"Q"
At three miles, as seen from the bridge of the battleship, the small
craft which was steering a course that would bring her across our bows
in the course of the next few minutes was absolutely nondescript,
completely defying classification. A mile closer, however, it appeared
to be as plain as day that she was some ancient fishing boat, but
bluffer of bow and broader of beam than the oldest of trawlers or
drifters in the service. It was only when she was right ahead, and but
six or eight cables' lengths distant, that a vagrant sun-patch came
dancing along the leaden waters beyond her to form a scintillant
background against which she stood out as what she was--the
sweetest-lined little steam yacht that ever split a wave. The
fishing-boat effect had been obtained by a simple arrangement of colours
which effectually clipped the clippiness from her clipper bows and
equally effectually discounted the graceful overhang of her counter.
In plain words, they had blocked in the lines of a bluff, squatty tug on
her hull with some kind of paint that was very easy to see, and covered
the rest of her with a paint that was very hard to see. A few changes
in rig, and the alteration was complete.
"Quite the cleverest and simplest bit of camouflage I ever saw," said
the captain, lowering his binoculars. "It's only the fact that we're
looking down on her from a considerable height against that bright sheet
of water that gives a chance to follow her real lines at all. From the
deck--and even more so from the bridge of a submarine, or through its
periscope--it would be a lot easier to tell what she _isn't_ than what
she _is_. As a matter of fact, I can't say that I know what she is even
now. It is evident that she _was_ a yacht, and no end of a beauty at
that. But now, in that guise--probably some sort of patrol or
anti-U-boat worker, for a guess, perhaps a 'Q.'"
The officer of the watch turned aside for a moment from the gyro across
which he had been sighting. "I think she must be the '----,' sir," he
said. "Some American millionaire had her in the Mediterranean, and,
wanting to do his bit, brought her up to Portsmouth and turned her over
to the Admiralty to do what they wanted with her so long as it would
help to lick the Hun. She's been mixed up in several kinds of stunts,
and is supposed to have a U-boat or two to her credit. Her present
skipper's a Yank who came to her from a M.L. They say he's no end of a
character, but right as rain on his job and with a natural nose for
trouble. One of his hobbies is making his ship look what she isn't,
and, in order to see her as she would appear to a U-boat, he goes out
and studies her through the periscope of one of our own submarines. When
one of these isn't handy, he sometimes goes out in a whaler and studies
her through a stubby periscope poked over its gunwale. He got blown
right out to sea one night when he was making some experiment from a
whaler in 'moonlight visibility,' and didn't get back till the next
morning. It had no effect on his enthusiasm, though, for he was out on
the same stunt the next night. No question about his nerve, nor his
luck, nor his skill, for that matter. Smart seamanship probably has as
much to do with the fact that he has never been torpedoed as has his
fancy camouflage."
I made up my mind at once that here was a man worth meeting and hearing
the story of, but as the only base he seemed to have was not easy to
reach, and as his ship was reported at sea on the only occasions I was
free to go there, some weeks went by before I was able to carry out my
plan of paying him a visit. Then, one morning, a nondescript craft,
which might have been anything from a wood-pile to a Chinese junk half a
mile away, came nosing inconsequentially through the lines of the Grand
Fleet and moored alongside the very battleship in which I happened to be
at that time.
"K---- has come in with the '----' to 'swing compasses,'" the
navigating officer announced to the ward-room. "He's a 'converted
side-wheel river ferry-boat' this morning, or something of the kind; and
he's going to get blown to sea in a 'sudden gale,' or something of the
kind; and he says that, if anyone doesn't believe it, to come aboard and
he'll give 'em something to stimulate their 'stolid British
imaginations.'"
As certain lockers of the "----" had not been entirely looted of their
age-mellowed treasure when the yacht was dismantled for sterner service
than lounging about limpid Mediterranean harbours, the doubters were,
naturally, many; but it is pleasant to be able to record that those who
came to scoff remained--to tea. Indeed, it was not until after tea that
I had a chance for a half-hour's yarn alone with K---- in the
"banquet-hall-deserted" splendour of the stripped saloon. It was then
that he told me how it was he chanced to "come across and get into the
game."
He used the latter expression several times, I remember, and to no one
that I can recall having met, either on land or sea, was the grim work
he was doing more of a "game" than to this brave, resourceful,
devil-may-care Middle Westerner.
