thoughtfully, and said:
"If we do not consume it any faster, it should last us for a couple of
hours yet. It would be better, however, to decrease our speed a little."
I pondered this situation for a time. In about an hour the tide would
turn and the current would be against us. We would not be able to make
much speed then, but, on the other hand, it would be dark, and we would
probably dare to rise to the surface. The enemy undoubtedly believed we
had perished and would have decreased his vigilance.
"All right," replied the engineer. "We'll stop one motor. There is no
danger we will run aground. It is too deep here for that."
Consequently, we stopped one motor, and continued ahead at a reduced
speed. At exactly five o'clock we came up again to look around. Hard by
in our wake was the French torpedo boat steaming at a distance of about
two hundred meters.
"Well, what is it now?" I said to the mate, and bit nervously on my
lower lip. "It looks as if that rascal was after us."
"It must be a coincidence," answered the unperturbed optimist.
We submerged once more, but came up again after another half hour.
The torpedo boat still came after us, steaming along in our wake at a
distance of two hundred meters.
"If this is a coincidence, Mate, then it is a very, very peculiar one,"
I said to him.
When it was six o'clock we again took a look around. The Frenchman was
still after us at the same distance.
"The devil! This is no coincidence! I'll be hanged if this is a
coincidence. This is intentional. We are certainly pursued!"
There must be something the matter with us. The enemy must be able to
follow us--there must be some sign that enables him to follow us even
when submerged to a great depth. What could it be?
I was pondering this impossible problem. The only thing I could think of
was that when the mine exploded, it had caused a leakage in one of our
oil tanks and that the escaping oil left a plain trail that betrayed our
presence. It was impossible at any rate on account of our slow speed
under the water, against the current, that by a coincidence and without
knowing about it, the Frenchman kept coming after us at the same precise
distance. I had to find out about it. We submerged once more, changed
our course, and proceeded at full speed. If the Frenchman had really
been able to see anything of us, then he would also follow us now when
we changed our course and were going four times as fast.
At half past six I looked astern through the periscope and again saw,
just as at five, half past five, and six, the Frenchman who, at the same
speed on a changed course, continued to follow us.
VII
A LIVELY CHASE
The fact that the French destroyer continually followed us at the same
distance made me certain. There was no doubt about it. We had been
discovered and were pursued. Soon the Frenchman would call for aid and
would have all the bloodhounds of the sea on our scent and following us.
By this time our storage batteries had begun to be exhausted, and the
water was a hundred meters deep so that it was impossible for us to lie
on the bottom.
"Nice prospects," I thought to myself. To the mate and crew in the
"Centrale," I called loudly so that all could hear me:
"Well, now we have gotten rid of him at last. Didn't I say it was only a
coincidence?"
I wanted to relieve the tension on the nerves of the men, because I knew
how they had gone on for days at a high pitch of excitement.
In my plans, I had counted on the darkness, which must come soon. We
would be very economical of the power, so that it would take us to the
point which I had selected after carefully studying the chart. We kept
to the same course for half an hour. Then, when the darkness must have
settled down, I turned off at an angle of ninety degrees, and headed
straight for the coast, where I knew the depth would permit us to rest
on the bottom, to wait until the enemy had given up his manhunt. This
would be towards morning, I thought, especially if the storm coming up
from the southwest should increase in violence so that the searching of
the water with nets would become very difficult.
The point that I had selected for our resting place was far from
comfortable. And it was marked on the chart, not with the reassuring
"Sd." which indicated a sand bottom, but with the dreaded "St." which
meant the bottom was stony. But we had no choice. And when the devil is
in a pinch, he will eat flies, although he is accustomed to better food.
We did not rise again, since we knew it was dark over the sea, but
continued at a considerable depth without incident and slowly approached
our goal.
About midnight, according to my calculations, we would be able to touch
the bottom. And the storage batteries had to last up to that time.
Krüger figured and figured and came to the conclusion that they would
hardly last long enough.
