The submarine had made its appearance quite suddenly, rising in silence
to the surface of the water, where the waves broke against the
superstructure, which was presently the centre of a white circle of
foam. A little afterwards, the figures of two men appeared upon the
conning-tower, one of whom Jimmy Burke recognized immediately as the
German officer who had hailed the "Harlech," and whom he had followed to
the engine-room of the deserted ship.
There was something almost uncanny in the thought that this dreaded
submarine monster had travelled northward all the way from the Lizard,
evading the Allied destroyers which thronged the Channel and the Straits
of Dover, steering amid the shoals and shallows of the Goodwin Sands,
passing under water in all probability often within a stone's throw of
His Majesty's ships guarding the shores of England.
Of all craft that put to sea, the modern submarine is the most
formidable, inasmuch as it seems gifted with an intelligence of its own.
It is an invention so highly organized and delicately equipped, its
capabilities are so marvellous, its possibilities so great, that it is
not difficult to imagine it even possessed of a kind of consciousness of
its own. As a matter of fact, it is no more than a perfectly complete
machine which--after the manner of all machinery--answers to the will of
its commander. When that commander is ruthless and pitiless, when his
orders are to wage war upon innocent men, women and children, to show
neither gallantry nor clemency to whomsoever may fall into his clutches,
then a submarine--such as the U93--becomes the shark, the ship of prey,
among the navies of the world.
The "Kitty McQuaire" was sinking fast by the bows. In the red
sunset--the last of a dying day--she had not ten minutes in which to
live; and yet, faced with such a tragedy, with the spectacle of so many
men so indubitably doomed, the commander of the U93 threw back his head,
and laughed.
His voice sounded false and fiendish amid the soft, rhythmic washing of
the waves. It was the laugh of a coward in his hour of triumph; for
there can be no true courage which does not go hand in hand with
clemency and generosity. Assuredly, the kindness of the seas, the sense
of gallantry that led Nelson's sailors to risk their lives so often in
saving their drowning foes, does not extend to all. The German Navy is
a thing of yesterday; and it had been better for the honour of the
Fatherland had German naval officers and seamen learnt something more of
the glorious traditions that British sailors honour and respect. It was
not enough to copy the latest type of British super-Dreadnought or
battle-cruiser. There is no such thing as a seaman without a sailor's
heart.
The man's laugh died away in the distance, as the submarine raced after
the "Marigold," which was now almost a mile ahead. The U93 had made her
intentions perfectly clear in the brutal laugh of her commander. She was
in no way disposed to hold out a helping hand to enemies in distress.
Captain Crouch and his friends on board the sinking fishing-boat could
be safely left to drown like rats. Their lives had been a menace to the
German Empire; Crouch, in his own small way, was one of those who had
stood between Germany and the sun. It was as well that they should be
thrown upon the mercy of the sea, to swim at random, desperate, until
great fatigue and a sense of their own helplessness should weigh them
down, to sink, one by one. The U93 followed in the wake of the
"Marigold," which had heaved-to, and from which a signalling lamp was
now throwing out its dots and dashes in the twilight.
Crouch turned to Captain Whisker. They were clinging, side by side, to
an iron bollard fastened to the deck; for the smack was leaning over so
that her deck sloped like the roof of a house.
"How long do you give her?" he asked.
"Three minutes more, perhaps. She may dive on a sudden, or she may
settle down quite quietly. They sometimes do, as you know as well as
I."
They remained silent for some moments, both staring hard at a certain
fixed point in the midst of the gathering darkness. Here, like a small
star, a red light suddenly shone out; and as they looked, a white light
appeared, higher up and in front of the red one, and then higher still,
another, so that all three together formed an isosceles triangle.
"There's the 'Mondavia'!" said Crouch. "I know the skipper well--a man
called Cookson, who once sailed with me to Melbourne. As a last hope,
I'll try to pick her up."
He asked for the signalling lamp, lit up, and raised and closed the
shutter to see that it was in working order. Whilst Crouch was so
employed, Captain Whisker gave his final instructions. Every man was
ordered to put on his lifebelt; several spars were loosened, and left
upon the deck, so that when the boat went down they would float. As
soon as the "Kitty" foundered, the men were to take to the sea, where
they could cling to the floating spars. They were warned, however, to
avoid the dinghy, which would prove nothing but a death-trap.
Seeing that their chances of ultimate salvation were very small, all
these instructions and precautions must appear somewhat unnecessary and
useless. It is, however, a natural instinct for men to cling to life.
Life is held to be so precious, and death so gloomy and uncertain, that
no sane man of his own free will can bring himself to take the first
step that leads to the Great Unknown. These rough seamen of the
Yorkshire coast thought of the wives and children that they would leave
behind in Hull and Grimsby, and such thoughts are enough in themselves
to lend strength and courage to the last. In grim silence, they set to
work following the skipper's instructions, fastening their lifebelts
around their waists, still clinging to the ship that was now in such
desperate plight that the forward part was almost entirely under water.
Captain Crouch, holding with one hand to the tiller, used the other to
work the signalling lamp, the face of which was directed towards the
"Mondavia." Darkness had now set in; neither the "Marigold" nor the U93
was to be seen, and of the tramp steamer nothing was visible but the two
masthead lights and the red light on the port quarter.
Suddenly, Jimmy Burke--who had never left the side of his good friend,
Captain Crouch--let out a loud cry, and pointed excitedly towards the
Jason steamer.
"Look there!" he exclaimed. "She has seen our light. She's swinging
round."
