PATROL
The Senior Naval Officer (or the S.N.O., as they clip it down to) at
X---- had prepared me for finding an interesting human exhibit in the
sharp-nosed, stub-sterned little craft snuggled up to the breast of its
mothership for a drink of petrol, or whatever other life-giving essence
she lived and laboured on, but hardly for the highly diversified
assortment that was to reveal itself to me during those memorable days
we were to rub shoulders and soak up blown brine and grog together as
they threaded the gusty sea lanes of her winter North Sea patrol.
"I am sending you out on M.L.[D] ----," the S.N.O. had said as he gazed
down with an affectionate smile at the object of his remarks, "for
several reasons, but principally on account of the men that are in her.
You'll find them a living, breathing object-lesson in the adaptability
of the supposedly stodgy and inflexible Anglo-Saxon race. Her skipper,
to use one of his own favourite expressions, is a live wire--always
seems to be able to spark when there's trouble in the wind. He came from
somewhere in Western Canada, I believe. Seems to have tried farming
there for a spell, and I think he said something once about running his
own agricultural tractor. At any rate, in some way or another, he has
picked up more practical knowledge of petrol engines than many of our
so-called experts.
[Footnote D: Motor launch.]
"The fact is," continued the S.N.O. as we turned back towards his office
at the end of the quay, "the fact is that D----, though he never saw
salt water before he crossed the Atlantic to do his bit in the War, and
though he never has got and never will get, I'm afraid, his sea-legs, is
in many respects the most useful M.L. Officer I have ever had to do
with, and that's saying a good deal, let me assure you.
"He's always sick as a dog from the time he puts to sea to the time he
returns to port. The only thing that is liable to be more sick is the
Hun submarine he once gets his nose on. I've heard him say in a joking
way, two or three times, that he always could scent a Hun as far as he
could a skunk--I think that's what he calls it; and from some of the
things he's done I must confess I'm more than half inclined to believe
him. Perhaps his most remarkable achievement, however, is that of taking
eight or ten men, just as green as he was himself regarding the sea, and
making of them a crew that will handle that cranky little lump of a
craft pretty nearly as smartly as old trawler-men would on the nautical
side, and at the same time having a fund of resource always on tap that
is positively uncanny--almost Yankee, in fact," he added with a smile.
"Indeed, I believe D---- speaks of having knocked about the States a bit,
which may account for some of the 'wooden-nutmeg' tricks he has played
on the U-boats. Try to get him to tell you some of them. You'll hardly
be allowed to write much of them for a while yet--certainly not until
they have become obsolete through the introduction of new devices; but
you'll find it good material some day."
* * * * *
M.L. ---- looked more diminutive than ever as I was rowed out to her
anchorage in the chill grey mists of the following morning; but a raw
cold, which had been striking through to the marrow of my bones,
dissolved, as by magic, before the friendly warmth of the welcome
which awaited me, when I had clambered up the sawn-off Jacob's Ladder
and over the wobbly wire rail. A slender but lithely active chap in a
greasy overall and jumper, to give it the Yankee name, gave me a
finger-crushing grip with his right hand, while with his left he deftly
caught and saved from immersion my kit-bag, which had fallen short in
the toss that had been given it from below. Just for an instant the
absence of visible insignia of rank made me think that he was a petty
officer of engineers, or something of the kind; then the magnetism of
his personality flowed to me through the medium of his hand-clasp, and I
knew I was looking into the eyes of a man who would not be likely to
figure for long as anything less than "Number One" on any kind of job he
ever undertook.
"You're just in time for a 'square,'" he said heartily, leading the
way to the tiny hatch and preceding me down the ladder. "You'll be
needing it, too, after that pull with nothing more than that sloppy
dish-wash kaffy-o-lay that you get at the hotel at this hour of the
morning on your stomach. Don't try to bluff me that you had anything
more. I know by sad experience. Now _I'll_ give you something that'll
stick to your ribs. What do you say to some Boston baked beans and a
'stack o' hots'? Guess I know what a 'Murican likes. Sorry my maple
syrup's gone, but here's some dope I synthesised out of melted sugar
and m'lasses--treacle, they call it over here."