Until ten o'clock we had heard our friend's propellers over us several
times. Thereafter all became quiet on the surface, and, relieved, I drew
a deep breath. They had lost the scent. It became bearable again in the
U-boat. I sat on the stairway leading to the "Centrale" and was eating
sandwiches and drinking hot tea with the other officers and the rest of
the crew. It was almost twelve o'clock and still we had not touched
bottom. What would happen if the computation of our location was wrong?
This could easily have occurred, because of the strong current and our
slow speed.
Half-past twelve! Still no bottom! Engineer Krüger was nervously
stamping his feet and turned out one electric light after another in
order to save power. For the same reason, the electric heating apparatus
had been cut off for a long time, and we were very cold.
At five minutes to one we felt a slight scraping. The motors were
stopped and then we reversed them in order to decrease our speed. A
slight jolt! We filled the ballast tanks and were lying on the bottom
where we could wait for morning at our ease. Who thought that? He who
imagined that we would have any rest was disappointed. We were lying on
a rock, and the tide turned about two o'clock, and the southwest wind
swept the sea fiercely.
At the beginning, it seemed as if we would be all right, down there on
the "St." bottom, but we soon discovered differently--when the rolling
began. There was no chance of gentle resting, as on the soft sand of the
North Sea, but, instead, we banged and racked from one rock to another,
so it was a wonder the boat could stand it at all.
Sometimes it sounded as if large stones were rolling on deck and, again,
our boat would fall three or four meters deeper with a jolt, so that the
manometer was never at rest, and we had to stand this continued rising
and falling between twenty-two and thirty-eight meters.
At last, towards four o'clock, we gave it up. At some of the joints in
the ship, there were small leakages, and none of us had any thought of
sleeping. We, therefore, went up to the surface.
I opened the conning tower hatch and let the fresh air rush against me.
I had a queer sensation. It seemed to me as if we had been buried in the
deep for an eternity and had had a long, bad dream.
But we had no time to dream. The storm had not calmed, but continued in
its fury, and it was not long before we in the tower were soaking wet.
However, to our satisfaction, the water was much warmer than in the
North Sea. We noticed that the last hours had brought us much closer to
our object.
It was the Gulf Stream that was flowing by us and which, in this
section, is really warm, running between two shores close together.
The night was coal black. At a great distance astern, two light-houses
flashed, one white and the other red. It was easy for us to know our
position. No enemy was in sight, so he must have abandoned his search as
useless. Can any one understand with what relief we realized this fact?
Confidently we began to look ahead to success now that, at last, the
dangers of the mine fields, which had been greater than we had expected,
were behind us.
The exhausted batteries were quickly re-charged, in order to be ready
for other emergencies, and then, with our Diesel engines running, we
went out into the open ocean, away from the unfriendly shores, to get
some fresh air and to rest our nerves.
When the day began to break, we were twenty sea miles out and had
already re-charged the batteries with so much power that, if necessary,
we could proceed for several hours under water. In the dusk of the dawn,
we had a new surprise.
Gröning, who, by chance, had looked toward the bow where the outlines of
our boat were becoming visible, suddenly against all rules, grabbed my
arm. With mouth open, eyes staring, and an arm outstretched, he pointed
toward the bow.
"What is that?"
I ran up, bent forward, and followed with my eyes in the direction in
which he was pointing.
"What is that?" I asked him.
I hurried toward the bow, so as to be able to see better. The boat's
whole deck, from the conning tower to the prow, looked as if it had been
divided into regular squares, between which dark, indistinguishable
objects were moving in snakelike lines. Near me there was such a square.
I stooped down and picked up a steel cord about as thick as my finger. A
net, I thought, certainly a net.
"We have the remnants of the net all over us," I shouted through the
noise of the storm to Gröning. "Get the nippers, hammer, and chisel
ready. As soon as it is light enough, we must go to work to cut it
free."
And the thick, dark snake--what was that? It came up to starboard,
slipped across the deck, and disappeared to port into the darkness. It
did not take us long to find out what kind of a snake it was, and I
comprehended everything fully. That persistent, mysterious pursuit by
the Frenchman was at once plain. Now I understood clearly what had
happened on the surface after the explosion of the mine. My heart froze
when I thought how readily the enemy had been able to follow our course.
