six months. After that--_phut_!"
"Then what do you suggest?"
"Depends," replied Trevorrick. "Fifty thousand apiece and a snug
hiding-place in one of the South American republics."
"Takes some doing."
"It can be done."
"How?"
The two men looked at each other, trying to fathom the depths to
which either would be prepared to go.
"How?" asked Pengelly again. "Holding up a bank, for example.
"Try again."
"Highway robbery, perhaps."
"Sort of," admitted Trevorrick. "For 'highway' substitute 'high
seas,' and you've got it."
"Piracy, by Jove!" ejaculated Pengelly, with a gleam in his eyes. It
was a case of blood will tell, and Pengellys had in bygone days
sailed under the Jolly Roger; more than one had made a public
spectacle at Execution Dock. "'That's funny, deuced funny," he added
after a pause.
"I've been thinking of that myself."
"It'll require a jolly sight more than thinking," remarked
Trevorrick grimly.
"It's risky."
"Course it is. So's everything, if you go the wrong way about it.
Take shipbreaking: you might get cut in two by a chunk of steel
plate, or you might try the business end of an oxygen-acetylene
flame. That's happened before to-day."
"You--I mean, we--would probably be caught inside of a week," said
Pengelly, resuming his habit of raising objections. "Aircraft and
wireless don't give a fellow much of a chance."
"Not if we played our cards properly."
"Don't see how," rejoined the little man petulantly. "And when we're
collared----"
He completed the sentence by a double gesture--a circular motion of
his right hand in a horizontal plane followed by a rapid vertical
movement.
"Better that than seven years," said Trevorrick coolly. "But you're
showing the white feather already."
"Surely you're joking about it?"
"Never more serious in all my life," the senior partner hastened to
assure him. "The audacity of the thing is in our favour. Ask any
naval expert. He'll tell you that piracy, except in the Red Sea and
the China Station, is as dead as Queen Anne. I'm going to show the
blamed experts that they're talking through their hats."
"But----"
"Don't start butting in with your confounded 'buts,'" exclaimed
Trevorrick, with a tinge of asperity. "You say you've been
considering the matter. How far have you gone into the practical
side of it? I can make a pretty shrewd guess. You haven't even
scratched the epidermis of the problem. I have. Cast your eyes over
this."
From his pocket-box, Trevorrick produced a leaf of a notebook. On it
was written in small, carefully-formed letters, the following:
1. The vessel.
2. Crew.
3. Maintenance.
4. Cruising limits.
5. Communication with shore.
"Now," continued Trevorrick briskly, "I've gone deeply into the
question. We'll run over the various items. Then we can discuss
details; but remember, I want constructive, not destructive
criticism. Here I am trying to put you on to a get-rich-quick
scheme. That's the main idea. It's for your benefit--and mine.
First, the ship. I propose adopting R 81."
R 81 was the Polkyll Creek Shipbreaking Yard's latest acquisition.
She had been towed round from Devonport only a couple of days
previously and had been placed in the mud-dock alongside the
rapidly-disintegrating hull of her former sister-submarine R 67.
"Bless my soul, man!" interrupted Pengelly, heedless of the senior
partner's caution. "You'd never get her outside Falmouth Harbour."
"You're bearing in mind the Admiralty inspector," declared
Trevorrick, purposely refraining from showing displeasure at the
interruption. "He'll be here to-morrow or Friday. After that, it
will be three months before he shows up again. Then I can manage him
all right. No, I don't intend to offer him half a crown to look the
other way. But there's not the slightest reason why we shouldn't
hoodwink him. The moment he goes after his next visit, we'll start
operations. R 81 goes under the covered shed; R 67 will be moved
into R 81's berth. It's not altogether a stroke of luck that we
haven't started cutting into R 67's hull below the waterline. When
the inspector comes again he won't see R 67. She'll be broken up
entirely as far as he's concerned. R 67 will assume R 81's number.
We'll leave enough of the hull for that. The pirate submarine, ex-R
81, will already be nearing completion well out of the sight of the
official eye."
"Trevorrick, I always thought I had the bump of imagination,"
declared Pengelly. "I give you best."