"I had had a fair bit of experience in yachting and boating during the
last six or eight years before the outbreak of the war," he said,
settling back at ease in one of the two remaining lounging-chairs, "and
most of it has stood me in good stead at one time or another since I
have been on the job over here. I sailed a single sticker on Lake
Michigan for a number of seasons, and I used to run down from my home in
Lake Forest to business in Chicago in my own motor-boat on and off
during the summer. It was what I knew of the latter which got me on a
'M.L.' without any preliminary hanging about when I first came over
early in the war. What I knew about sailing has been all to the good
almost every day I have been at sea, from the time I lured on a U-boat
by ringing up my 'M.L.' as a disabled fishing-smack to the time when I
had to bring this poor little old girl into port under canvas after I
had knocked out her propellers with one of her own depth-charges." It
was a fantastically amusing tale, that last. "It was the culmination of
my experiments in scientific camouflage," said K----, with a baleful
smile. "Up to that time any contrivances to deceive the Hun were getting
more and more intricate right along; since then they have tended more
and more toward extreme simplicity. It was this way, you see, that I
happened to work up to that depth-charge crescendo. From the first I had
been striving to give the U-boat mixed impressions of me, especially on
the score of which way I was going. This, as I soon found out from
studying the thing in the proper way, is much easier to do in the case
of a man whose observation is limited to a few feet above the water than
in the case of one who has a more lofty coign of vantage to con from.
That is to say, it's much easier to convey false impressions, especially
regarding your direction, to a man with his eye to a periscope than to
one in the foretop of a battleship, to take the two extremes. Trying now
one thing and now another as I had more experience, I found that where
at first every shot fired at me was directed ahead with a more or less
approximate allowance for the ship's progress in that direction, after a
while they began to go oftener and oftener astern, indicating they were
confused as to my rate of change. It was just as I was about to put the
crowning touch on my efforts in 'mixing direction' that the trouble
occurred. As the experiments with this particular contrivance never went
any further, there will hardly be any harm in my telling you what it was
and how it worked.
"I had already, with the aid of a couple of slanting fins, attached
something after the fashion of bilge-keels, only just below the
water-line on either quarter, worked up a fairly satisfactory 'bow wave'
aft, and I was endeavouring to supplement this by a scheme for making it
appear as though the sky was moving past her funnel in the direction it
wasn't. You see, I was working on the same principle which deceives you
when you think the standing train you are in is in motion when you see
the one on the next track start up.
"As the U-boat skipper's 'look-see' is often limited to a hurried sort
of a peep, I figured that if I could contrive to keep a rather
conspicuous imitation sky of canvas running past the masts and funnels
in the same direction she was going, only faster, it might create the
illusion--in the distorted 'worm's eye' vision of the man at the
periscope--that she was going in the opposite direction. I studied some
make-shift rigs from water-level through a periscope, and made up my
mind the scheme was worth trying."
K---- relighted his cigar and resumed with a sad smile.
"I still think the idea was good," he said, "but it took too complicated
an installation to carry it out, especially on a small craft with a low
freeboard. There were gearings and transmissions and rollers, and
heavens knows what not, needed to make the endless strip of canvas 'sky'
run smoothly, and there were also many wires and ropes. It was one or
the other of the latter which was responsible for the disaster, for
while the thing was still in the 'advanced experimental' stage a U-boat
popped up close by one day--probably a bold attempt on its skipper's
part to see if he really saw what he thought he had seen--and I spun the
'----' around on her tail (one of the nice things about her is that she
will turn in a smaller circle than most destroyers) and tried, first
choice, to ram him, and, second choice, to drop a depth-charge down the
hole he had ducked into. I was too late to ram by a few seconds, and
there must have been a good fathom or two of clearance between my keel
and the conning-tower I had driven for. The bridge and the two
periscopes he had 'turtle-necked' in showed clean and sharp in the clear
water as I leaned over the port side of the bridge--the easiest chance a
man ever had for kicking off a 'can' just where it ought to go. As I
turned to the depth-charge release I already had visions of him falling
apart like a cracked egg, with bobbing bubbles and howling Huns coming
up to the surface together. It was only a couple of days before that I
had picked up several British fishermen--all that were left alive after
a U-boat skipper had vented his morning hate by shelling the boat in
which they were leaving their sinking trawler--and I was still mad
enough to want to ram Heligoland if a chance had offered. I felt a kind
of savage joy in the chance to put that tin of T.N.T. where it would
wipe out a bit of the score I had been checking up against the Hun, and
I seemed to see a sort of a Hand of Fate in the fist I was reaching up
to the handle of the release. It couldn't miss, I told myself,
and--well, it didn't.
