THE CONVOY GAME
The fantastic pile of multi-coloured slabs blotting out a broken patch
of sky above the seaward end of the estuary, if it had been on land,
might have been anything from a row of hangars, viewed in slant
perspective, to the scaffolding of a scenic railway, or a "Goblin's
Castle" in Luna Park. But there in the middle of the channel, the
mountainous bulk could only be one thing, the _Lymptania_, the ship
which our division of American destroyers had been ordered to escort on
that part of its westbound voyage in which there was reckoned to be
danger of submarine attack. Distorted by the camouflage, the tumbled
mass of jumbled colours continued to loom in jagged indefinitiveness as
we closed it from astern, and it was only when we had come up well
abreast of it that the parts settled down into "ship-shapeliness," and
the silhouette of perhaps the most famous of the world's great steamers
sharpened against the sunlit afternoon clouds.
The change which had been wrought in the appearance of the _Lymptania_
since last I had seen her was almost beyond belief. Then she had been a
hospital ship, with everything about her, from snowy whiteness to red
crosses in paint and coloured lights, calculated to establish her
character, to give her the protection of conspicuousness. Now she sought
protection in quite the opposite way. Every trick of scientific
camouflage had been employed to render her inconspicuous; while, if that
failed, there were the destroyers. The protection of these big liners is
a considerable undertaking, but it has its redeeming features. As U-boat
bait they are unrivalled, and the number of German submarines which have
been sent to the bottom as a direct consequence of attempting to sink
one of them will make a long and interesting list when the time comes to
publish it.
There was something almost awesome in the emptiness of the great ship,
in the lifelessness of the decks, in the miles of blinded ports. The
heads of a few sailors "snugging down" on the forecastle, a knot of
officers at the end of the bridge, and two stewardesses in white
uniforms leaning over the rail of one of the upper decks--that was all
there was visible of human life on a ship which a few days before had
been packed to the funnels with its thousands of American soldiers. A
lanky destroyer gunner lounging by a ladder, described her exactly when
he said to one of his mates: "Gee, but ain't she the lonesome one!"
The captain of the _Zip_ turned his glasses back to cover the little
group of officers on the liner's bridge. "There's the skipper," he said
presently. "I only hope he's well ahead of the game on the sleeps, for I
wouldn't mind betting that he won't be leaving that bridge for a cup of
coffee for some time. It's going to be an anxious interval for him--very
anxious. It's quite beyond calculation, the value to the Allies at this
moment of a ship of the size and speed of the _Lymptania_, and her
skipper must know from what has happened the last week, that the Huns
are all out to bag her this time, and he can hardly be able to extract
any too much comfort out of the fact that it's about a hundred to one
that we'll bag the Fritz that tries it--either before or after the
event. Yes, it will be an anxious time for him--but," a grimly wry smile
coming to his face as he turned his eyes to the opening seaward horizon,
"even so, it'll be nothing to the time we're in for in the _Zip_ and all
the rest of the escort. _He'll_ be able to sleep if he happens to take a
notion to; _we_ won't, at least, not during the time we've got _her_ to
shepherd. Again, he's only got the _chance_ of being hit by a torpedo to
worry about; we've got the _certainty_ of being hit by head-seas that
have as much kick in them to a driven destroyer as a tin-fish full of
gun-cotton. Unless the weather gets either a good deal better or a shade
worse, we're sure up against the real thing this time.
"The fact is," continued the captain, taking up the slack in the hood of
his weather-proof jacket as a slight alteration of course brought a new
slant of wind; "the fact is, I'd much rather see it get worse than
better. If it would only kick up enough sea so that there was no chance
of a submarine operating in it, she could drive right along on her own
without any need of destroyers. But so long as we've this weather
there's a possibility of a torpedo running in, we've got to hang on to
the last shiver, and there are two or three things which are going to
make 'hanging on' this particular trip just a few degrees worse than
anything we've stacked up against before. This is about the way things
stand: The _Lymptania's_ best protection is her speed; but while she is
just about the fastest of the big ships, she is also just about the
biggest of the fast ships. This means that the size of the target she
presents goes a long way toward offsetting the advantage of her speed;
so that the presence of destroyers--in any kind of weather a submarine
can work in--is very desirable, and may be vital.
