HUNTING
"If it's destroyer work you want, there are five of them getting under
weigh at four o'clock," said the "Senior Officer Present," looking at
his watch. "You'll have just about time to pick up your luggage and
connect if you want to go. I can't tell you what they're going to
do--they won't know that themselves till they get to sea, and their
orders may be changed from hour to hour, and things may happen to send
them to the Channel, France, or to several other places, on and off the
chart, before they put in here again. But there'll be work to do--plenty
of it. That's the best part of this corner of the North Atlantic in
which our Allies have done the American destroyers the honour of setting
them on the U-boats. Whatever else you may suffer from, it won't be from
ennui." It was luck indeed, on two hours' notice, to have the chance of
getting out in just the way I had planned, where I had been quite
prepared to stand-by for twice as many days, and I fell in with the
arrangement at once.
Captain X---- ran his eye down a board where the names of a number of
destroyers were displayed against certain data indicating their
whereabouts and disposition. "_Zop_, _Zap_, _Zip_, _Zim_, _Zam_," he read
musingly. "_Zip_--yes, I don't think I can do better than send you on
the _Zip_. Her skipper is as keen as he is able, and the _Zip_ herself
has the reputation of having something of a nose for U-boats on her own
account. I'll advise him you're coming. Pick up your sea togs and put
off to her as soon as you can. Good luck." The American naval officer,
like the British, never says "Good-bye" if it can possibly be avoided.
They were already preparing to unmoor as I clambered over the side of
the _Zip_, and by the time I had shifted to sea-boots and oilskins in
the captain's cabin--which, unoccupied by himself during that strenuous
interval, was to be mine at sea--she was swinging in the stream and
nosing out into the creaming wakes of the two of her dazzle-painted
sisters who were preceding her down the bay.
* * * * *
There are several things that strike one as different on going to an
American warship after a spell in a British ship of the same class, but
the one which surges to meet you and goes to your head like wine is the
all-pervading spirit of vibrant, sparkling, unquenchable youthfulness.
Everything you see and hear seems to radiate it--every throb of the
engines, every beat of the screws--and at first you may almost get the
impression that it comes from the ship herself. But when you start to
trace it down, you find it bubbles from a single fount, the men, or
rather the boys--the lounging, laughing, devil-may-care boys. Theirs the
alchemy to transform every one and everything that comes near them into
the golden seeming of themselves.
This youthfulness of the American destroyers is in the crew rather than
the officers, for the latter--especially the captain and executive--will
average, if anything, a shade older than their "opposite numbers" in a
British destroyer. There is a certain minimum of highly specialised work
in navigating and fighting a destroyer which must be in the hands of
officers and men who can have only attained the requisite training in
long years of technical study and practical experience. Given these, and
the remainder of the ship's company--provided only that they have
digestive organs that will continue to function when tilted through a
dozen different slants and angles in as many seconds--can be trained to
perfection in an astonishingly short time. Here it is that America has
scored, for there is no doubt that the youngsters that have rushed to
enrol themselves for her destroyer service are better educated and
quicker in mind and body than those available for any other navy in the
war. It is the incomparable adaptability these advantages have conspired
to give him that has made the Yankee destroyer rating a combination of
keenness and efficiency that leaves little, if anything, to be desired
on either score.
Here is the way a British naval officer who is familiar with the work of
the American destroyer flotilla expressed himself in this connection:
"The ship's company of any one of these American destroyers," he said,
"will average a good five years younger than that of a British
destroyer. Off hand, one would say that this would tell against them,
but, as a matter of fact, quite the contrary is the case.
"Given that the command and the technical operations are in the hands of
highly trained and fairly serious-minded officers, you can't have too
much slapbang, hell-for-leather, devil-take-the-consequences spirit in
the ship's company. And where will you find that save in the
youngsters--tireless, fearless, careless boys. They've found that out in
the air services, and we're finding it out in the destroyers. And right
there--in these quick-headed, quick-footed super-boys of theirs--is
where the Yankee destroyers have the best of us. It is they--working
under consummately clever officers--that enabled the American destroyer
flotilla to reach in a stride a working efficiency which we had been
straining up to for three years."