Reaching the lower deck, we edged along to a transom at the end of a
table which all but filled the tiny dining-cabin.
"Shake hands with Mac," said the skipper by way of introducing me to a
tall and extremely good-looking youth in a Cardigan jacket, duffel
trousers, and sea-boots, who rose with a smile of welcome as we dropped
down beside him. "Mac's a Canuck, like myself," he went on, after asking
me if I liked my eggs "straight up" or "turned over," and passing the
order on to a diminutive Cockney with a comedian's face, who came
tripping in almost as though wafted on the "smell o' cooking" which
preceded him through the opened galley door.
"Mac learned his sailoring on his dad's yacht on Lake Ontario, and I
learned mine driving a 'deep-seagoing' side-wheel tractor on a ranch in
Alberta. Only time I was ever afloat before I became a 'Capt'in in the
King's Navee' was on a raft on the old Missouri, in Dakota; and that
isn't really being afloat, you know, for 'bout one half the water of
that limpid stream is mud and the other half catfish. A great pair of
old salts, we two--hey, Mac?
"And the rest of the crew's no more 'saline' than its 'orfficers.'
That's the way they say it, ain't it, Mac? Little 'Arry, the
galley-slave, was a knock-about artist in the London music-halls before
he 'eard the sea a-callin', and now he doesn't 'eed nothin' else, do
you, Harry? And you'll hear the sea a-callin' that nice big breakfast of
yours just as soon as we get outside the Heads, won't you, Harry? And
then you won't 'eed nothin' else for quite a while. And so'll Mac hear
the sea a-calling his breakfast, and so'll I, and so'll all the rest of
us--every mother's son. It's a fine lot of Jack Tars we are, the whole
bunch of us. Did I tell you that one of my quartermasters is an
ex-piano-tuner, and that the other was a Salvation Army captain before
he entered the Senior Service for the duration? And my Chief--that's him
you hear alternating between tinkering and swearing at the engines on
the other side of that bulkhead you're leaning against--owned a
motor-boat of his own before the War, and appears to have divided his
waking hours between racing that and his stable of motor-cars? You can
tell he was a gentleman once by the fluency of his cussing. He's the
only man I've met over here that could give yours truly any kind of a
run in dispensing the pungent persiflage; but I had the advantage of
driving mules as a kid.
"But cussing, though it helps with a lot of things, doesn't make a
sailor, and the Chief's no more of a Jack Tar than me or Mac or Harry.
Fact is, that the only man aboard who ever made his living out of the
sea before the war is a fisherman from the Hebrides; and even the
glossary in the back of my Bobbie Burns won't translate his lingo. Two
or three times, when the sea has been kicking up a bit, he has managed
to tell us that no self-respecting God-fearing sailor would be oot in
such weather. Possibly he's been right; but, as none of us are sailors,
we don't feel called on to pay much attention to his ravings. Our duty
is to harass any Huns that encroach on our beat; and the fact that we've
had a modicum of success in that line proves you don't have to be a
sailor to qualify for the job. Which don't mean, though," he concluded
with a smile of sad resignation as he rose and reached for his
oil-skins, "that I don't hope and pray that I'll develop the legs and
stomach of a sailor before the war's over."
When breakfast was eaten, forward and aft, all hands were piped on deck,
and in less than ten minutes M.L. ---- was under way and threading the
winding channels of a cliff-begirt Firth to the mist-masked waters of
the North Sea.
* * * * *
As I picked my way forward to the little glassed-in cabin, which served
the double purpose of navigating-bridge and wheel-house, I told myself
that I was sure of two things--first, that the skipper, by birth,
breeding, residence, and probably citizenship, was an American of
Americans, and, second, that the chances were he would not admit that
fact unless I "surprised him with the goods." An Englishman will often
mistake a Canadian for an American but a Yankee himself will rarely make
that error. I was sure of my man on a dozen counts, and resolved to lay
in figurative ambush for him.