"Now the escorting of any steamer that makes over twenty knots an hour
is a lively piece of business, no matter what the weather, for
destroyers, to screen most effectively, should zigzag a good deal more
sharply than their convoy, and that, of course, calls for several knots
more speed. This can be managed all right in fair weather, or even in
rough, where there is only a following or a beam sea; but where the seas
come banging down from more than a point or two for'ard of the beam it
is quite a different matter. In that event, the speed of the whole
procession depends entirely on how much the destroyers can stand without
being reduced to scrap-iron. Naturally, the ship under escort endeavours
to make her speed conform to the best the destroyers can do under the
circumstances; but since an extra knot or two an hour might well make
all the difference in avoiding a submarine attack, the tendency always
is to keep the escorting craft extended to just about their limit of
endurance.
"Just how the mean will be struck between what a fast steamer thinks its
escorting destroyers _ought_ to stand, and what the destroyers really
_can_ stand, depends upon several things. Perhaps the principal factor
is the state of mind of the skipper of the steamer, and that, in turn,
is influenced by the value of his ship--both actual and potential--and
the danger of submarine attack at that particular time in the waters
under traverse. When the destroyers set out to escort a very fast and
valuable ship, steering into heavy head seas in waters where there are
known to be a number of U-boats operating, they've got the whole
combination working against them, and the result is--just what you're
slated to see this trip. Best take a good look at the _Zip_ while you've
got a chance; she may be quite a bit altered by the time we get back to
port again. And you might take a squint at the _Flossie_ over there,
too. She's our latest and swiftest, the Fotilla's pride. But this is
her first experience of taking out an ex-ocean greyhound, and if, in a
burst of fresh enthusiasm, she chances to tap any of these several extra
knots of speed she is supposed to have--well, the _Flossie's_ sky-line
in that case will be modified more than those of all the rest of her
older and wiser sisters put together."
Those were prophetic words.
"The one thing that makes it certain that we'll be put to the limit
to-night," resumed the captain, after he had rung up more speed on our
coming out into opener water, "is the news in this morning's official
announcement of the sinking of the _Justicia_. We seem just to have
struck the peak of the midsummer U-boat campaign. It was scarcely a week
ago that they got the _Carpathian_. Then, a few days later, came the
_Marmora_ (you won't forget for a while the strafe we had at the U-boat
which put her down), and now it's the _Justicia_, the biggest ship
they've sunk in a year or so. That's the thing that must be worrying the
skipper of the _Lymptania_, for it shows they're after the great
troop-carriers. The way they stuck to the _Justicia_ proves they're not
yet beyond taking some risk if the stake is high enough. Now and then
some Fritz is found desperate enough to commit hari-kari by coming up
close (if the chance offers) and making sure of getting his torpedo
home. He gets what's coming to him, of course, but there is also a fair
chance of his getting the ship he is after; and a fast liner for a
U-boat is a poor exchange--from our standpoint. Naturally, these things
all make the skipper of the _Lymptania_ anxious to minimise his risks by
hitting up just as hot a pace as he can, and that, with her size and her
power, will be just about full speed. I can't tell you to a knot how
fast that is, but I can tell you this: if you were on the bridge of a
destroyer going at that speed when it hit a good heavy head-sea, the
only thing that would tell you it wasn't a brick wall she had collided
with would be the sort of moist feeling about the pile-driver that
knocked you over the side. So it looks like the rub is going to come in
getting the _Lymptania_ to content herself with a speed at which--well,
at which you can detect some slight difference between a head-sea and a
brick wall from the bridge of the destroyer doing the butting. Whatever
that proves to be, you'll have such a chance as you may never get again
to see what stuff your Uncle Sam's destroyers are made of."