* * * * *
The green hills astern had turned grey and dissolved in mist and
darkness before the captain was able to announce what work was afoot for
us. The _Zim_ and _Zam_, it appeared, were to be detached on some
mission of their own, while the _Zop_, _Zap_, and _Zip_, after
"hunting" submarines for some time, were to proceed to a certain port,
pick up the _Lymptania_, and escort her through the danger zone on her
westward voyage. The captain was grinning as he finished reading the
order. "I can't give you any definite assurance," he said, "that the
hunt part of the stunt is going to scare up any U-boats, although the
prospects this week are more promising than for some time; but"--he
turned his level gaze to the westward, where the in-rolling Atlantic
swells were blotting with undulant humps the fading primrose of the
narrow strip of after-glow--"if this wind and sea keep the same force
and direction for three or four days more, I'll promise you all the
excitement your heart can desire when we take on our escort duties. The
last time we took out the old _Lymptania_--well, I've got marks on me
yet from the corners I got banged up against, and as for the poor little
_Zip_--but she's had a refit since and most of the scars have been
removed. As you will have ample chance to see for yourself, there isn't
a lot of _dolce far niente_ in any of this life we lead in connection
with our little game here, but if there is one phase of our activities
that is farther removed from 'peace, perfect peace' than any other, it
is trying to screen an ex-Atlantic greyhound that is boring at umpty-ump
knots into a head wind and sea. Strafing U-boats is a Sunday-school
picnic in comparison at any time; but it will be worse this week because
they have just put down a couple of big liners, and the skipper of the
_Lymptania_, knowing they will be laying for him, will force her like he
was trying to get his company the trans-Atlantic mail subsidy. For us to
cut zigzags around that kind of a thing--but you'll be able to judge for
yourself. I only hope we can catch you a U-boat or two by way of
preliminary, so as to lead up to the climax by slow degrees."
Things were fairly comfy that night--that is, as comfort goes in a
destroyer. There was a good stiff wind and a good deal more than a lop
of sea running; but as both were coming on the quarter and we were
plodding along at no great speed, the _Zip_ made very passable weather
of it. The bridge, save for occasional showers of light spray where a
sea slapped over the side, was quite dry, and even on the long run of
low deck amidships there were several havens of refuge where the men off
watch could foregather to smoke and yarn without fear of more than an
occasional spurt of brine. A dry deck does not chance every day that a
destroyer is on business bent at sea, and when it does, like sunshine in
Scotland, is a thing to luxuriate in.
As the twilight deepened and melted into the light of a moon that was
but a day or two from the full--"bad luck for the _Lymptania_ convoy,
that moon," the captain had said as he noted how it was waxing on his
chart--I came down from the bridge and worked along from group to group
of the sailor men where, lounging and laughing, they sheltered in the
lee of funnel and boat and superstructure. The first one I pushed into
was centred round a discussion, or rather an argument, between two boys,
the one from Kansas and the other from Oklahoma, as to which had raised
the best and biggest corn in the course of some sort of growing
competitions they had once taken part in. Several others standing about
also appeared to have come from one or other of those fine
naval-recruiting States of the Middle West, and seemed to know not a
little about intensive maize culture themselves. I was just ingratiating
myself with this party by nodding assent and voicing an emphatic "Sure!"
to one's query of "Some corn that, mister, hey?" when I discovered a
cosmopolitan group (two Filipino stewards, the coloured cook, and three
or four bluejackets in sleeveless grey sweaters) collaborating in the
arduous task of teaching a very sad-faced white mongrel to sit up on his
haunches and beg. Or rather it was an elaboration of that classic trick.
On drawing nearer I perceived that the lugubrious-visaged canine already
had mastered begging for food, and that now they were endeavouring to
teach him to beg for mercy. At the order "Kamerad!" instead of sitting
with down-drooping paws, he was being instructed to raise the latter
above his head and give tongue to a wail of entreaty. He was a brighter
pup than his looks would have indicated, and had already become letter
perfect in the wail. "Kamerading" properly with uplifted paws, however,
was rather too much for his balance, at least while teetering on the
edge of a condensed milk case which was itself sliding about the deck of
a careening destroyer. The dog had been christened "Ole Oleson," one of
the sailors told me, both because he was "some kind of a Swede" and
because, like his famous namesake, he had tried to come aboard in "two
jumps" the day they found him perched on a bit of wreckage of the
Norwegian barque to which he had belonged, and which had been sunk by a
U-boat an hour previously. The men seemed to be very fond of him, and I
overheard the one who picked him up off the box to make a place for me
to sit on, whisper into his cocked ear that they were going to try to
catch a Hun in the next day or two for him to sharpen his teeth on.