"The explosion 'jolted' at the proper interval all right, but not in the
proper place, nor in the proper way. I was watching for the up-boil
squarely in the middle of the right-angling propeller swirl of the
submarine, but that was receding, smooth and unbroken, when the crash
came. The fact is, I never did see the spout from that charge--for the
very good reason that it was tossed up almost under the '----'s'
counter, where it knocked off the blades of both propellers and all but
blew in her stern. The depth-charge had fouled a trailing wire from some
of my 'stage scenery sky' and been dragged along to detonate close
astern. I saw her taffrail shiver and kick upwards, and the shock was
strong enough to upset my balance even on the bridge. That last was the
first thing that made me sure something had slipped up, for, ordinarily,
the jolt from a properly set 'can' is no more than that from a sharp
bump against the side of a quay. I mean the jolt as felt on the bridge,
of course; below, and especially in the engine-room or stokehold, it is
a good deal more severe. It was the shattering jar of this one that told
me it had gone wrong, and then, when she began to lose way and refuse to
answer her helm--the rudder had been knocked out, too, but not enough so
that it couldn't be tinkered up to serve temporarily--I knew it was
something serious.
"It was a good deal of a relief to find that, badly buckled as some of
the plates were, she wasn't making any more water aft than the pumps
could easily take care of. That was the first thing I looked after, and
the next was the U-boat; or rather, we were looking out for both at the
same time. If there was one thing more than another that helped to
reconcile me to the double disappointment of missing my crack at the
Hun and knocking my own ship out, it was the fact which soon became
apparent, that Fritz never knew about the latter. If he _had_ known the
shape I was in, he could have finished me off a dozen times over during
the hour or more the '----' was lying helpless, and before the first
armed trawler showed up in answer to my S.O.S. Just why he didn't, I
could never make quite sure, but the chances are it was one or both of
two things. It is quite possible that the biff from the
depth-charge--which must still have been almost as near to him as it was
to me when it exploded--may have done the submarine really serious
injury, perhaps even sinking it. We never found any evidence, however,
that this had been the case. Whether he was damaged or not, there is no
doubt that his close call gave him a bad scare. There could have been
nothing in the explosion to tell him that it did any harm to his enemy,
and, since he did not have his periscope up, there was no way he could
see what had happened. Doubtless expecting another 'can' any moment, and
knowing well that it would be only a matter of an hour or two until
there would be a lot more craft joining in the chase, it is probable
that he followed the tactics which you can always count on a U-boat
following when it knows a hunt is on--that is, to submerge deeply and
lose no time in making itself just as scarce as possible in the
neighbourhood where the hue-and-cry has started. That's the only way I
can account for the fact that this particular pirate didn't have a
revenge after his own Hunnish heart. We were about evenly matched for
guns probably, and doubtless I would have had rather better than an even
break on that score, because a surface craft can stand more holing than
a submarine. But there was nothing to prevent his taking a sneaking
sight through his periscope from a safe distance and then slipping a
mouldie at us, which, helpless as we were for a while, there would have
been no way of avoiding. A moving ship of almost any class, provided it
has a gun to make him keep his distance, has a good fighting chance of
saving herself from being torpedoed by the proper use of her helm; a
disabled ship, though she has all the guns in the world, has no show if
the Fritz really thinks she's worth wasting two or three torpedoes on.
If he has his nerve, and any luck at all, he ought to finish the job
with one.
"So I think you'll have to admit," said K---- with a whimsical smile,
"that, under the circumstances and considering what might have happened,
I felt that I had no legitimate kick coming in having to take her home
under sail. Fact is, I considered myself in luck to have a ship to take
home at all. The rudder, luckily, though a good deal bent and twisted,
had not been blown away. It took a lot of nursing to turn it, and, when
we finally got her off under mainsail, forestaysail and jib, the
eccentricities it developed took a lot of getting used to. Although it
was quite fortuitous on our part, the course we steered during the
thirty hours we put in returning to base was the most complex and
baffling lot of zigzagging I ever had anything to do with. If a U-boat
skipper lying in wait for us could have told what she was going to do
next, I can only say that he would have known a lot more than I did.
"At the end of an hour or two a couple of trawlers hove in sight and
closed us to be of what help they could in screening. They made a very
brave show of it until we got under weigh, and then they were led just
about the wooziest dance you ever heard tell of. By a lucky chance, for
me, not for the trawlers, there was a spanking breeze on the port
quarter (for the mean course to base, I mean); and it wasn't long before
the little old girl, even under the comparatively light spread of sail
on her, was slipping away at close to nine miles an hour. That won't
surprise you if you noticed the lines of her. I've turned back in her
log and found where she's run for thirty-six hours at fourteen miles,
even with the drag of her screws, which always knock a knot or two off
the sailing speed of a yacht with auxiliary power.
"Well, that nine miles an hour was a good bit better than those trawlers
could do under forced draught, and after falling astern for a while,
they started to catch up by shortening their courses by cutting my
zigzags. That was where the fun came in. It would have been easy enough
if I had been zigzagging according to Hoyle. But where I didn't know
myself just what she was going to do next, how was I going to signal it
to them, will you tell me? About every other time that they tried to
anticipate my course they guessed wrong, and were worse off than before
as a consequence. They must have been a very thankful pair when one of
the two destroyers which finally came up took them off to hunt the
submarine. The other destroyer stood by to escort me in. Her skipper
offered me a tow, but I was anxious to save face as much as possible by
returning on my own, and so declined. In case of an attack it would have
been better to have him screening than towing anyhow. In the end, when
we got in to where the sea room was restricted, I was glad to take a
hawser from a tug they sent to meet me to keep from putting her on the
mud.