We made screening formation as soon as we were well clear of the
barraged waters of the estuary, though the sea we had to traverse before
entering the open Atlantic was considered practically empty of menace.
The _Lymptania_, making astonishingly little smoke for a coal-burner,
worked up to somewhere near her top speed in a very short time; but,
with the light-running seas well abaft the beam, the destroyers cut
their zigzags round and about her with many knots in reserve. The big
liner, with much experience to her credit, knew precisely what to do and
how to do it, and the whole machine of the convoy worked as though
pulled by a single string. Her very movements themselves seemed to give
the various units of the escort their cues, for, though she steered a
course so devious and irregular that no submarine could have possibly
told how to head in order to waylay her, she was never "uncovered."
Ahead and abreast of her, going their own way individually, but still
conforming their general movements to hers, the destroyers wove their
practically impenetrable screen.
Whatever there was ahead, it was ideal destroyer weather for the moment,
and all hands came swarming out on the dry sun-warmed deck to make the
most of it while it lasted. An importunate whine from a nest of arms and
legs sprawling abreast the midships torpedo-tubes attracted my attention
for a moment as I sauntered aft to see what was afoot, and presently the
rattle of dice on the deck and an imploring "Come on, you Seven!" told
me they were "shooting Craps," with, I shortly discovered, bars of milk
chocolate and sticks of chewing-gum for stakes. Several others were
playing "High, Low, Jack," and here and there--using elbows and knees to
keep the bellying pages from blowing away--were little knots clustered
about the latest Sunday Supplement from New York.
But quite the best thing of all was two brown-armed youngsters going
through a proper battery warming-up with a real baseball. I had seen
enthusiasts on two or three of the American units with the Grand Fleet
playing catch right up to the moment "General Quarters" was sounded for
target practice; but that was on the broad decks of battleships, with
some chance of saving a ball that chanced to be muffed. But here the
pitcher had to wind-up with a sort of a corkscrew stoop to keep from
hitting his hand against a stay, while the catcher braced himself with
one foot against a depth-charge and the other against the mounting of
the after-gun. There were four or five things that the ball had to clear
by less than a foot in its flight from one to the other, but the only
ones of these I recall now are a searchlight diaphragm and a gong which
sounded from the bridge a standby signal to the men at the
depth-charges. I actually saw that skilfully directed spheroid make two
complete round-trips, from the pitcher to the catcher and back, before
it struck the gong a resonant bing! caromed against the side of an
out-slung boat and disappeared into the froth of the wake.
The pitcher and catcher were in a hot argument as to whether that was
the twenty-sixth or the twenty-seventh ball they had lost overboard
since the first of the month, but they fell quiet and turned sympathetic
ears to my description of a net I had seen rigged on one of the
American battleships to prevent that very trouble.
"Nifty enough," was the pitcher's comment when I had finished describing
how the net was drawn taut right under the stern to prevent all leakage.
"Only thing is, the captain might rule it off on the score that it'd
catch the 'cans' we was trying to drop on Fritz as well as the 'wild
pitches.' Might do for harbour use, though. Lost balls is a considerable
drain even there."
It was just before dinner-time that the lengthening life of the seas
gave warning that we were coming out into the Atlantic. The force of
them was still abaft the beam, however, and their principal effect was
to add a few degrees of roll, with an occasional deluge dashing in
admonitory flood across the decks. But it was enough to make the Ward
Room untenable, so that dinner had to be wolfed propped up on the
transoms, one nicely balanced dish at a time. There would be about an
hour more of this comparative comfort, the captain said, before we
reached a position where the full force of the seas would be felt, but
things would not really "begin to drop" till the _Lymptania_ altered
course and headed westerly. "If you have any writing, reading, sleeping,
or anything except just existing to do," he warned, as he kept his soup
from overflowing by an undulant gesture of the hand which poised it,
"better do it now. It's your last chance."