I all but had him within the hour. We were clear of the Heads, and the
skipper, having turned over to Mac, was trying to forget that imperious
call o' the sea he had chaffed 'Arry about by showing me round. He had
explained the way a depth-charge was released, and was just beginning to
elaborate on the functions of an old-fashioned lance-bomb.
"Now this fellow," he said, balancing the ungainly contrivance and
giving it a gingerly twirl about his head, "is a good deal like the
sixteen-pound hammer which I used to throw at college."
Knowing that the hammer-throw was not a Canadian event, I promptly cut
in with "What college?" "Minnesota," he answered readily enough;
adding, as I began to grin: "A good many Canadians go across there for
the agricultural courses." I resolved to await a more favourable
opportunity before bringing my "charge" point-blank. It came that
afternoon, when I stood beside him on the bridge as he bucked her
through ten miles of slashing head-sea, which had to be traversed to
gain the shelter of a land-locked bay beyond a jutting point, where we
were to lie up for the night. He was telling me U-boat-chasing yarns in
the patchy intervals between the demands of _mal de mer_ and navigation,
and one of them ended something like this: "Old Fritz--just as we
intended he should--caught the reflection of the flame through his
upturned periscope and, thinking his shells had set us afire, rose
gleefully to gloat over his Hunnish handiwork. Bing! I let him have it
just like that."
The motion with which he flung the lemon he had been sucking as an
antidote for sea-sickness could not have been in the least suggestive of
what really happened; but that straight-from-the-shoulder,
elbow-flirting, right-off-the-ends-of-the-fingers action was so like
another motion with which I had long been familiar, that, with a meaning
side-squint, I observed promptly:
"So you add baseball to your other accomplishments, do you? Did a bit of
pitching, if I don't miss my guess? How long have you played?"
"Since I was a kid," he admitted with a grin that sat queerly on the
waxy saffron of his sea-sick face. "Yes, I even 'tossed the pill' at
college--that is, until a shoulder I knocked out trying to slide home
one day spoiled my wing."
I knew I had him the instant that first admission left his lips. "Since
the kids weren't playing sand-lot baseball in Canada twenty years ago,"
I said, ducking low to let the spray from a sea which had just broken
inboard blow over, "you might just as well 'fess up and tell me which
neck of the Mississippi Valley you hail from. Just as one Yankee to
another," I pressed, as his piercing eye turned on me a look that seemed
to bore right through and run up and down my spine; "even as one Middle
Westerner to another, for I was born in Wisconsin myself."
For an instant his lips hardened into a straight line, and the flexed
jaw-muscles stood out in white lumps on either side; then his mouth
softened into a broadening grin, and a moment later he burst into a
ringing laugh.
"Sure thing, old man, since you put it on 'sectional' grounds, and since
we're going to be shipmates for a week, and"--fetching me a thumping
wallop on the back--"since we both wear the same uniform, anyhow, curly
stripe and all, I'll make a clean breast of it. I was born in
Kansas--got a farm there, near a little burg called Stockton,
to-day--and was never out of the Middle West in my life till I crossed
over into Canada to enlist in the first year of the war. I felt I had to
get into the show somehow, and the little old U.S.A. was hanging fire so
in the matter of coming in that I just couldn't wait. I'll tell you the
whole story when we're moored for the night."
* * * * *
I have never been able to recall my yarn with D---- that evening without
a hearty guffaw. A rising barometer had cleared the grey smother of mist
from the sea, but a shift of the wind from south-east to north-east
exposed us to a blast which, chilled at its fount in the frozen fjords
of Norway, knocked the bottom out of the thermometer and filled the air
with needle-like shafts of congealed moisture that seemed to have been
chipped from the glassy steel dome of the now cloudless sky. There was a
filigree of frost masking the wheel-house windows before the early
winter night clapped down its lid, and the men who went forward to pass
a line through the ring of the mooring-buoy pawed the icy deck with
their stiff-soled sea-boots without making much more horizontal progress
than a squirrel treading its wheel.