"You may well believe that effectually put an end to my experiments with
'movable sky,' and other similar mechanical complexities," K----
continued with a laugh. "Indeed, from that time on I have been inclining
more and more to simpler things, rig outs that are sufficiently free
from wheels within wheels to leave the mind clear for the real work in
hand, which, after all, is putting down the Hun, not merely deceiving
him as to what you are. You see how simple a setting our present one is;
yet it is very complete in its way, and I have reasonable hopes of
success with it. No, I can hardly tell you just what I am driving at
with it, or just how I am going to go about it. In a month or two, when
its possibilities have been exhausted and it has become a wash-out
perhaps I shall be a bit freer to talk about it.
"Come and spend a day or two with me at the end of about six weeks, when
my present round of stunting will probably be over, and I'll tell you
all the 'Q' yarns that the law allows. The Hun is dead wise to the game
on principle, so there can't be any point in keeping mum any longer on
stunts that he's twigged a year or so ago, and which you'd have about as
much chance of taking him in with as you'd have in trying to sell a gold
brick on Broadway."
* * * * *
Three months went by before I was able to take advantage of K----'s
invitation to pay him a visit at what he had called his "business
headquarters," and as I had naturally expected that she would have
played many and diverse parts in the interim, it was with some surprise
that I found the "----" still "dressed" as she had been when I last saw
her.
"We've never quite been able to pull it off," K---- explained, "and the
waiting, and the not-quites and the might-have-beens have given me no
end of a dose of that kind of hope deferred which maketh the heart sick.
But we've at least been lucky enough not to queer the game by showing
our hand, so that there's still as good a chance as ever to make good
with it under favourable circumstances. For that reason, the less we say
about it for the present the better. That's in regard to this particular
stunt, I mean. As for the rest of the 'Q' stuff that we've brought off,
or tried to bring off, during the last three years--I'm at your service
to-night after dinner. The Germans have been publishing accounts of some
of the stunts, under the title of 'British Atrocities,' for some months
now, but as there are slight variations from the truth here and there,
you may still be interested in getting some of the details a bit nearer
the original fount.
"They claimed, for instance, that when one of their 'heroic' U-boats ran
alongside an armed British patrol boat, which had surrendered to it, to
transfer a boarding-party, an officer of the M.L. rushed on deck and
threw down on the deck of the submarine what the skipper of the latter
took to be a packet of secret books, and that this 'packet,' exploding,
eventually resulted in the sinking of the guileless German craft. Now,
about the only thing which is correct about that account is the
statement that a U-boat was sunk. It wasn't an armed M.L. that
surrendered to Herr Ober-Lootenant--armed M.L.'s don't do that sort of
thing, take my word for it--but an unarmed, or practically unarmed,
pleasure yacht, which had apparently become disabled and blown to sea.
And the trusting U-boat did not come alongside to put aboard a prize
crew to navigate its captive to a German port as they'd try to make you
believe, but only to sink it with bombs placed in the hold, so as to
save shells or a torpedo. And it wasn't a packet of secret books that
put the pirate down, but a 'baby,' and _my_ baby at that. No, I don't
mean that I threw a real child of mine to Moloch--I haven't any to
throw--but only that the idea of this literal _enfant terrible_, with a
percussion cap on the top of his head and a can of T.N.T. for a body,
originated under my hat.
"It's not surprising that the Huns didn't get the thing straight at
first, though I believe one of their later versions does have a child in
the cast, for none of the Germans present have yet returned to tell just
what happened. About half of them never will see their beloved
'Vodderland' again, and I don't mind telling you that I'm not wearing
any crepe on my sleeve on that account, either. Do you know"--K----'s
face flushed red and his brow contracted in the anger the thought
aroused--"that those ---- pirates were going right ahead to sink what
they thought was nothing but a pleasure yacht, with a number of women
and children in it, although it was plain as day to them that the one
boat carried would founder under a quarter of our number? That's your
Hun every time, and it was just that insensate lust of his to murder
anything helpless that I reckoned on in baiting my trap. I felt dead
certain---- But I'll tell you the whole yarn this evening."