All eyes were turned towards the west. In the half-light, the men were
just able to discern the faces of their comrades, and everywhere were
the same emotions legible: hopelessness, pity for those who would be
left without support, bitterness at the harshness of their fate, and a
set determination to die like British seamen. They looked in the
direction indicated with hungry, sorrowful eyes, as if each knew only
too well in his heart that help was so far away that it was sheer folly
to think of it at all.
None the less, they could not dispute the evidence of what they saw.
Even as they looked, the lights of the steamer swung round, so that the
two white lights appeared in the same vertical plane, the one above the
other. The red light also grew smaller and less distinct, and at the
same time a green light appeared on the same level as the red.
To anyone who had the smallest knowledge of the sea, there can be no
mistaking signs so manifest. The "Mondavia," which hitherto had shown
her port light to the east, had now changed her course, and was making
straight for the sinking boat. Though there was no necessity to explain
to sea-faring men exactly what had happened, Captain Whisker seized the
opportunity to speak words of courage to his men.
"Bear up, my lads," he cried. "She has sighted us; you may be sure of
that."
"She'll reach us in time?" asked Jimmy.
"There's no chance of it," answered the burly captain. Then on a
sudden, his voice became much louder, as he struck a note of alarm.
"She's going, now!" he cried. "Take to the water, lads; and each man
for himself!"
As he said the words, he threw off his coat, waistcoat, and his long
gum-boots, and plunged headforemost into the sea.
The "Kitty McQuaire" had run her course; her days of usefulness were
ended. As all honest ships--and, indeed, all honest men--are some day
bound to do, she had come to the Parting of the Ways. She had been a
good craft in her time, as Captain Whisker himself could testify; and
she went down into the depths gently and silently, as if she welcomed an
eternity of rest.
And there remained upon the troubled surface of the water, now lifted
high upon the crest of rolling waves, now buried in the wide trenches of
the sea, the black forms of the heads and shoulders of a dozen
struggling men.
The majority of these had gone into the water clinging to the loose
spars by means of which they hoped to save themselves from drowning.
They were all strong swimmers; and, moreover, with their cork lifebelts,
it was hardly possible for them to die until the icy coldness of the
water had chilled them to the bone.
As chance had it, Jimmy Burke found himself clinging to the same piece
of wreckage as both Captain Crouch and the burly skipper. This was a
big iron-ringed boom which--though it floated--was too heavy to rise to
the top of the waves that swept over it in quick succession. Hence, it
was all that they could do to retain their hold, and neither would they
have succeeded in this had it not been that a rope was attached along
the entire length of the spar.
How long they remained in this desperate situation not one of them was
afterwards able to say. The water was bitterly cold; it was as if they
were being frozen to death, and were dying from the feet upwards. Before
long they had lost all power of sensation. They did not speak to one
another, nor were they so foolish as to try to. Every few seconds a
great wave swept over them, and they were buried in the sea, sometimes
as much as three fathoms deep. At such times, there was a rushing in
their ears--a great sound like a multitude of cataracts; and then,
gasping, breathless, with but little of life remaining to them, they
emerged once more upon the surface, to behold the dim starlight, a pale,
dying moon screened by a mist, and the great rolling sea on every side.
Quite suddenly, the loud siren of the steamer sounded near at hand. It
was as if the noise was within their very ears. They had no means of
answering; there was not one who had strength enough to shout. They
could only wait, half-frozen and altogether desperate, trusting to
Providence that they would be discovered in the midst of the illimitable
darkness.
It was Providence, indeed, that came to their aid, that brought the
"Mondavia" to the very place where they were struggling for their lives;
otherwise, they could never have been found. There was no searchlight
on board the ship, and the sea was still so rough that, even had it been
broad daylight, they would have been hidden by the waves.
The captain of the "Mondavia" had done all that was in his power; he had
ordered every cabin and deck lamp to be lighted, so that in the darkness
the old sea-going tramp was like a liner, with every porthole shining,
brilliantly illumined.
And no sooner did this great blaze of light stand forth before those who
were struggling in the sea than, as one man, they threw themselves from
the spars to which they had been clinging and struck out towards the
ship. The gangway had been lowered, as well as every rope ladder that
the "Mondavia" had on board; and it was Jimmy Burke himself who was the
first to know that he was saved.
Dripping, aching in every limb, so numbed that he could not stand
upright, he crawled to the main-deck, and there fell, speechless and
coiled up, with his knees drawn to his chin.
There was no need for him to speak. His very presence there was direct
evidence of all that the captain of the steamer wished to know. On the
instant, the engine-room bell rang down for the ship to "stop," and then
"half-speed astern"; and--as nearly as she could--she remained
stationary, rolling on the heavy swell that still moved the sea.
One after the other, those drenched, frozen and half-suffocated men
dragged themselves on board; and of them all, Captain Crouch was the
only one who had the ability either to move or find his voice. He was a
man so inured to hardship and so wiry that it was as if his vitality was
endless. He sat up and looked about him, and then slowly counted with a
finger the number of the drenched and motionless figures that lay in the
lamplight on the deck.
"Bluffed!" he cried. "Bluffed, as by a miracle! There's not a man
missing. The cowards might as well have tried to drown a shoal of
mackerel." Then, on a sudden, he seized the pockets of his coat.
"Thunder!" he uttered, in tones of mingled mortification and rage.
"Thunder, I've lost my favourite pipe!"
Captain Cookson of the "Mondavia" was staring at him in amazement, after
the manner of one who beholds a ghost. Then, seizing Crouch by both
shoulders, he shook him so violently that the salt water flew from off
him as from a dog on a river bank.
"It's Crouch!" he cried. "It's Crouch!"
"The same man," said Captain Crouch, holding out a wet, ice-cold hand.
"The same man, Cookson, but without his favourite pipe."