* * * * *
These boys told me a number of stories in connection with the survivors
they had rescued, or failed to rescue, from ships sunk by U-boats. Most
of them were the usual accounts of firing on open boats in an attempt to
sink without a trace, but there was one piquant recital which revealed
the always diverting Hun sense of humour at a new slant. This was
displayed, as it chanced, on the occasion of the sinking of "Ole's"
ship, the Norwegian barque. After this unlucky craft had been put down
by shell-fire and bombs, the U-boat ran alongside the whaler containing
the captain and mate, and they were ordered aboard to be interrogated.
Under the pretence of preventing any attempt to escape on the part of
the remainder of those in this boat, the Germans made them clamber up
and stand on the narrow steel run-way which serves as the upper deck of
a submarine. No sooner were they here, however, than the Hun humorist on
the bridge began slowly submerging. When the water was lapping round the
necks of the unfortunate Norwegians, and just threatening to engulf
them, the nose of the U-boat was slanted up again, this finely finessed
operation being repeated during all of the time that the captain and
mate were being pumped below by the commander of the submarine. No great
harm--save that one of the sailors, losing his nerve when the U-boat
started down the first time, dived over, struck his head on one of the
bow-rudders and was drowned--was done by this little pleasantry, but it
is so illuminative of what the Hun is in his lightsome moods that I have
thought it worth setting down.
[Illustration: "KAMERADING" WITH UPLIFTED PAWS]
[Illustration: HELPING THE COOK TO PEEL POTATOES]
The American is more violent in his feelings than the Briton, and much
more inclined to say what he thinks; and I found these boys--to use the
expressive phrase of one of them--"mad clean through" at the Hun pirate
and all he stands for. America--with more time to do that sort of
thing--has undoubtedly gone farther than any other country in the war in
trying to give her soldiers and sailors a proper idea of the beast
they have been sent out to slay. These lessons seem to have sunk home
with all of them, and when it has been supplemented--as in the case of
the sailors in the destroyers--by the first-hand teachings of the Huns
themselves, it generally leaves a man in something like the proper state
of mind for the task in hand. Not that I really think any of the
Americans, when they have the chance, as happens every now and then,
will carry out all the little plans they claim to be maturing,
but--well, if I was an exponent of the U-boat branch of German kultur,
and my _unterseeboot_ was depth-charged by a British and an American
destroyer, and I came sputtering up to the surface midway between them,
I don't think I would strike out for the lifebuoy trailing over the
quarter of the one flying the Stars and Stripes. I may be wrong, but
somehow I have the feeling that the Briton--be he soldier, sailor, or
civilian--hasn't quite the same capacity as the Yank for keeping up the
temperature of his passion, for feeling "mad clean through."
Joining another group bunched in the lee of a tier of meat-safes, I
chanced upon a debate which threw an illuminative beam on the feelings
of what might once have been classified as hyphenated Americans. At
first the whole six or eight of them, in all harmony and unanimity, had
been engaged in cursing Sinn Feiners, with whom it appeared they had
been having considerable contact--physical and otherwise--in the course
of the last few months. Then one of the more rabid of them on this
particular subject--he and one of his mates had been waylaid and beaten
by a dozen hulking young Irishmen who resented the attentions the
Yankees were receiving from the local girls--threw a bone of dissension
into the ring by declaring that a Sinn Feiner was as bad as a Hun and
ought to be treated the same way.
The most of them could hardly bring themselves to agree to this, but in
the rather mixed argument which followed it transpired that the lad who
had led the attack on Sinn Fein was named Morarity and had been born in
Cork, and that the one who maintained that nothing on two legs, not even
a Sinn Feiner, was as "ornery as a Hun," was named Steinholz, and had
been born in St. Louis of German parents.
The wherefore of this they explained to me severally presently, when it
turned out that their views--as regards their duties as Americans--were
precisely similar. Like all good Yankees, they said, they had it in for
both the Hun and the Sinn Feiner; but, because each of them had a _name_
to live down, he felt it incumbent on himself to out-strafe his mates in
the direction from which that name came. It was a bit naïve, that
confession, but at the same time highly instructive; and I wouldn't care
to be the Hun or Sinn Feiner that either of those ex-hyphenates had a
fair chance at.