It would have been bracing enough if there had been a cheery open fire,
or at least a glowing little sheet-iron stove, to thaw and dry out at,
as there is on most patrol craft, and even on many trawlers. But in the
particular type to which M.L. ---- belonged (the units of which are said
to have been built in fulfilment of a rush order given one winter on
the assumption that the War would be over before the next) there was no
refinements and few comforts. Heating is not included among the latter:
the only stove in the boat being in the galley, where the drying of wet
togs in restricted quarters is responsible for a queer but strangely
familiar taste to the pea-soup and Irish stew which you never quite
account for until you discover the line of grease on the corner of the
tail of your oilskin or the toe of your sea-boot.
The diminutive electric heaters are true to the first part of their name
rather than the last: that is to say, while they are undeniably
electric, it is equally certain that they do not heat. There _is_ a
certain amount of warmth in them, as I discovered the time I scorched my
blankets by taking one to bed with me; but that is of use only when you
can confine it and apply locally, which is rarely practicable in a small
craft at sea, even when you have the time for it.
It will be readily understood, therefore, why on a M.L., at sea in
really wintry weather, the only alternative to sitting up and being
slowly but surely chilled to the marrow is to doff wet togs as soon as
you come off watch, don dry ones, bolt your dinner, and turn in. This is
just what we had to do on M.L. ---- that night; for, besides the really
intense cold, a sea which came through the sky-light of the little
dining-cabin early in the afternoon had drenched cushions and curtains,
with enough left over to form an inch or two of swashing swirl upon the
deck. Poor 'Arry, with the effects of the "call o' the sea" still
showing in his hollow eyes and pasty cheeks, was not in shape to do much
either in the way of "slicking up" or "snugging down"; while the extent
of his culinary effort was limited to a kedgeree of half-boiled rice and
pale canned salmon, and a platter of eggs fried "straight up," according
to D----'s order, with the yolks glaring fish-eyedly at you from a
smooth, waxy expanse of congealed grease. D----, who was still somewhat
"introspective" himself, turned down the "straightups" straightaway,
bent a look that was more grieved than angry on the forlorn 'Arry, and
then, rising shiveringly, started edging along over the sodden divan
toward his cabin door.
"As principal medical officer of this ship," he said through chattering
teeth, "I prescribe the only treatment ever found to be efficacious in
such circumstances as the present--bunk, blankets, and hot toddy."
There were two bunks in D----'s narrow cabin, and it was not until we
had turned into these--he in the lower, I in the upper--that the
mounting glow of soul and body thawed the reserve which had again
threatened to grip him in the matter of where he came from, and set his
tongue wagging of his life on the old home farm, and from that to a
sketchy but vivid recital of things that he had done, and hoped still
to do, as the skipper of a British patrol boat. It is the vision that
the memory of that recital conjures up: D----, with a Balaclava helmet
pulled low over his ears, gesticulating excitedly up to where I, the
unblanketed portion of my anatomy shrouded to the eyes in a wool
duffel-coat, leaned out over the edge of the bunk above--that I can
never dwell on without laughing outright.
The story of the way in which it happened that D---- came over to get
into the game in the first place did not differ greatly from those I
have heard from a score or more of young Americans who, partly inspired
by a sense of duty and partly lured by the promise of adventure, sought
service in the British Army or Navy by passing themselves off as
Canadians. He had intended to enlist in the Army at first; but when he
found that six months or more might elapse before he would be sent to
the other side, he crossed at his own expense on the chance of avoiding
the delay. At the end of a disappointing month spent in trying to enlist
in some unit that had a reasonable expectation of going into active
service at once, the intervention of an old college friend--an able
young chemical engineer occupying a prominent post in Munitions--secured
him a sub-lieutenant's commission in the R.N.V.R. Although, as he
naïvely put it, the sea was no friend of his, it appears that the M.L.