Several bits of salvage from the "----'s" pleasure-yacht days figured in
the little feast K---- had spread that evening, and I remember
particularly that the Angostura was from a bottle Commodore P---- had
himself secured at the time when that incomparable bitter was distilled
in a little ramshackle pile-built factory at Ciudad Bolivar, on the
upper Orinoco. And the coffee that same genial _bon vivant_ had had
blended and sealed in glass by an old Arab merchant at Aden, while the
Benedictine had cost him a climb on foot through an infernally hot
August afternoon to an ancient monastery inland of Naples. It was
between sips of Benedictine--from a priceless little Morning
Glory-shaped curl of Phoenician glass, picked up in Antioch one winter
by the owner, and overlooked in the "stripping" operations--that K----
told me the story of the first of what he called his "Q-rious"
operations.
"There was a story attached to just about every little package of food
and drink P---- left in the yacht," said K----, unrolling the gold foil
from a cigar whose band bore the name of a Piñar del Rio factory which
is famed as accepting no order save from its small but highly select
list of private customers in various parts of the world; "and in the
several letters he has written begging me to make free with them he has
told me most of the yarns. The consequence was that, while the good
things lasted--they're most of them finished now--I was getting in the
way of enjoying eating and drinking them, telling where they came from
and how they were come by, just about as much as good old P---- himself
must have done. In fact, I think that their possible loss was about my
worst worry when I tried my first 'Q' stunt on.
"The success of any kind of stunt for harrying the U-boat is very
largely a matter of psychology, and this is especially so in the 'Q'
department. The main point of it is to make the enemy think you are more
harmless than you really are. There is nothing new in the idea, for it
is precisely the same stunt the old pirate of the Caribbean was on when
he concealed his gun-ports with strips of canvas and approached his
victims as a peaceful merchantman. As a matter of fact, I think it was
the Hun himself who started the game in this war, for I'm almost dead
sure that we had tried nothing of the kind on--in a systematic way, at
any rate--up to the time one of his U-boats rigged up a mast and sails
and lured on victims by posing as a fisherman in distress.
"Obviously, it's a game you can't use any kind of craft that is plainly
a warship in, and the burning question always is as to how far you will
sacrifice punishing power to harmlessness of appearance. A light gun or
two is about as far as you can go in the way of shooting-irons, and
even these are very difficult to conceal on a small boat. Likewise a
torpedo tube. I tried that first stunt of mine without either, and
that's where the psychology came in.
"Most of the 'Q-boats' they were figuring on at that time were of the
slower freighter type, with a rather powerful gun mounted for'ard and
concealed as well as possible by something rigged up to look like deck
cargo.
"That was, however, all well and good as far as it went, I figured, but,
from such study of the Hun's little ways as I had been able to make, I
had my doubts as to whether an old cargo boat would prove tempting
enough bait to put a Fritz in the proper mental state for a real
'rise'--one in which he'd deliver himself up to you bound and gagged, so
to speak. _That_ was the kind of a thing I wanted to make a bid for,
and, by cracky, I pulled it off.
"From all I could pick up, from the inside and outside, about the ships
that had already been torpedoed, I came to the conclusion that the Hun
would go to a lot more trouble, and take a deal bigger chance, to put
down a vessel with a number of passengers than he would with a
freighter. And even that early in the War a U-boat had exposed itself to
being rammed by a destroyer, when it could have avoided the attack
entirely by foregoing the pleasure of a Parthian shot at a lifeboat
which was already half-swamped in the heavy seas. _That_ was the little
trait of the Hun's that I reckoned on playing up to when I began to
figure on taking the '----' out U-boat strafing without any gun larger
than a Maxim aboard her. I'd have been glad enough of a good
four-incher, understand, if there had been any way in the world it could
have been concealed. But there wasn't, and rather than miss getting into
the game at all, I was quite content to tackle it with such weapons as
were available. That was where my 'che-ild' came in.
"On the score of weapons available, there were only two--the lance-bomb
and the depth-charge. For the kind of game I had in mind, it was to the
former that I pinned my faith. It was powerful enough to do all the
damage needful to the shell of a submarine if only a chance to get home
with it could be contrived. 'Getting it home' has always been the great
difficulty with the lance-bomb, and up to that time the only chap to
have any luck with it was the skipper of a M.L.--another Yank, by the
way, who came over and got into the game in the same way, and about the
same time, that I did. He had been the champion sixteen-pound
hammer-thrower in some Middle Western college only a year or two before,
and, by taking a double turn on his heeling deck, managed to chuck the
bomb (which is on the end of a wooden handle, much like the old throwing
hammer) about three times as far as anyone ever dreamed of, and cracked
in the nose of a lurking U-boat with it.