A very domestic little party I found cuddled up aft among the
depth-charges. One lad--he had been a freshman at Cornell, I learned
later, and would not wait to train for a commission, so keen had he been
to get into the war--was just back from a week's leave in London, and
was telling about it with much circumstance. There were many things that
had interested and amused him, but the great experience had been three
days spent as a guest in an English home at Wimbledon. The head of the
family, it appeared, was some kind of a City man, and, encountering the
doubtless aimlessly wandering Yank at Waterloo, had forthwith carried
him home. Everything had bristled with interest for the young visitor,
from the marmalade at breakfast and the port at dinner to croquet on the
lawn and a punt on the Thames at Richmond. But the best of it all had
been that he had brought a standing invitation from the same family to
any of his mates who might be coming up to London while the war was on.
During the refit, which was supposed to be imminent, two of these, who
had plumped for the great London adventure, had screwed up their courage
to following up the invitation to the hospitable home in question. Out
of his broader experience, their worldly mate was tipping them off
against possible breakers. This is the only one I remember: "You'll
find," he said, gesturing with an admonitory finger that could just be
dimly guessed against the phosphorescence of the tossing wake, "that
they don't seem to have any great grudge 'gainst us for licking them and
going on our own in '76; but go easy on rubbing it in just the same,
'cause you're a guest in the house. Best forget the Revolution while
you're over here. That scrap was more'n a hundred years ago, and we've
got another on now. Half the people you meet here never heard of it,
anyhow, and when you mention it to them they think you refer to another
Revolution in France which came off about the same time."
It was at about this juncture that a change of course brought seas which
had been quartering a couple of points forward of the beam, and in a
jiffy the swift spurts of brine had searched out the last dry corner of
the deck and sent scurrying to shelter every man who had not a watch to
stand. Three times I was completely drenched in groping forward from the
after-superstructure to the ward-room, under the bridge, so that I was a
good deal inclined to take it as a joke--and a rather ill-timed one at
that--when an ensign about to turn in on one of the transoms muttered
something about being thankful that we were going to have _one_ quiet
night when a man could snatch a wink of sleep. I asked him if he
referred to the night we expected to be in port waiting for the
_Lymptania_, but the fact that he had already dozed off proved that he
really had not been trying to be funny at my expense. Indeed, it was a
fairly quiet night, as nights go in destroyers; but, even so, I needed
a good high sideboard to keep from rolling out of the captain's bunk,
and then two sofa pillows and my overcoat to keep from pulping my
shoulder against the sideboard.
We were still sliding easily along at the same comfortable umpteen knots
in the morning, but with the breaking of the new day a subtle change had
come over the spirit of the ship. It was just such a change as one might
observe in a hunter as he passes from a plain, where there is little
cover, to a wood where every tree and bush may hide potential quarry.
And that, indeed, was precisely the way it was with us. The night before
we were "on our way"; this morning we were ploughing waters where
U-boats were _known_ to be operating. It was only a couple of days
previously that the good old _Carpathia_ had been put down, and not many
hours had passed since then but what brought word, by one or another of
the almost countless ways that have been devised to trace them, of an
enemy submarine working in those waters. We were ready enough the night
before, ready for anything that might have turned up; but this morning
we were more than that.
There was a new tenseness now, and a feeling in the air like that which
follows the click-click after a trigger is set to "hair." It was as
though everyone, everything, even the good little _Zip_ herself, was
crouched for a spring.
There was an amusing little incident I chanced to see which illustrates
the keenness of the spirit animating the men even in the moments of
waiting. A favourable course had left the deck unswept by water for an
hour, and a half-dozen boys, off watch, but too restless to turn in,
were trying to kill time by helping the cook peel potatoes. It was one
of these whom I saw stand up, take several swift strides forward across
the reeling deck, draw a rag from the pocket of his "jeans," and then,
with great care and deliberation, begin to polish a patch of steel plate
that was exposed in the angle of two strips of coco-matting. "Wha' cher
holystoning deck yetawhile fer, Pete?" one of his mates shouted.
"Can'cher wait till we gets back to port? We may have to foul your
pretty work with greasy Huns any minnit." Unperturbed, Pete went right
on rubbing, testing the footing every now and then with the sole of his
boot. Only when the job, whatever it was, was done to suit his
fastidious taste did he return to his seat on the reversed water-bucket
and start peeling potatoes again. Not till a full dozen or more neatly
skinned Murphies had passed under his knife did he vouchsafe to reply to
the half-curious, half-pitying looks and remarks his mates had continued
to direct at him. Then his explanation was as crushing as complete.