We could easily trace the snake with all its curves, as it became
lighter, because it was a long cork hawser, made for the purpose of
sustaining the net. This was of light cork of about the thickness of a
forearm and was light brown in color.
About two hundred meters of this easily perceptible hawser were floating
on the water, and gave us a tail with many curves in it. This tail,
which we had been dragging after us, gave us the solution of the
puzzling pursuit.
When we had torn the net, with our engines at their highest speed, a
large piece of it to which the hawser was fastened had clung to our
U-boat and, after we had submerged, the hawser was still floating on the
surface and continued to drag along behind us, still floating when we
had submerged to a great depth. The Frenchman, who had discovered us on
account of the explosion, had observed this, and, in spite of all our
twistings and turnings, could follow us easily.
It was a master work of our able sea crew to cut clear that heavy steel
net. The sea became still higher and washed furiously over the deck,
angered by the resistance of our little nutshell. The men were standing
up to their stomachs in the white, foaming waves, and had to use all
their strength to stand against their force. Full of anxiety, I sat in
the conning tower with a life-saving buoy ready and followed closely
with worried eyes every move of my men during their dangerous work.
All went well, and, after a half hour's hard work, we were rid of the
troublesome net. The nippers, hammer, and chisel and six drenched
sailors disappeared down the conning tower. Each of the six held in his
numbed, wet fist a rusty piece of the net as a souvenir of the
fourteenth day of April.
The sun arose as if nothing had happened. From the eastern horizon it
shone over the French coast as if to say:
"I am neutral! I am neutral!"
When it got up higher in the heavens and sent its greeting to England,
it shivered and hid behind a thick cloud.
What was the matter with it? What was it that destroyed the joy of the
greeting of the young morning? What was it yonder that wounded its
neutral heart?
A steamer approached. Thick, black clouds of smoke poured out along her
wake and hung heavily over the sea. She had two high, thin mastheads,
two funnels, slanting slightly toward the stern, and a light-colored
hull with a high bridge. "A funny ship," we decided and submerged.
When we saw her clearly through the periscope after a while, we found
out the discouraging fact that she was a hospital ship. The snow-white
color, the wide green bands from the bow to the stern, and the large Red
Cross on the hull and the mast tops easily identified her as such.
I was just about to turn away, as an attack upon a sacred Red Cross ship
could not be thought of, when my eyes as if by magic became glued to
something I could not make my brain believe, something unheard of. I
called Gröning to the periscope, so that he could be sure I made no
mistake. No, I was right, and, to my amazement, I saw an insolence which
was new to this world. No wonder that the sun had hidden its face in
order not to see this scorn and mockery of humanity. No neutral sun
could shine on anything like that. Only the moon could stand such
lights, although they must disgust even the moon, used to dark deeds.
The ship, which was safe under the holy flag of humanity and mercy, was
loaded from bow to stern with artillery supplies, and amongst the guns
and ammunition there was crowded an army of soldiers and horses. Under
the protection of the colors of the flags, which they were so
atrociously misusing, they were proceeding in the daylight on the way to
the front.
"Such a crowd!" exclaimed Gröning, and stepped back from the periscope.
"And such a shame that we can't touch it," said I, furious, and stamped
on the iron floor so that it resounded. "I would like to have gotten
hold of it. Such nasty people, such hypocrites! But it can't be helped.
The boat is too fast and too far away for us to head it off."
Of course, we tried and went after it at top speed for some time. But
the distance became greater instead of lessening, and, with our
batteries exhausted, we had to abandon the chase. Then we turned,
furious and swearing, and came to the surface again after a little
time.
It was a very unpleasant feeling, after a short chase, to have to lie
with exhausted batteries, and limp ahead like a lame horse. Consequently
we did not attempt any new enterprise, but remained on the open water
for several hours charging our storage batteries. Just as we were about
through with this work, there came along an insolent trawler which
started to chase us. None of us had any desire to submerge again,
because the sun was shining so beautifully, and it became warmer with
each minute we headed south.