"Unluckily, I was not a hammer-thrower, and so had to try to bring about
an easier shot. It was with this purpose in view that I submitted a
proposal to reconvert the '----' temporarily to the outward seeming of a
pleasure yacht; to make her appear so tempting a bait that the Hun's
lust for _schrecklichkeit_, or whatever they call it, would lure him
close enough to give me a chance at him. They were rather inclined to
scoff at the plan at first, principally on the ground that the enemy,
knowing that there was no pleasure yachting going on in the North Sea,
would instantly be suspicious of a craft of that character. I pointed
out that there was still a bit of yachting going on in the Norfolk
Broads, which the Hun, with his comprehensive knowledge of the East
Coast, might well know of, and that there would be nothing strange in a
craft from there being blown to sea in a spell of nor'west weather. Of
course, the '----' isn't a Broads type by a long way, but I didn't
expect the Hun to linger over fine distinctions any more than the trout
coming up for a fly does. The sequel fully proved that I was right.
"It was largely because the stunt I had in mind promised to cost little
more than a new coat of paint and a few rehearsals, which could easily
be carried on in the course of our ordinary patrol duties, that I
finally received somewhat grudging authorisation to go ahead with it. It
was not till the whole show was over that I learned from the laughing
admission of the officer who helped secure that authorization, that the
fact that the output of real M.L.'s was becoming large enough so that
they were about independent of the use of yachts and other pleasure
craft for patrol work, also had a good deal to do with the granting of
it.
"I already had several well-trained machine-gunners in the crew, so that
about the only addition I had to make to the ship's company was a
half-dozen boys to masquerade as ladies. As they were not meant to stand
inspection at close range, nothing elaborate in the way of costume or
makeup was necessary. They wore middy jackets, with short duck skirts,
which gave them plenty of liberty of action. Most of them (as there was
nothing much below the waist going to show anyway) simply rolled up
their sailor breeches and went barelegged, and one who went in for white
stockings and tennis shoes was considered rather a swanker. Their
millinery was somewhat variegated, the only thing in common to the
motley units of head-gear being conspicuousness. There was a much
beribboned broad-brimmed straw, a droopy Panama, a green and a purple
motor veil, and a very chic yachting effect in a converted cap of a
lieutenant of Marines with a red band round it. Less in keeping, if more
striking, was a Gainsborough, with magenta ostrich plumes, a remnant
from some 'ship' theatricals.
"Hair wasn't a very important item, but they all seemed to take so much
pleasure in 'coiffeuring' that I took good care not to discourage their
efforts in that direction. The spirit that you enter that kind of a game
in makes all the difference in the world in its success, and these
lads--and, indeed, the whole lot of us--were like children playing
house. All of them were blondes--even a boy born in Durban, who had more
than a touch of the 'tar brush,' and one--a roly-poly young Scot, who
had made himself a pair of tawny braids from rope ravellings--looked
like a cross between 'Brunnhilde' and 'The Viking's Daughter.'
"It was only during rehearsals, of course, that these lads were 'ladies
of leisure.' The rest of the time I kept them on brass polishing and
deck-scrubbing, with the result that the little old '----' regained,
outwardly at least, much of her pristine ship-shapiness. The 'gentlemen
friends' of the 'ladies' were even more of a 'make-ship' product than
the latter.
"Indeed, they were really costumes rather than individuals. I don't mean
that we used dummies, but only that there were eight or ten flannel
jackets and boater hats laid ready, and these were to be worn more or
less indiscriminately by any of the regular crew not on watch. Their
rôle was simply to loll on the quarterdeck with the 'ladies' while the
U-boat was sizing us up, then to join for a few minutes in the 'panic'
following the hoped-for attack, and finally to beat it to their action
stations.
"That a 'baby' was by far the most effective disguise for the first
lance-bomb we hoped to chuck home was obvious at the outset. Both of
them had heads, their general shapes (when dressed) were not dissimilar,
while the 'long clothes' of the infant was found to have a real
steadying effect on the missile, on the same principle that 'streamers'
act to bring an air-bomb down nose-first. Of course, a child in arms,
like this one was to be, wasn't just the kind of thing one would take
pleasure yachting; but I knew the Huns took their nurslings to beer
gardens, and thought that that might make them think that the
Englanders--who were incomprehensible folk anyhow--might take this
strange way of accustoming their young to the waves which they sang so
loudly of ruling.
"The decisive consideration, however, was the fact a baby was the only
thing except a jewel-case that a panicky woman in fear of being
torpedoed would stick to. As you can't get a lance-bomb in a jewel-case,
it was plainly 'baby' or nothing.
"In the end, because I was afraid that none of the feminine make-ups was
quite good enough not to awaken suspicion at close range--I decided that
the heaving over of the 'baby' should be done by a 'gentleman' instead
of by a 'lady.' As one of the seamen put it, it was only 'nateral that
the nipper's daddy 'ud be lookin' arter 'im in time of danger,' and I
had read of sailors being entrusted with children on sinking ships. The
man I picked for the job--the 'father of the che-ild,' as he soon came
to be called--was not the one who had proved the best in distance
throwing in the trials, but rather one on whose cold-blooded nerve I
knew I could count in any extremity.