"It don't look much as if you guys wants to get a Hun," he observed
finally, running a critical eye over them. "Oh, you do, do you? My
mistake. Well, then, don't try to be funny with another guy that's
doing his best to effect that same good end. Now looka here. From where
I sits to my gun-station is just six steps. Six for me, I mean; it'd be
more for most of you 'shorties.' Now I just figures that step number
four lands my foot square in the dribble of oil on that patch where
there ain't no matting; so what was more natural than for me to go and
swab it up. Last time the gong binged I hit half a preserved peach, and
sprained a wrist and ankle so bad that I woulda been dead slow on the
gun if we'd had to fire it. Keeping my eye peeled for another piece of
peach, I pipes that gob of oil, and so goes and gets rid of it. It's
painful having to explain a simple thing like that to you bone-heads,
but, now that you got it, p'raps you'll ease off on your beefing, and
peel spuds. _That_ don't take no brains."
Two or three times in the course of the morning the look-out's shout of
"Sail!" bearing this way or that, brought those in sound of it to their
feet in the expectation that it would be followed by the welcome
clanging of the alarm bell; and once or twice the wireless picked up the
S.O.S.--they do not send it out that way now, but these letters are
still the common term in use to describe the call of a ship in
distress--of a steamer that had been torpedoed. But the sails turned out
to be friends in every case, while both of the ships reported sinking
were too far away for us to be of any use to them. Early in the
afternoon a suspiciously cruising craft, which proved presently to be a
friend, got a high-explosive shell under her nose as a consequence of
her deliberation in revealing that fact. The smartness with which the
men tumbled to quarters, and the almost uncanny speed with which the
forecastle gun was served, boded well for developments in case the real
thing turned up.
"Do you always fire a blank across their bows when you don't quite like
the look of 'em?" I asked the captain innocently, as he gazed dejectedly
through his glass at certain unmistakable evidences proving that he had
been cheated of his quarry. "Blank!" indignation and half the look that
sits on the face of a terrier who discovers that he has cornered his own
family's "Tabby" instead of the neighbour's "Tom"; "blank!--did you ever
see a blank 'X-point-X' that threw up a spout as high as a masthead, and
all black with smoke? That was the worst punisher we have in our
lockers; and, what's more, it was meant to be a hit. And the next one
would have been," he added. "You can't afford to waste any time where
five or ten seconds may make all the difference between bagging and
losing a Hun."
"But how about bagging something that isn't a Hun?" I protested. "I told
you, I think, that I had arranged to go out next week on patrol in one
of the American submarines; but after what I've just seen----"
"The burden of proof is up to the craft under suspicion," cut in the
captain, "and they ought to have no trouble in supplying it if they have
their wits about them." Then, with a grin, "But if you're really going
out on submarine patrol next week, why--I'll promise to look twice
before turning loose one of those--those 'blanks.'" How he kept his word
is another story.
It was about an hour or two later that the wireless winged word that
seemed at last to herald the real thing. It was the S.O.S. of a steamer,
and conveyed merely the information that she had just been torpedoed,
with her latitude and longitude. The position given was only thirty or
forty miles to the northward, and though the name in the message--it was
_Namoura_ or something similar--could not be found on any of our
shipping lists, the _Zop_, as senior ship, promptly ordered course
altered and full speed made in the hope of arriving on the scene in time
to be of some use. With every minute likely to be of crucial importance,
it was not an occasion to waste time by waiting or asking for orders. A
swift exchange of signals between ships, a hurried order or two down a
voice-pipe, an advancing of the handle of the engine-room telegraph, a
throwing over of the wheel, and we had spun in the welter of our tossing
wake and were off on a mission that might prove one of either mercy or
destruction, or, quite conceivably, both. The formation in which we had
been cruising when the signal was received gave the _Zip_ something
like a mile lead at the get-away, and this--though one of the others was
a newer and slightly faster ship--she held gallantly to the end of the
race. By a lucky chance, though there was a snoring wind and a lumpy sea
running, the course brought both abaft the beam and permitted us to run
nearly "all out" without imposing a serious strain on the ship. The
difference between running before and bucking into seas of this kind I
was to learn in a day or two. For the moment, conditions were all that
could be asked to favour our getting with all dispatch into whatever
game there was to be played.