game had proved congenial from the outset: so much so, indeed, that
something like three years of service found him with two decorations and
innumerable mentions to his credit, to say nothing of the reputation of
being one of the most resourceful, energetic and generally useful men in
a service in which all of those qualities are taken more or less as a
matter of course. He had gone in as a Canadian for fear that he might be
turned down as a Yankee, and then, to use his own words: "By the time
the U.S.A. began to take a hand, I had told so many darn lies about
hunting and fishing and farming in Alberta and British Columbia that I
concluded it would be less trouble to go on telling them than to start
in denying them. The boundary between Canada and the U.S.A. is more or
less of an imaginary line, anyhow, and so is that between the average
Yankee and Canuck. I reckon I've made it just as hot for the Hun as the
latter as I would have as the former, and that's really the only thing
that counts at this stage of the game." It was this last observation, I
believe, which started D---- talking of his work.
"Generally speaking," he said, reaching up the match with which he had
just lighted a cigarette to rekindle the tobacco in my expiring pipe,
"the rôle of the M.L. is very much more defensive than it is offensive.
It is supposed to police certain waters, watch for U-boats, report them
when sighted, and then carry on as best it can till a destroyer, or
sloop, or some craft with a real punch in it, comes up and takes over.
Well, my idea from the first has been to make that 'defensive' just as
'offensive' as possible, and it's really astonishing how obnoxious some
of us have been able to make ourselves to the Hun. Off-hand, since, with
his heavier guns, the average Hun is more than a match for us even on
the surface, there wouldn't seem much that we could do against him
beyond running and telling one of our big brothers. The perfecting of
the depth-charge gave us one very formidable weapon, however, and that
of the lance-bomb another, though the days when Fritz was tame and
gullible enough to allow himself to be enticed sufficiently near to
permit the use of the latter are long gone by. The most satisfying job I
ever did, though, was pulled off with a lance-bomb; and, since there is
not one chance in a thousand of our ever getting away with the same kind
of stunt again, there ought to be no kick on my telling you just how it
happened.
"You see," he went on, pulling a big furry-backed mitten on the hand
most exposed to the cold in gesticulation, and tucking the fingers of
the other inside the neck of the Balaclava for warmth, "Fritz is an
animal of more or less fixed habits, and so the best way to hunt him,
like any other animal, is to begin by making a study of his little ways.
I specialised on this for some months, confining myself almost entirely
to what he did in attacking, or when being attacked by, M.L.s, and
ignoring his tactics with sloops, trawlers, and other light craft. It
wasn't long before I discovered that his almost invariable
practice--when it was a matter of only himself and a M.L.--was to get
the latter's range as quickly as possible, endeavour to knock it out, or
at least set it afire, by a few hurried shots, and then to submerge and
make an approach under water for the purpose of making a closer
inspection of the damage inflicted. In this way the danger of a hit from
the M.L.'s gun was reduced to a minimum--an important consideration, as
a holing by even a light shell might well make it impossible to submerge
again. And a U-boat incapable of seeking safety in the depths is, in any
part of the North Sea where it would have been likely to meet a M.L.,
just as good as done for.
"I also found that when explosions had taken place in the M.L., or when
it was heavily afire by the time the U-boat drew near, it was the
practice of the latter to come boldly up and finish the good work at
leisure, with the addition of any of the inimitable little
Hunnisms--such as firing on the boats, or ramming them, or running at
full speed back and forth among the wreckage so as to give the screws a
good chance to chop up the swimming survivors--of which _Unterseeboot_
skippers were even then becoming past masters.
[Illustration: A DEPTH CHARGE]
[Illustration: DISABLED DESTROYER IN TOW]
"In short," here D---- paused for a moment while he lifted the little
electric heater and lighted a fresh cigarette on one of the glowing
bars, "in short, I studied the vermin in just the same way I did the
gophers and prairie-dogs when I started to exterminate them on my Kansas
farm. I found out when they were most likely to come up, when to stay
down; what things attracted them, and what repelled. Then I went after
them. Of course, there was no chance for the clean sweep I made of the
gophers and prairie-dogs, but we've still managed to keep our own little
section of the beat pretty clear.