"He was a Seaman Gunner, named R----, and was lost a year ago when a
rather desperate 'Q' stunt he had volunteered for miscarried. He had
just the touch of the histrionic desirable for the intimate little
affair in question, and the way he played his part fully justified my
selecting him."
K---- leaned back in his chair and blew smoke rings for a minute before
resuming his story. "There are some kind of stunts, like this one I've
been trying to bring off for the last two or three months," he said,
"that always seem to hang fire; and there are others where, from first
to last, everything comes up to the scratch on time, just like a film
drama. That first one I'm telling you about was like that,
everybody--even to the U-boat--coming on to its cue. Indeed, when I
think of it now, the whole show seems more like a big movie than
anything else.
"By the time we were letter perfect in our parts, there came two or
three days of just the kind of a storm I wanted to make a good excuse
for a dinky little pleasure boat being out in the middle of the North
Sea. I took care, of course, to be 'blown' to the last position at
which an enemy submarine had been reported.
"Then, where a destroyer or a M.L. might have cruised round for a month
without sighting anything but fog and the smoke of some of our own ships
on the horizon, we picked up a Fritz running brazenly on the surface the
first morning. That was first blood for my harmless appearance right
there, for he must have seen us some time previously of course, and had
we looked in the least warlike, would have submerged before even our
lookout spotted his conning-tower.
"As it was, he simply began closing us at full speed, firing as he came.
It was rotten shooting at first, as shooting from the very poor platform
a submarine affords usually is, but, at about three thousand yards, he
put a shell through the fo'c'sl', luckily above the water-line. The next
minute or two was the most anxious time I had, for, if he made up his
mind to do it that way, there was nothing to prevent his sticking off
there and putting us down with shell-fire.
"Perhaps if the two or three shots which followed had been hits, that is
what he would have done. It was probably his disgust at the fact that
they were all 'overs' that determined him to close in and finish the job
with bombs. Possibly, also, the fact that I appeared to be starting to
abandon ship at this juncture convinced him finally that the yacht had
no fight in her, and it may well be that the temptation to loot had
something to do with his decision. I could never make quite sure on
those points, for Herr Skipper never confided what was in his mind to
the one officer who survived him. At any rate, he came nosing
nonchalantly in and did just what I had been praying for the last month
he would do--poked right up alongside. The heavy sea that had been
running for the last two or three days had gone down during the night,
so that he was able to stand in pretty close without running much danger
of bumping.
"The extent of my abandoning ship had been to follow the old sea rule of
saving the women and children first. Or rather, we put the women off in
our only boat; the baby, I won't need to tell you, was somehow
'overlooked.' The boat was lowered in full view of the Hun, who was
about fifteen hundred yards distant at the moment, and there was a
little unrehearsed incident in connection with it that must have done
its part in convincing him that what he was witnessing was a genuine
piece of 'abandon.' One of the girls--it was the blonde 'Brunnhilde,' I
believe--not wanting to miss any of the fun, started to hang back and
tried to bluff them into letting her stay by swearing that she'd rather
face the Hun than desert her child. As a matter of fact, the
'Gainsborough' had more claim on the kid than 'Brunnhilde,' for she--I
mean he--had cadged its clothes from a sweetheart who worked in a
draper's shop. If I had been there personally, I'm afraid
'Brunnhilde's' little bluff would have won through, for a man whose wits
are keen enough to spring a joke at a crisis has always made an especial
appeal to me. To the bo'sun, however, orders were orders, and his answer
to the recalcitrant blonde's insubordination was to rush her to the rail
by the slack of her middy jacket, and to help her over it with the toe
of his boot.
"The 'K----'s' low freeboard made the drop a short one, and, luckily,
'Brunnhilde' missed the gun'nel' of the whaler and landed gently in the
water, from where she was dragged by the ready hands of her sisters a
few moments later. They do say, though, that she turned a complete
flip-flop in the air, and that there was a display of--well, if a Goerz
prism binocular won't reveal the difference between a pair of blue
sailor's breeches and French lingerie at under a mile, all I can say is
that we've much overrated German optical glass. As I learned later,
however, the Huns, observing only the fall and missing the revealing
details, merely concluded that the Englanders were jumping overboard in
panic, and dismissed their last lingering doubts and suspicions.
"The girls were already instructed that they were to lie low and keep
their peroxide curls out of sight as long as they were within a mile or
so of the submarine, so as not to tempt the latter to follow them up for
a look-see at closer range. The boat had orders to pull astern for a
while, and then, if the Hun was observed to come alongside the '----' as
hoped, to turn eight or ten points to port and head up in the direction
from which he had appeared. The reason for this manoeuvre, which was
carried out precisely as planned, you will understand in a moment.