Many a so-called express train has travelled slower than any one of
those three destroyers was ploughing its way through solid green water.
For a few seconds after "Full speed!" had been rung down to their
engine-rooms, swift-spinning smoke rings had shot up from their funnels
and gone reeling off down to leeward; then, with perfect synchronisation
of draught and oil, the duskiness above the mouths of the stumpy stacks
had cleared, and only the mirage on the horizon astern betrayed the
up-spouting jets of hot gases. Only the vibrant throb of the speeding
engines--so pervading that it seemed to pulse like heart-beats through
the very steel itself--gave hint of the mightiness of the effort that
speed was costing. With that throb stilled--and the mounting wake
quenched--the progress of that thousand tons or so of steam-driven
steel would have seemed scarcely less effortless than that of an
aeroplane.
An order from the Commander-in-Chief--which was picked up presently--to
go to the assistance of the torpedoed ship and to "hunt submarine" had
been anticipated; but the real name of the steamer--finally transmitted
correctly--brought to me at least a distinct shock. It was H.M.S.
_Marmora_, and the _Marmora_, the former P. & O. Australian liner, was
an old friend. To anyone who loves the sea a ship, no matter of what
kind, has a personality. But in the case of a ship in which he has
sailed--lived in, worked and played in, been happy in, perhaps gone
through certain dangers in--has more than a personality, it has a place
in his heart. Many and many a morning since the first U-boat campaign
was started I had read--and never without a lump rising in my throat--of
the passing of just such a friend, of the going out of the world of
something--almost of "some one"--which I had always looked forward to
seeing again. _Afric_, _Arabic_, _Aragon_, I knew their names well
enough to compile the list alphabetically. It would have run to some
score in length, and from every name would have led a long train of
treasured memories. But the blow had never come quite this way before,
never fallen quite so near at home. An especially dear friend had just
been stricken less than a degree of latitude away; but the poignancy of
that realisation was tempered by the thought that I was in a ship
rushing to her assistance, a ship that could be as swift to succour as
to avenge.
I must confess to a queerly mixed state of mind that next half-hour.
Consumed as I was with interest in our terribly purposeful progress
leading up to the entrance into that grim drama approaching its
climacteric act just beyond the sky-line, there were also vivid
flare-backs of memory to the days of my friendship with the _Marmora_,
arresting flashlights of the swift refreshing morning dive into the
canvas pool on her forecastle, of lounging chairs ranged in long rows
'twixt snowy decks and awnings, of a phosphorescent bow-wave curling
back and blotting the reflections of stars in a tropical sea. There was
a picture of the clean sweet lines of her as--buff, black, and
beautiful--she lay at the north end of the horseshoe of the Circular
Quay at Sydney, with a rakish Messageries liner moored astern of her and
a bluff Norddeutscher Lloyd packet ahead. It was her maiden voyage, and
Australia, which had never seen so swift and luxurious a liner before,
was receiving her like a newly arrived _prima donna_. I took passage in
her back as far as Colombo. That fortnight's voyage had been diverting
in a number of ways, I recalled, but most of all, perhaps, as a
consequence of the throwing together of a large party of Wesleyan
missionaries from Fiji and the members of a London musical comedy
company returning from its Australian "triumphs." I was just beginning
to chuckle inwardly at the recollection of what one of the missionary
ladies had said to a buxom chorus-girl who tripped out to the fancy
dress cricket-match in her pink tights and a ballet skirt, when the
ting-a-ling of a bell brought the captain to the radio-room voice-pipe.
"Message just received," I heard him repeat. "All right. Send it up." He
slapped down the voice-pipe cover, and a messenger had handed him the
signal before he had paced twice across the bridge.
"_Marmora_ just sunk," he read; "survivors picked up by P.B.'s _X_ and
_Y_."