"Having satisfied myself regarding the Hun's penchant for stealing up,
submerged, to gloat over the dying agonies of his victim, it seemed to
me that the obvious thing to do was to lead him on with an imitation
death-agony, and then have a proper surprise waiting for him when he
came up to gloat. The first thing I started working on was how to 'burn
up' and 'blow up' with sufficient realism to deceive the skipper of a
submerged U-boat, and still be in shape to spring an effective surprise
if he could be tempted into laying himself open to it.
"My first plan proved too primitive by far. I reckoned that the
'blowing-up' touch might be provided by dropping a depth-charge, and
that of 'burning up' by playing my searchlight on the surface of the
water on the side the approach was to be expected from. Neither was good
enough. The 'can' might have been set to explode on the surface, but
that could not be affected without running the chance of blowing in my
own stern. But the bing of a depth-charge detonating well under the
water is quite unmistakable, and the first U-boat I tried to lure with
one made off forthwith, plainly under the impression that it was the
object of an active attack. As for the searchlight, I saw that it
wouldn't do the first time I went down and took a peep at a trial of it
through the periscope of one of our own submarines. The beam did cast a
patch of brightness discernible through the upturned 'eye' at a depth of
from sixty to eighty feet, but it was neither red enough nor fluttery
enough to suggest anything like a burning ship. I set to work to devise
something more life-like, without ever waiting for a chance to draw a
Fritz with it.
"First and last, I tried a goodly variety of 'fire' experiments," D----
continued, snuggling down for a moment with both arms under the
blankets, "and I don't mind admitting that I'd like to have a few of
'em, smoke and all, flaming up all over this refrigerator right now. The
thing I finally decided to try consisted of nothing more than a light,
shallow tank of ordinary kerosene--paraffin oil, I believe they call it
here--made fast to a small, roughly built raft. The _modus operandi_ was
as simple as the contrivance itself. As soon as a U-boat was sighted,
the raft was to be launched on the _opposite_ side, and kept about
thirty feet out by means of a light boom. The next move was to be up to
Fritz, and it was fairly certain he would do one of two things--submerge
and make off, or remain on the surface and begin to shell us. In the
latter case we were to start firing in reply, of course; but that was
only incidental to the main plan. This was to wait until we were hit,
or, preferably, until he fired an 'over,' the fall of which, on account
of his low platform, he could not spot accurately, and then to fire the
tank of kerosene. A line to a trigger, rigged to explode a
percussion-cap, made it possible to do this from the rail. As the
flames, besides giving off a lot of smoke, would themselves leap high
enough to be seen from the other side, it was reasonable to suppose that
Fritz would be deluded into thinking we were burning up, and make his
approach a good deal more carelessly than otherwise. If he persisted in
closing us on the surface, there would be nothing to it but to make what
fight we could with our fo'c'sl' gun, and try to make it so hot for him
that he would have to go down before his heavier shells had done for us.
But if, following his usual procedure, he made his approach submerged,
then there were two or three other little optical and aural illusions
prepared for his benefit. I will tell you of these in describing how we
actually used them."
D---- lay quiet for a minute, the wrinkles of a baleful grin of
reminiscence showing on both sides of the aperture of the Balaclava.
"The first chance we had to try the thing out it nearly did us in," he
chuckled presently. "No, Fritz had nothing to do with it. _He_, luckily
for us, submerged and beat it off after firing three or four
shots--probably through mistaking the smoke of a couple of trawlers just
under the horizon for that of destroyers. It was all due to bad luck and
bad judgment--principally the latter, I'm afraid. It was bad luck to the
extent that the U-boat was sighted down to leeward, so that there was no
alternative but to put over my 'fire-raft' on the windward side. The bad
judgment came in through my underestimating the force of the wind and
the fierceness with which the kerosene would burn when fanned by it.