"On came Fritz, coolly contemptuous, and on went the show, like the
unrolling of a movie scenario. For a while I was fearful that he might
order back my boat to use in boarding me with, but as soon as he was
close enough to be sure that I had no gun he must have decided so much
trouble was superfluous. He had only one gun, it was evident--the
gunners kept sweeping it back and forth to cover from about the bridge
to the engine-room as they drew nearer--and presently I saw men, armed
with short rifles, coming up through both fore and after hatches. Far
from exhibiting any signs of belligerency, I still kept three or four of
my 'flannelled fools' mildly panicking. Or, rather, I _ordered_ them to
panic mildly. As a matter of fact, they did it rather violently--a good
deal more like movie rough stuff than the real thing.
"Little difference it made to Fritz, though, who seemed to take it quite
as a matter of course that the British yachtsman should show his terror
like a Wild West film drama heroine. On he stood, and when he came
within hailing distance, a burly ruffian on the bridge--doubtless the
skipper--shouted something in guttural German-English which I never
quite made out, but which was probably some kind of warning or other. I
don't think I saw any of my crew exactly 'Kamerading', but I needn't
tell you that every man in sight was doing his best to register
'troubled passivity', or something like that. I had anticipated that I
might not be in a position to signal his cue to R----, and so had
arranged that he should keep watch from a cabin port, and to use his own
judgment about the time of his 'entrance.' I was afraid to have him on
deck all the time for fear the 'che-ild' might be subjected to too
careful a scrutiny. R---- was just in flannels, understand, so there was
nothing suspicious in his own appearance. He did both his play-acting
and his real acting to perfection, neither overdoing nor underdoing one
or the other.
"The U-boat was close alongside, rapidly easing down under reversed
propellers, before R---- appeared, just as natural an anguished father
with a child as you could possibly ask for. Two or three of the Huns
covered him with their carbines as he dashed out of the port door of the
saloon--that one just behind you--but lowered the muzzles again when
they saw it was apparently only a half-distracted parent trying to
signal for the boat to come back for him and his babe. I have no doubt
that there were some very sarcastic remarks passed on that U-boat at
this juncture about the courage of the English male. _If_ there were,
the next act of the coolest and bravest boy I ever knew literally
forced the words down their throats.
"The whaler which, following its instructions, had been pulling easterly
for some minutes, now bore about four points on the port quarter, so
that R----, in his apparent endeavour to call its attention to the
deserted babe, could not have seemed to have been doing anything
suspicious when he swung the bundle above his head and rushed to the
rail almost opposite the U-boat's conning-tower. That rotary upward and
backward swing was absolutely necessary for getting distance with, and
without it there was no way that forty or fifty pound infant could have
been hurled the fifteen feet or more which still intervened. As it was,
it landed, fair and square, in the angle formed by the after end of the
conning-tower and the deck. At the same instant our machine-guns opened
up through several of the port scuttles, which had been specially
enlarged and masked with that end in view, and in a few seconds there
was not an unwounded Hun in sight. The gunners had been the first ones
sprayed, with the result that they were copped before firing a shot.
Their torpedoes, or course, were too close, and not bearing properly
enough to launch.
"Immediately following the explosion of the bomb and the opening of the
machine-gun fire a strange thing happened. I saw the U-boat's
bow-rudders begin to slant, saw her begin to gather way, heard the hum
of motors as the rattle of the Maxims (their work completed) died out,
and--down she went, and with three hatches open, and a ragged hole abaft
the conning-tower where the 'baby' had exploded in its final tantrum. I
could never get any sure explanation of this from any of the survivors
we fished up out of the water, but everything points to the probability
that the skipper--perhaps inadvertently, as the up-kick of the bomb blew
him overboard--pulled the diving klaxon, and the officer in the central
control room, not knowing just how things stood above, proceeded to
submerge as usual. Doubtless the men who should have been standing by to
close the hatches in such an emergency had been caught by the
machine-gun fire. With every man below tied down with his duties in
connection with submerging her, it is quite conceivable that nothing
could be done, once she was below the surface, to stop the inrush of
water, and that she was quickly beyond all hope of bringing up again. I
didn't have a fair chance to size up the hole ripped open by the bomb,
but rather think that also was large enough to have admitted a good deal
of water.
"It was rather disappointing in a way, having her go down like that, for
as things had turned out, it was a hundred to one we should otherwise
have captured her almost unharmed. There was a good deal of solace,
however, in the fact that none of the Huns were getting back to tell
what happened to them, so that this identical stunt was left open for
use again. As a matter of fact, variations of it were used a number of
times, by one kind of craft or another, before an unlucky slip-up--the
one which finished poor R----, by the way--gave the game away and
started us veering off on other tacks. I have had a number of successes
since that time," concluded K----, pouring me a glass of the yacht's
1835 Cognac as a night cap, "but never a one which was quite so much
like taking candy from a child as that 'opener.'"