The forty winks I managed to snatch as a result of following up the
sleeping part of that recommendation stood me in good stead in the times
ahead. It took no little composing to doze off even as it was, and it
was the sharp bang my head got from the siderail of my bunk that put a
period to the nap I did get. The rolling had increased enormously, and
though it was apparent we were not yet bucking into it, the swishing of
the water on the forecastle overhead indicated that there had been
enough alteration of course to bring the seas--on one leg of the zigzags
at least--well forward of the beam. I climbed out, pulled on my
weather-proof suit and sea-boots, and clambered up to the bridge.
There were still a couple of hours to go before dark, and in the
diffused light of a bright bank of sunset clouds the gay dazzle colours
of all the ships showed up brilliantly as they ploughed the
whitecap-plumed surface of a sea which now stretched unbrokenly to the
westward horizon. There was a world of power behind the belligerent bulk
of swells which had been gathering force under the urge of a
west-nor'-west wind that had chased them all the way from Labrador, and
the destroyers, teetering quarteringly along their foam-crested tops,
were rolling drunkenly and yawing viciously ahead of jagged wakes.
Still driving on at express speed, however, they continued to maintain
perfect formation on the swiftly steaming _Lymptania_. The latter,
apparently as steady as though "chocked up" in a dry-dock, drove
serenely on in great swinging zigzags.
The captain came up from the chart-room and took a long look around.
"It's just about as I expected," he said, shaking his head dubiously.
"It isn't so rough but what a submarine might stage an attack if her
skipper had the nerve; and it's a darn sight too rough for destroyers to
screen the _Lymptania_ with her holding to anything like full speed.
It's all up now to _what_ speed she will try to hold us to."
"But what's the matter with this?" I protested. "We're still hitting the
high places for speed, and, while I wouldn't call this exactly
comfortable, we still seem to be making pretty good weather of it."
The captain smiled indulgently. "You're right," he said, "as far as you
go. We are indeed hitting the high places, but--the high places haven't
started hitting us yet. Wait just about five or ten minutes," he added,
turning his glasses to where the great liner, silhouetted for the moment
against the sunset clouds, ploughed along on our port beam, "and you'll
see the difference. Ah!" this as he steadied his glasses on where the
boiling wake of the _Lymptania_, beginning to bend away in a sharp curve
indicating a considerable alteration of course. "There she goes now.
Hold tight!"
With his hand on the engine-room telegraph, the captain gave the men at
the wheel a course to conform to that of the _Lymptania_. Quick as a
cat on her helm, the _Zip_ swung swiftly through eight points and
plunged ahead. This brought on her bows seas that had been rolling up
abeam, and we were up against the real thing at last.
The first sea, which she caught while she was still turning, the _Zip_
contented herself with slicing off the truculently-tossing top of before
crunching it underfoot. It was a smartly-executed performance, and
seemed to promise encouragingly as to the way she might be expected to
dispose of the next ones. The second in line, however, which she met
head-on and essayed the same tactics with, dampened her ardour--and just
about everything and everybody else below the foretop--by detaching a
few tons of its bumptious bulk and raking her fore-and-aft with its
rumbling green-white flood. The bridge was above the main weight of that
blow, but 'midships and aft I saw men bracing themselves against a
knee-deep stream. One bareheaded and bare-armed man, who had evidently
been surprised in making his way from one hatch to another, I saw rolled
fifteen or twenty feet and slammed up against the torpedo-tube which
prevented his going overboard. He limped out of sight, rubbing his
shoulder, and probably never knew how lucky he was in being caught by
_that_ wave instead of one which came along a minute later.
The slams which she received from the next two or three seas left the
_Zip_ in a somewhat chastened mood, and rather less sanguine respecting
her ability to go on pulling off that little stunt of surmounting waves
by biting them in the neck and then trampling their bodies under foot.
She was beginning to realise that she had a body of her own, and that
there was something else around that could bite--yes, and kick, and
gouge, and punch below the belt, and do all the other low-down tricks of
the underhand fighter.