The sinking made no immediate change in our plans. There was still a
chance we might be of use with the survivors, and also the matter of the
U-boat to be looked after. With no abatement of speed, all three
destroyers drove on. The navigating officer reckoned that in another
fifteen minutes we should be sighting the rescuing craft, and probably
wreckage; but when twice that time still left a clear horizon ahead, it
began to appear as though there had been a mistake of some kind. And so
there had, but it was a lucky mistake for us. It was some time later
before they figured just how it had chanced, but what had happened was
this. The _Marmora's_ last despairing call--doubtless sent out by a
breaking-down radio--gave her position as some ten or twelve miles out
from what it really was. The consequence was that, heading somewhat wide
of the sinking ship, to which, however, on account of the presence of
the patrol boats, which had evidently been close enough to come to her
immediate assistance, we could have been of small use, we had steered
directly for the one point where it was most desirable we should make
our appearance at that psychological moment: for the point, in short, at
which the coolly calculative skipper of the U-boat responsible for the
outrage, after running submerged for an hour or more and doubtless
figuring he had come sufficiently far from the madding crowd that would
throng the immediate vicinity of the wreckage to be at peace, had come
up to smoke his evening pipe and cogitate upon the Freedom of the Seas.
It was just as it began to become apparent that we were badly adrift as
regards the point where the _Marmora_ had gone down that a whine from
the lookout's voice-pipe reported to the bridge that it had sighted a
"sail--port, ten."
"What is it?" asked back the captain.
"Looks like subm'rine," came the reply; and with one quick movement the
captain had started the alarm-bell sounding "General quarters!" in every
part of the ship. With every man knowing precisely what he had to do,
and how to do it, there was incredible speed without confusion. Tumbling
to their stations like hounds on a hot scent, they yet managed to avoid
getting in each other's way, even in the narrow passages and on the
ladders. The loom of the conning-tower was plain to the naked eye, now
that one knew where to look for it, but only for a few minutes. Even as
a swiftly passed shell was thrown into the open breech of the forecastle
gun, came the look-out's whine through the voice-pipe, "She's going
down, sir; she's gone!" The breech of the gun spun shut, but the eye of
the sightsetter groped along an empty horizon.
"Never mind," muttered the captain grimly. "Couldn't have croaked him
with one shot anyhow. Got something better'n shells for him. Now for
it," and his hand went back to pull the wire of a gong which gave
certain orders to the men standing-by with the depth-charges. That, a
word down the engine-room voice-pipe, and a fraction of a point's
alteration in the course--and there was only one thing left to be done.
The time for that had not quite arrived.
Because a destroyer's engine-room telegraph-hand points to "Full speed!"
it does not necessarily mean that there are not ways of forcing more
revolutions from the engines, of driving her still faster through the
water should the need arise. Such a need now confronted the _Zip_, and,
like the thoroughbred she was, her response was instant and generous.
The pulsing throb of her quickened till it was almost a hum; the
quivering insistency of it struck straight to the marrow of the bones,
drummed in the depths of one's innermost being. If there is anything to
stir the blood of a man like a destroyer beginning to see red and go
Berserk, I have yet to encounter it.
There must have been something like three miles to go from the point
where the U-boat had been sighted to the point where the inevitable
patch of grease would mark the place where it had submerged, and rather
less than twice that many minutes had elapsed when the cry of "Oil
slick--starboard bow!" came almost simultaneously from the look-outs in
the foretop and on the bridge. Over went the helm a spoke or two, and
the executive officer, in his hand a thin piece of board with a table of
figures pasted on it, moved up beside the captain. Straight down the
wobbly track of iridescent film drove the _Zip_, and when a certain
length of it had been put astern, the captain turned and drew a lever to
him with a sharp pull.
Three, four seconds passed, and then, simultaneously with a heavy
knocking thud, a round patch of water a hundred yards or so astern
quivered and fizzed up sharply like the surface of a glass of
whisky-and-soda after the siphon has ceased to play on it. Following
that by a second or two, a smooth rounded geyser of foam boiled up a
dozen feet or so, and then gradually subsided. That one, plainly, was a
deep-set charge, whose force was expended far beneath the surface. A
second one threw a geyser twice as high as the first, and a third, which
fizzed and spouted almost simultaneously, blotted out a great patch of
sternward sky with its smoke-shot eruption.
Presently the _Zop_ "struck oil," and then the _Zap_. Soon the muffled
booms of their rapidly scuttled depth-charges began to drum, while
astern of them the foam-spouts nicked the sky-line like a stubby picket
fence.
Perhaps the lad whom I later overheard describing that bombardment by
saying that "'tween the three of us, we was scattering 'cans' like rice
at a wedding" was guilty of some exaggeration; but it is a fact that
they were spilling over very fast and, there is little doubt, with
telling effect. The savageness of the bolts of wrath released by the
exploding charges was strikingly disclosed when two of them chanced to
be dropped at nearly the same time by destroyers a mile or more apart,
when the under-sea "jolts" would meet half-way and form weird evanescent
"rips" of dancing froth strongly suggestive of chain-lightning. The way
in which even the most distant of the detonations made a destroyer "bump
the bumps," quite as though it was striking a series of solid
obstructions, gave some hints of the bolts that were descending upon the
lurking pirate.