As the propeller, now free from the nets with which we were fouled,
could give us our best speed, we immediately began the race and hastened
laughingly and in good spirits ahead. Our boat cut through the waves
with such speed as it showed when it first came from its wharf. The
foam made a silver-white mane for us. What did we care if we got wet? We
went at top speed, and, smiling, looked at the smoking and puffing
steamer behind us.
"He'll never catch us," I said to Krüger, who had come up to the conning
tower to ask if we were going fast enough, or if he should try to get
more speed out of our engines. "Just keep her turning at the same rate,
Herr Engineer. That's sufficient. It looks now as if we were gaining," I
told him.
Our pursuer seemed to realize he could not overtake us and tried to
anger us in other ways. Suddenly a gun flashed and a cloud of brown
smoke surrounded the small steamer for a second. Shortly after that a
small shell splashed into the water about a thousand meters from us and
a water spout not higher than a small tree arose from the sea.
We laughed aloud.
"Such a rotten marksman! He wants to irritate us with a shotgun. That's
ridiculous."
"That's an insolence without an equal," argued Lieutenant Petersen
angrily, who felt that he had been insulted in his capacity of the
artillery officer aboard. "We should not submit to this outrage. May I
answer him, Herr Captain?" he asked me with eyes flashing.
"Yes, you may try as far as I am concerned, Petersen, but only three
shots. You can't hit him at this distance, anyway, and our shells are
valuable."
Grinning with joy, Petersen hurried to the guns, leveled, aimed and
fired, himself, while the water washed around him up to his waist.
"Too short to the right!" I shouted to him, after I observed the high
water spout through my double marine glasses.
The next shot fell close to the steamer. It became too hot for our
pursuer. He turned quickly and went back in the same direction from
which he had come. But the hunting fever had gotten into our blood. We
also turned and pursued the fleeing pursuer. Show us what you can do
now, engines!
Shot after shot flashed, roaring from our cannon. The distance was
almost too great for our range. We had to set the gun at the highest
possible angle in order to have any chance of hitting him. The first
shots all fell short, or to the side, but at the eighth we made a hit.
A roaring hurrah greeted the dark-brown explosion which marked the
arrival of the shell on the trawler.
In vain, the trawler sent one shot after another at us. They never came
near us. On our side, however, one hit followed another, and we could
see that the hostile ship was listing heavily to port, and we hoped to
be able to give him his death blow, when the outlines of three of his
colleagues were sighted behind and to the right and left of him,
approaching at great speed. Our only chance was to turn again in order
to avoid being surrounded, since too many dogs can kill the hare.
Early in the evening we submerged to keep ourselves at a safe depth. We
were very tired, because we had had thirty-eight hours of work and
realized, now that all the excitement was over, how the nerves began to
relax. To begin with, the nerve strain showed itself by the fact we
could hardly go to sleep, tired as we were. And when we did doze off at
last, we had many disturbing dreams. I, myself, lay awake for hours and
heard through the open doors, in the deadly quiet of the U-boat, how the
men tossed about in their bunks during their sleep, talking and
muttering. It was as if we were in a parrot's cage instead of a
submarine. Also I lived over again during the night most of the events
of the past hours. The only difference was, peculiarly enough, that I
was never the fish, but always the fisherman above the surface who
constantly tried to catch my own U-boat with a destroyer.
When I woke I could hardly untangle the real situation, because I saw
the French Captain-Lieutenant's black-bearded face before me, when, with
great joy in his small dark eyes, he said:
"Diable, il faut attraper la canaille!"
VIII
THE BRITISH BULL-DOG
In the morning a clear, blue sky and a calm sea greeted us. The wind had
abated during the night and had changed so that it came from the
direction of land, and, therefore, could not disturb the sea to any
great extent. In the best of spirits, well satisfied and refreshed by
our breakfast, we were sitting on the conning tower, and enjoying the
mild air of spring and puffing one cigarette after another. During the
night we had reached the position where, for the present, we intended to
make our attacks on the merchant transportation which was very
flourishing in that region. We crossed the steamship lanes in all
directions with guns loaded and with a sharp lookout so as not to lose
any opportunity to damage the enemy's commerce.