Languid and uncertain of movement, like a dazed prize-fighter, she was
just steadying herself from the jolt a bustling brute of a comber had
dealt her in passing, when the skyline ahead was blotted out by the
imminent green-black loom of a running wall of water which, from its
height and steepness, might well have been kicked up by a Valparaiso
"Norther" or a South Sea hurricane.
It may have been the chastened state of mind the last sea had left her
in which was responsible for _Zip's_ deciding to take this one "lying
down"; or again, it may be that she was acting, in reverse, after the
example set by the rabbit who, because he couldn't go under the hill,
went over it. At any rate, after one shuddering look at the mountainous
menace tottering above her bows, she made up her mind that she was
better off under the sea than on the surface, and deliberately dived. Of
course, it was the Parthian kick the last sea had given her stern that
was really responsible for her bows starting to go down at the very
instant those of every other ship that one had had experience of would
have been beginning to point skyward, but to all intents and purposes
she looked, from the bridge, to be submerging of her own free and
considered decision. The principal thing which differentiated it from
the ordinary dive of a submarine was the fact that it was made at a
sharper angle and at about four times the speed.
There was something almost uncanny in the quietness with which that
plunge began; though, on the latter score, there was nothing to complain
of by about half a second later. I have seen at one time or another
almost every conceivable kind of craft, from a Fijian war canoe to the
latest battlecruiser, trying to buck head seas, and invariably the wave
that swept it had the decency to announce its coming by a warning knock
on the bows. This time there was nothing of the kind. The retreating sea
had lifted her stern so high that the forecastle was under water even
before the coming one had begun to topple over on to it. The consequence
was that there was no preliminary bang to herald the onrush of the
latter.
The base of the mountainous roller simply flooded up over the diving
forecastle and crashed with unbroken force against the bridge. We had
collided with the "brick wall" right enough, and for the next few
seconds at least the result was primal chaos.
I have a vivid but detached recollection of two or three things in the
instant that the blow impended. One is of the helmsman, crouching low,
with legs wide apart, locking his arms through the slender steel spokes
of the wheel the better to steady her in the coming smash. Another is of
the captain, with hunched shoulders and set jaw, throwing over the
telegraph to stop the engines. But the clearest picture of all is of the
submarine lookout on the port side--a black-eyed, black-haired boy with
a profile that might have been copied from an old Roman coin--who was
leaning out and grinning sardonically into the very teeth of the
descending hydraulic ram. It was his savagely-flung anatomy, I believe,
though I never made sure, which bumped me in the region of the solar
plexus a moment later and broke my slipping hold on the buckling
stanchion to which I was trying to cling.
There was nothing whatever suggestive of water--soft, fluent, trickling
water--in the first shattering impact of that mighty blow. It was as
solid as a collision between ship and ship; indeed, the recollection I
have of a railway wreck I was once in on a line in the Argentine Pampas
is of a shock less shattering. It is difficult to record events in their
proper sequence, partly because they were all happening at once, and
partly because the self-centred frame of mind I was in at the moment was
not favourable for detached observation. The noise and the jar of the
crash were stupendous, yet neither of these has left so vivid a mental
impression as the uncanny writhing of the two-inches-thick steel
stanchion to which I was endeavouring to hold, and the nerve-racking
sound of rending metal. I have no recollection of hearing the clink of
broken glass, nor of being struck by pieces of it; yet all the panes of
heavy plate which screened the forward end of the bridge--of a
thickness, one had supposed, to withstand anything likely to assail
them--were swept away as though they had been no more than the
rice-paper squares of a Japanese window.