Scarcely had it been touched off before there was a veritable
_Flammen-werfer_ playing against thirty or forty feet of the windward
side, and in a way which made it impossible for a man to venture there
to cast off the wire cables which moored the raft. As this class of
M.L.s have wooden hulls, you will readily see that this was no joke.
"The splash of the beam seas proved an efficacious antidote, so far as
the hull was concerned, however; but how some other highly inflammable
material I was carrying 'midships escaped being fired in the minute or
more that I was swinging her through sixteen points to bring the raft to
the leeward of her---- Well, I can only chalk that up to the credit of
the special Providence that is supposed to intervene especially to save
drunks and fools. You can bet your life I never let myself be tempted
into making that break again, though it involved a trying exercise of
self-restraint when it chanced that the very next Fritz I sighted also
bore down the wind.
"The two or three U-boats which were sighted in the course of the next
five or six weeks ducked under without firing a shot, and I was
beginning to think that perhaps they had somehow got wind of my little
plan and were taking no chances in playing up to it. Then, one fine
clear morning, up bobs a Fritz about six thousand yards to windward, and
begins going through his part of the show almost as though he was one of
our own submarines with which I had been rehearsing. His firing at us
was about as bad as mine at him; but he finally lobbed one over that was
close enough, so I knew he couldn't tell whether it was a hit or not,
and on that I touched off the fire-raft, which was soon spouting up a
fine pillar of flame and smoke. To discourage his approach on the
surface, I kept up a brisk firing to give him the impression that we
were going to live up to British Navy traditions by going down fighting,
and to convince him that it would be much safer to close under water.
This came off quite according to plan, and presently I saw the loom of
his conning-tower dissolve and disappear behind the spout of one of our
shells, which looked to have been a very close thing.
"I stood on at a speed of five or six knots, but on a course which I
reckoned he would anticipate and allow for. When I figured that he was
not over a mile away, I dropped a float over the stern with a time-bomb
attached to it, the detonation of which in this way I had found by
experiment to furnish a much more life-like imitation of an internal
explosion in a ship--when heard in hydrophones, I mean--than that of a
depth-charge. The periscope which was shortly poked cautiously up for a
tentative 'look-see' could not, I am pretty nearly dead certain, have
revealed anything to belie the impression I had laid myself out to
convey--that M.L. ---- was an explosion-riven, burning, and even
already, probably a sinking ship. Besides the gay gush of flames from
the fire-raft, which must have appeared to be roaring amidships, lurid
tongues of fire were also spouting out of the forrard and after hatches,
and from several of the ports; while a thirty-degree list to starboard
might well have indicated that she was about to heel over and go down. I
had looked at her that way from a periscope myself, while I was studying
the effect of some 'stage property' flares in comparison with ordinary
gasoline 'blow-torches,' and knew how much she looked like the real
thing even when you knew she wasn't. The list? Oh, that was a very
simple matter. This class of M.L.s is never on an even keel for long,
anyhow, and the installation of a couple of tanks made it possible to
pump water back and forth and give her any heel we wanted. We put her
almost on her beam ends when we were experimenting on the thing, and
without upsetting things much outside of the galley, which we had
neglected to warn of what devilry was afoot.
"If we didn't look helpless and harmless enough for any Fritz to run
right up alongside and 'gloat over,' I'll eat my hat; and that was what
I was counting on this fellow doing. Indeed, I'll always think that was
just what he _did_ intend to do eventually; only it was the way he went
about doing it that was near to upsetting the apple-cart. It seemed
reasonable to suppose that he would come up and do his gloating on the
side he approached from, and so that was the side I had prepared to
receive him on. The heavy list she was under to starboard would have
made it possible to bring the gun to bear on him until he was almost
under the rail, and then there would be a chance for a lance-bomb. If he
came up on the other side by any chance, I had figured that the game
would be all up; for there was the fire-raft to give it away, while the
list would be on the wrong slant to give the gun a show. Well, whether
it was accident or intent, that is just what he did--broached abeam to
port, about half a cable's length off the sizzling tank of flaming
kerosene.