Shortly before dinner the first merchant ship arose on the south
horizon. It was a sailer, a large, full-rigged schooner, which, hard by
the wind, headed towards the French coast. With majestic calm, lightly
leaning to the wind, the splendid ship approached. The snow-white sails
glittered in the sun in the far distance. The light, slender hull plowed
sharply through the sea.
With a delighted "Hello," we hurled ourselves on our prey. Above our
heads fluttered pennants and signal-flags which signified:
"Leave the ship immediately!"
Sharply and distinctly in the bright sun the command traveled from our
boat to the large, heavily-loaded ship, and the colors of the German
flag-of-war, which floated from the mast behind the tower, left no doubt
of the grim sincerity of the command.
Did they not have a signal-book over there, or did they not want to
understand us? Ah! A flag went up on the main-mast. The wind unfolded it
and, proudly and distinctly, France's tricolor could be seen. The flag
stopped at half-mast--a distress-signal! The flag on half-mast was the
pursued sailer's call for help. They understood our command and were now
looking for assistance before obeying us. Wait, my little friend, we'll
soon get that out of you.
"Hoist the signals: 'Stop immediately or I'll shoot!'"
The signal flew up. Now, look here, Frenchy, this is no joke; soon the
little, gray animal, which is circling around you, will bite.
"We will give, them three minutes to consider the matter, then we'll
shoot down the masts," I said to Lieutenant Petersen, who was standing
by the guns, and, in his excitement, was stepping from one foot to
another.
With watch in hand, I counted three full minutes. The sailer did not
take any notice of us, just as if our existence had nothing to do with
him.
"Such impudence," I murmured, as I put down my watch. Soon thereafter
resounded through the entire boat:
"Fire!"
"Rrrrrms!" the guns thundered with a deafening roar, and the shell
whistled through the schooner's high rigging, in which it tore a large
hole, struck the mainyard of the forward mast, exploded, and snapped off
the heavy mast, so that, with its sails, it fell like a broken wing on
the deck of the ship.
The results were immediately apparent. The red and white pennant, which
in the international language means: "I understand!" flew to the
masthead. The sailors, who had gathered in groups, looked at us in
alarm. They were scattered by the commands of the captain and hurried in
all directions to their posts. Giving orders in the singing accents of
the French language, the sails were soon lowered and the ship slowed up.
The boats were swung out and made ready, and men, with life-saving
buoys, were running all over in great excitement.
We closed in on the ship to windward, and I called to the captain to
make haste--that I would give him just ten minutes more to get away
before torpedoing his ship.
In the bow compartment, where the torpedo tubes are built into the
U-boat and the torpedoes themselves are stored, there was feverish
activity from the minute we saw the hostile ship and the alarm was
sounded. It is cramped in the forward part of a U-boat, very cramped,
and it is necessary to have a special crew of very skilled men to be
able to accomplish their purpose in this network of tubes, valves, and
pumps. The officers' mess, which is just back of the torpedo
compartment, is quite roomy and comfortable. It was now changed in a
moment to an uninhabitable place. Ready hands pulled down the
oil-stained curtains in front of the bunks and folded up the narrow
table and the four chairs without backs. These were all placed in a
corner hurriedly, and the luxuries were all gone, making room to handle
the torpedoes.
Schweckerle, in command of the torpedo tubes, was like a father in the
way he watched over his torpedoes. He loved them as if they were
children and continually oiled and greased them and examined them
carefully. They said of him that he mourned when he had to separate
himself from one of them. And I, myself, saw that when a torpedo, for
some reason or other slightly turned, did not strike its target, he went
around broken-hearted for many days and could not eat.
This faithful fellow was now busily occupied taking care of his children
and had selected "Flink" and "Reissteufel" (these were his names for the
two torpedoes now ready for the tubes) when the command was given:
"First torpedo tube ready!"
This meant "Reissteufel" was to go.
Schweckerle was in his element and, when he gave his commands, the
sailors ran as if the devil was at their heels.
"You here! You there! You take that! You take the other! Forward! Hurry!
Take hold! Get the oil can! That's good! That's enough! Now put it
in--push it forward! Now hold back! Slowly--slowly--stop!"