[Illustration: WHERE THE GREAT LINER PLOWED ALONG]
[Illustration: WE HAD COLLIDED WITH THE "BRICK WALL"]
[Illustration: NOW SHE WAS BACK AT BASE]
The rush of water, of course, followed instantly upon the crash, yet, so
vivid are my impressions of the things intimately connected with the
blow itself that it seems as though there was an appreciable interval
between the fall of that and the time when the enveloping cataclysm
transformed the universe into a green-white stream of brine. From ahead,
above and from both sides the flood poured, to meet and mingle in a
whirling maelstrom in the middle of the bridge. There was nothing of
blown spindrift to it; it was green and solid and flowed with a heave
and a hurl that made no more of slamming a man to the deck than of
tossing a life-buoy. I went the whole length of the bridge when I lost
my grip on the port stanchion, brought up against the after-rail, and
then went down into a tangle of signal flags. I remember distinctly,
though, that the walls of water rushing by completely blotted out sea
and sky to port and starboard, and that there was all the darkness of
late twilight in the cavern of the engulfed bridge. Then the great sea
tumbled aft along the main deck, and it grew light again.
The captain and the helmsman had both kept their feet, and the latter,
dripping from head to heel, was just throwing over the engine-room
telegraph as I shook off my mantle of coloured bunting and crawled back
to my moorings at the stanchion. Immediately afterwards I saw him jump
on to the after-rail and make some sort of negative signal to a couple
of half-drowned boys who, waist-deep in swirling water, were pawing
desperately among the depth-charges. Then he came over and joined me for
a few moments.
"Some sea, that," he said, slipping down his hood and throwing back the
brine-dripping hair from his forehead. "It's happened before, but never
like that. Lord only knows what it's done to her. S'pose we'll begin to
hear of that in a minute." He pointed to a string of porcelain
insulators dangling at the end of twisted bits of wire in front of one
of the paneless windows. "That's the remains of our auxiliary radio," he
said, grinning; "and look at the fo'c'sle. Swept clean, pretty near.
Thank heaven, the gun's left. But, do you remember that heavy iron bar
the muzzle rested on? Gone! It was probably that, with some of the
shells in the rack, that made all that rat-a-tat. But what of it? Look
how she rides 'em now that she's eased down a bit. Only trouble is,
she's got to go it again. Look how we've dropped back." And he gave the
engine-room, by voice-pipe, a new "standard" speed, and threw the
telegraph over to "Full."
The pulsing throb began anew, and under the urge of speeding propellers
the _Zip_, steering in narrowed zig-zags quickly regained her station.
All of the destroyers, and the _Lymptania_ as well, had eased down
slightly, and the reduced speed meant also a reduction of the danger of
another of those deep-sea dives, something no craft but a submarine is
built to stand the strain of. But even as it was we were driving right
up to the limit of endurance all the time, and the sea that did not come
rolling up green right over the bows was the exception rather than the
rule. From the forecastle right away aft there was never more than a few
seconds at a time when the main deck was free of rollicking cascades of
boiling brine, and there were moments when only the funnels and the
after superstructure, rearing up like isolated rocks on a storm-beaten
coast, were visible above the swirling flood. There were times when the
men standing-by at the guns and torpedo-tubes seemed almost to be
engulfed; yet none of them was swept away, and they even--from the way
they kept joking each other in the lulls--appeared to be getting a good
deal of sport out of the thing.
The barometer was falling, and both wind and waves gained steadily in
force as the afternoon lengthened and merged into a twilight that was
itself already melting before the rising moon. Clouds were few and
scattering, and it was plain there were to be no hours dark enough to
offer any protection from submarine attack. Looming as large as ever,
the big liner offered scarcely a better target on the side she was
illuminated by the moonlight than on the one from which she was
silhouetted against it. From either side a fifth of a mile of steel
would "take a lot of missing," and her captain, sensibly enough, would
not ease his engines by a revolution more than was necessary to keep
within his destroyer screen. It was plainly up to the destroyers to
stick it to the limit, and that is just what they did. As I heard one of
the men put it, it was the "bruisiest" bit of escort-work they had ever
been--or probably ever will be--called upon to face, but every one of
those Yankee destroyers stayed with it to the finish.