"Imagination isn't of much use, unless you put it to a practical
purpose," rejoined the other. "What I'm proposing can be done; more,
it's going to be done."
"But----"
"There you go again," interrupted Trevorrick tolerantly. "Carry on,
then. Trot out your objections. We'll argue all along the line as we
go. What were you about to remark?"
"We'll assume that you've bamboozled the Admiralty Nosey Parker,
whose business it is to bind us to our contract," said Pengelly.
"You've got the submarine fit, more or less, for sea. You'd have to
take her down the Fal on the surface. There's not enough water to
submerge. Day or night, you'd be spotted; and there'd be questions
asked."
"Pengelly, your Christian name ought to be Thomas, not Paul,"
remarked Trevorrick, in a bantering tone. He could afford to try to
be facetious. He knew enough of his partner by this time to realise
that the greater the objections the latter raised, the more chance
he, Trevorrick, had of gaining his case--as he almost invariably
did. "I'm going to take her out of Falmouth as a surface ship. I'd
defy any one to think her to be otherwise than an old tramp without
they actually came on board, which I don't intend that they should.
We've got the materials. In a couple of months we'll build up a
superstructure, rig dummy masts and funnels, and there you are. What
have you to say against that?"
"Top-hamper," declared Pengelly bluntly. What do you propose doing
when she dives? Ditch the lot? If you don't, she'll roll over when
she's submerged. And what speed do you expect you'll get when
running beneath the surface, assuming she doesn't turn turtle?"
"Top-hamper judiciously constructed will make no difference to her
stability when submerged," replied the other. "All that requires to
be done is to see that the superstructure, taken as a whole, weighs
the same as the quantity of water it displaces--fairly simple matter
if we make use of air-tight tanks and compartments packed with cork.
Speed under the surface doesn't count for much in our case. Storage
batteries are a nuisance at the best of times. No, I mean to
submerge and rest on the bottom in the event of an attack. She's
built to withstand, with an ample margin of safety, a depth of
twenty-five fathoms."
"Armament--guns and torpedoes--then," resumed Pengelly. "That's
going to knock you. Torpedoes don't grow on blackberry bushes, and
you can't go trotting about with a six-inch quick-firer under your
arm. Supposing Elswicks or Vickers did accept your order for a
quick-firer, you'd have the police knocking you up to know what your
little game is."
"Torpedoes are out of the question, I'm afraid," admitted
Trevorrick. His fellow-partner grinned with satisfaction. It was one
of those rare occasions when he scored a point with his objections.
"It's a pity; they might have come in handy, especially as they've
left the tubes in the ship. Nothing like a tinfish' to settle an
argument. Guns--no difficulty there. I can buy a 15.2 centimetre
quick-firer of the latest pattern--that's practically six-inch--at
Liége and get it delivered afloat outside Dutch or Belgian
territorial waters for a mere song, with as much ammunition as we're
likely to want. You see, I've made inquiries all along the line
already. Next item: Crew. I'll skip that for the present; but, let me
tell you, there was method in my madness when I was so mighty
particular in the choice of the hands here. Maintenance--that's
easily disposed of. We'll help ourselves, supplementing our store
with purchases from the shore. Now, Cruising Limits. No need to go
very far from home. West Coast of Europe between Finisterre and
Bergen offers enough scope for our little stunt; but it's in the
Channel that I hope to play Cain. No, don't get alarmed, Pengelly.
I'm not out for British shipping unless I'm forced. Hoist German
colours and capture a French vessel; collar a German and tell him
we're a Frenchman. Spin a yarn to a Dutchman while you're going
through his pockets. Bless my soul, man, we'll have our fifty
thousand apiece in no time. That brings me to the last item:
Communication with the shore. We'll have to lay by for a rainy day,
Pengelly--show a clean pair of heels before it's too late. We'll
have to travel light. Can't carry a pantechnicon of booty with us.
We must arrange to have it sent ashore and transferred to a
trustworthy agent in South America. I know of at least half a
dozen."
"How about the crew?" asked Pengelly. "We can't show up at some port
with thirty fellows tacked on to us."
"No need," replied Trevorrick with a grin. "We're not
sentimentalists, nor philanthropists."