At the end of a minute or two a quick order from the captain sent the
wheel spinning over, and, with raucous grinding of helm, round we swung
through sixteen points to head back in reverse over the path of
destruction we had just traversed. Just as the steel runners of a
racing skater throw ice when he makes a sudden turn, so the screws of a
speeding destroyer hurl water. The stern sank deep into the
propeller-scooped void, so that the high-tossed side-slipping wake
buried it beneath a frothing flood. Through several long seconds I saw
the water boiling above the waists of the men at the depth-charges,
without appearing to disturb them in the least; then the wheel was spun
back 'midships--and a spoke or two beyond to meet and steady her--the
bow wave resumed its curled symmetry and the wake began trailing off
astern again.
It was into a peaceful sea, indolently rolling, sunset tinged and
slightly sleeked with a thin streak of oil, that we had raced five
minutes before; it was a troubled sea, charge-churned and wave-slashed,
that we now nosed back into to see what good our coming had wrought. The
grey-blue-black of the long oil wake had been scattered into broken
patches by the explosions. Most of these were pale, sickly, and highly
anæmic in colour, and of scant promise; but for one, where fresh oil
rising spread rainbow-bright upon the surface, the _Zip_ headed full
tilt. The explosion here appeared to have been an unusually heavy one,
for the sea was dotted with the white bellies of stunned fish, most of
them floating high out of the water, with trickles of blood running from
their upturned mouths and distended gills. A six or eight-foot shark,
wriggling drunkenly along the surface with a broken back, was hailed
with a howl of delight by the men, who claimed to see in the fact that
the unlucky monster could not submerge his telltale dorsal, a sign that
their Fritz might be in the same difficulty.
Another "can" or two was let go as we dashed through that iridescent
"fount of promise"; and when we turned back to it again the wounded
shark had ceased to wriggle and now floated inertly among his hapless
brothers. But of Fritz--save for a glad new gush of oil--no sign.
Prisoners or wreckage are rated as the only indubitable evidence of the
destruction of a U-boat, and neither of these were we able to woo to the
surface in that busy hour which elapsed before the descending pall of
darkness put a period to our well-meant efforts. During that time not
the most delicate instrument devised by science for that purpose
revealed any indication of life or movement in the depths below. As the
water at this point was far too deep to allow a submarine to descend and
lie on the bottom without being crushed, this fact appeared morally
conclusive. It was this I had in mind when I tried to draw the captain
out on the subject. "Of course there's no doubt we bagged him?" I
hazarded, in a quiet interval when we were watchfully waiting for
something to turn up, or rather come up. He smiled a rather tired smile.
"Oh, very likely we have," he replied. "But, unluckily, there's nothing
we can lay our hands on to carry away and prove it. In case this
particular Fritz doesn't come to life and sink another ship in the
course of the next few days, there is just a chance that we may be
credited with a 'Possible.' They never err on the optimistic side in
sizing up a little brush of this kind, and perhaps it's just as well.
Anyhow, a game like this is worth playing on its own account, whether
you come in with a scalp at your belt every time or not."
It was just as darkness was slowing down our anti-U-boat operations,
that a signal came through stating that there were believed to be
several survivors still alive among the wreckage of the _Marmora_, and
ordering us to proceed to the scene of her sinking with all dispatch.
The moon was rising as we began to nose among the pathetic litter of
scraps that was all that remained afloat of what, five or six hours
previously, had been a swift and beautiful auxiliary cruiser.
There was enough light for us to be reasonably sure, at the end of an
hour's search, that our mission was in vain; that there remained no
living man to pick up. There was something strangely familiar, though,
in the lines of a cutter which, in spite of a smashed gunwale, was still
afloat, and I was just thinking of how grateful a lee, in the monsoon,
the windward side of the old _Marmora's_ lifeboats had furnished for a
deck-chair or two, when the captain, advancing the handle of the
engine-room telegraph, turned to me with: "We're off to rendezvous with
the _Lymptania_ now; I think we can promise you some real excitement in
the course of the next day or two."