Now it would be the _Zop_ that would emerge from under a mountainous sea
and come drifting back without steerage weigh, rolling drunkenly in the
trough, and now it would be the _Zap_. And now this or that result of a
"hydraulic ramming" would disable one of the others temporarily. But,
game to the last flake of brine-frosted camouflage, back they came to it
again, and again, and yet again. Sunrise of the next day found them
plugging on in station, and in station they remained until the
_Lymptania_, beyond the zone of all possible submarine danger, made a
general signal of "Thank you," and headed off to the westward on her
own.
* * * * *
Out of the dim grey dawn of the morning after the night before, battered
and buckled, but still unbroken, the wearily waggling line of the
_Lymptania's_ late escort trailed back into harbour. The mussed-up
silhouette of every one of them bore mute testimony to the way she had
been put "through the mill," and, in most cases, the things that met the
eye were not the worst. The _Zop_ needed every yard of the channel as
she zig-zagged up it under a jury steering-gear, and the _Zap_, like a
man dazed from a blow, would have sudden "mental hiati" in which she
would straggle carelessly out of line with an inconsequential
going-to-pick-flowers-by-the-roadside sort of air. The _Zim's_
idiosyncrasies had more of an epileptic suddenness about them, and her
hectic coughing plainly indicated some kind of "lung trouble." Our
little _Zip_ presented a very brave front to the outer world, but I
heard hollow clankings punctuating the erstwhile even hum of the
engines, while the drip, drip, drip and the drop, drop, drop through the
crinkled sheet-steel sheathing of my cabin told that the deck-plates of
the forecastle fitted a good deal less snugly than before they had
played anvil to the lusty head-sea hammer.
But the _Flossie_, the "latest, the swiftest, the flotilla's pride"--the
wounds of all the rest of us put together were as nothing to those of
the _Flossie_. In trying to maintain her pride of place at the head of
the escort, she _had_, for a brief space, unleashed those extra knots of
speed the captain had spoken of, and all that, and even more than, he
had prophesied had come to pass. It was just such a swaggerer of a sea
as that first one that _Zip_ had dived into which did the trick, only,
as the _Flossie_ was going faster, the impact was somewhat more severe.
She was a mile or more distant from us when it happened, and, watching
from the bridge of the _Zip_, we simply saw her dissolve into a
sky-tossed spout of foam. When she reappeared she was floating, beam-on,
to the seas, and, for the moment, an apparently helpless hulk.
The captain's instant diagnosis of a couple of muffled detonations which
followed was entirely correct.
"That sea must have 'jack-knifed' the _Flossie_ so sharply," he said,
"that the recoil took up the slack in the wires, releasing two 'cans'
she seems to have had set and ready. It's about the same thing as just
happened to us, except that the tautened wire only rang the stand-by
bell, the signal for the men to set the depth-charges. First thing I did
after we came to the surface was to negative that supposed order. That
was what I was doing when I waved to those boys who were clawing at the
'cans,' with their heads under water. Lucky they weren't carried away."
It was a chastened _Flossie_ which had gone floundering back to station
a few minutes later, but somehow or other she had managed to carry on,
and now she was back at Base. I won't "give comfort to the enemy" by
trying to describe her appearance, but some hint of it may be gleaned
from the laconic comment of one of the _Zip's_ signalmen, as the
"Flotilla's Pride" was warping in to moor alongside the mother ship.
"Gee whiz!" he ejaculated. "See the old _Vindictive_ limpin' home from
Zeebruggy! S'pose they'll fill her up with concrete now an' block a
channel."
The captain grinned as he overheard the remark where he waited by the
starboard rail for the last of the mooring lines to be made fast. "It's
not quite so bad as that," he said. "If need be, they'll have her, and
all the rest of us, right as trivets in three or four days, and quite
ready to take the sea again when our turn comes. It's all in the convoy
game, anyhow, and not such bad fun after all, 'specially when it's
behind you, and you've got a bath, and a change, and a lunch at the
Club, and an afternoon of tennis in immediate prospect. Come along."