"That next minute or two" (D---- sat up in bed in the excitement of the
memory of that stirring interval, and I felt one of his gesticulating
fists come with a thump against the bottom of my mattress) "called for
some of the quickest thinking and acting I was ever responsible for
pulling off. If he stayed up, it flashed to my mind, there was just the
chance I might ram him; while if he ducked down, there would probably be
a good opening for a depth-charge. I rang up full speed at the same time
I was shouting orders to cast off the fire-raft, and to bash in one end
of the starboard 'tilting-tank' with an axe. We had considered the
possibility of this emergency arising, as much as we hoped it wouldn't,
so that no time was lost in meeting it. The fire-raft, boom and all, was
cast off clean, and quickly left astern. In scarcely less time was the
tank emptied, though the sudden flood from it--it was on the upper deck,
understand--came very near to carrying overboard the man who broached
it. With motors, of course, we were running all out in 'two jerks,' and
she was doing several knots over twenty when, with helm
hard-a-starboard, she began rounding on the startled Fritz.
"There was no doubt about the fact that he _was_ startled, let me tell
you. And, when you think of it, it must have been a trifle disconcerting
to see the blown-up and burning boat he had come up to gloat over, and
perhaps loot before she went down, suddenly settle back on an even keel
and come charging down on him at twenty-five knots. The 'moony' fat
phizes that showed above the rail of the bridge were pop-eyed with
surprise--yes--and indecision, too, for there were several valuable
seconds lost in deciding whether to come on up--she had risen to the
surface with only an 'awash' trim--and make a fight with her gun, or to
dive.
"I don't think it would have made a great deal of difference in his own
fate which he did, but you can bet it made a lot of difference to me. I
don't mind telling you that I was never gladder about anything in my
life--at least anything since the rain that came at the end of a
three-months' drought to save my corn-crop a few years back--than when
those moon-faces went into eclipse and I saw him begin to submerge.
Although it had never formed a part of any plan I had ever worked out, I
give you my word that I fully intended to ram him, and that would have
meant--well, about the same thing as one airplane charging into another.
I should almost certainly have finished him, while at the same
operation--but I don't need to tell you that a match-box like this was
never made for bull-at-a-gate tactics. I've never heard of one of this
class of M.L.s getting home with a good square butt at a U-boat, and I'm
very happy to say that it didn't happen on this occasion. I don't think
that we even so much as grazed his 'jump-string'; but the whole length
of him was in plain sight sloping away from his surface swirl, and it
was easy as picking ripe pippins to plant an 'ash-can' just where it was
needed. The only aggravating thing about it was that, although oil came
boiling up in floods for three days, there was never a Hun, nor even an
unmistakable fragment of U-boat wreckage, picked up as a souvenir.
There was never any doubt about the sinking, however, for the trawlers
located the wreck on the bottom with a sweep, and gave it a few more
'cans' for luck.
"But the best evidence in my own mind," concluded D----, pulling the
blankets up higher over his shoulders as he settled back into the bunk,
"is the fact that, six weeks later, the identical stunt I had tried this
time actually lured another Fritz up to eat out of my hand almost
exactly as I had been planning for. Now, if that first one had really
survived and been able to return to base, it is certain that its skipper
would have told what he saw, and that there would have been a general
order (such as came out some months later when they finally did twig the
game) warning all U-boats against coming up to gloat at close range over
burning M.L.s. The fact that this second one was such easy picking
proves beyond a doubt that the other never got back."
"That last was the one you 'threw the hammer' at, wasn't it?" I asked,
leaning far out to make my words carry down to D----'s now
blanket-muffled ears.
"Yes," came the wool-dulled answer. "Tell you some other night. Gotta
get warm now. Toddy can's empty. Make a tent of the blankets with your
knees, and take the electric heater to bed in it, if you can't stop
shivering any other way. Good night."