CAPTAIN KETTLE
ON THE
WAR-PATH
BY
C. J. CUTCLIFFE HYNE
THIRD EDITION
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.
LONDON
_First Published ... May 11th, 1916
Second Edition ..... May 1916
Third Edition ...... October 1916_
Copyrighted in the United States by
C. J. CUTCLIFFE HYNE
All rights of translation, dramatic and motion picture rights
reserved
TO
E.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Marriage of Kettle
Firemen Hot
Kate Meredith
The Escape Agents
Adventures of Captain Kettle
Mr. Horrocks, Purser
The Filibusters
The Lost Continent
The Little Red Captain
The Recipe for Diamonds
The Paradise Coalboat
Through Arctic Lapland
Further Adventures of Captain Kettle
Thompson's Progress
Captain Kettle, K.C.B.
McTodd
Atoms of Empire
Prince Rupert the Buccaneer
Trials of Commander McTurk
Emperor of The World
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I The Supply Ship
II The Mine-layer
III Cotton
IV Gun-runners
V The Intervening Wire
VI Rejoining at Once
VII The Lady Killer
VIII An Eye for an Eye
IX That Rhine Tour
X The Inventor of Meltite
CAPTAIN KETTLE ON THE WAR-PATH
I
THE SUPPLY SHIP
Captain Sir Owen Kettle, K.C.B., shook his head and sighed. "I have
tried everything, sir, from the Flying Corps to Motor Transports and
R.A.M.C., and not one of them will have me. They say I've a wooden
leg."
"And that's not true," broke in Lady Kettle. "The Captain's is a
high-class American limb that cost £26 18s., even with the discount.
At least, the one he wore when he tried to enlist was. He still has
his old wooden implement (which Mr. McTodd made him), but he only
wears that about home here, and when we've no company. Mr. McTodd
meant well, but he made the leg of Honduras mahogany, and that's too
heavy. It's as good as an extra vest to the Captain when he wears
it."
"I'd like to show you our roses, sir," said Kettle, by way of getting
rid of a painful subject. "We had mildew on them, but I've syringed
them with a patent mixture of my own, and they're as clean now as a
well-scrubbed deck. I don't mind owning that the mixture is founded
on Quale's Sheep Dip, but I think I shall be able to get Government
protection for my adaptation of it. I have always been anxious, Mr.
Carnforth, to start in the patent medicine trade, and this is my
first opening. 'Try Kettline for mildew on your roses.' It would
sound well on the advertisements, especially with a verse or two of
poetry added. I've got quotations already for space in the
_Gardener's Friend_."
The big politician looked at the little sailor with a thoughtful eye,
and the unprejudiced observer might have jumped to the conclusion
that he was going to swear. But Mr. Carnforth knew his Kettle from
bitter experience, and passed a cigar case instead, and in his turn
talked roses, their diseases, their colours, and their culture, till
even Captain Kettle had no further views to offer on the topic. And,
at the finish, said he, "Now, my man, if you're fed up on flummery,
we'll get down to bed-rock business. Are you open to killing a few
Germans?"
"I haven't got a game ticket, sir, but my ten-shilling licence covers
the killing of vermin."
Martin Carnforth, M.P., grinned. "You're your little old self. In
this case it's the crew of a certain German submarine, number
unknown."
"I've a lot of theories, sir, about the way to catch submarines. Our
Navy----"
"Never mind the Navy, and never mind your theories for the moment.
This is a particular vessel which is to be off Ireland--North or
South, I don't know which at present--in a month's time, and I'm not
telling the Admiralty about her because they do nothing. I told the
Admiralty before about a German submarine which would be at a certain
spot within a certain limit of time, and they said my news was of
interest, but policy forbade them to act upon it. That submarine got
busy. She sank seven big steamers in a week, not to mention four
trawlers. We even owned up to four of the steamers and a brace of
trawlers."
Captain Kettle was openly shocked. "And you a Member of Parliament,
sir!"
"I'm sick and ashamed of it. Parliament talks and does nothing for
fear of losing its votes and its salaries, and I'm aching to do
something. They won't let me into either of the Services, because
they say I'm too old, and can't see, and am touched in the wind, and
am liable to pains in the carburettor. So I'm going on my own. I'm
going to be a dam' pirate, and if the Navy catches me trying to help
Great Britain, I suppose I shall hang. Question is--will you chip in
with me?"
"Certainly not," said Lady Kettle. "The Captain's a respectable
gentleman, now."
"I'll come like a bird," said the little sailor--his red torpedo
beard stuck out aggressively. "By James, Mr. Carnforth, sir, I've
been aching to have a bat at those Dutchmen ever since the war
started. I've only to get my next Sunday's sermon in our chapel
arranged for--
"You can leave me to attend to that, Captain," said Lady Kettle, and
there was a distinct gleam of triumph in her eye. "I've never been
allowed in the pulpit yet, Mr. Carnforth, but women must do men's
work in this war-time, and if there's a drop in the collection I'll
know who it is that's short, and she can buy her next week's butter
from Skipton, or where she likes. Not another pound does she have
from this farm."
We may pass over, then, a voyage across the Atlantic in the next
packet that sailed, and a train journey through the United States
from Jersey City to New Orleans. In that capital of moist heat and
doubtful drainage they put up at a modest and inconspicuous hotel,
and I regret to say under assumed names.
"If my name got down here," said Carnforth, "I should find myself in
the papers."
"If mine got out," said Kettle rather awkwardly, "I'm afraid I should
find myself in gaol. You see, sir, I've been here before. He was
only a thief of a stevedore when we had the bit of trouble, but he's
a political boss now, and Irish, and they say he's a long memory.
But an archdeacon, situated as I was then, couldn't have resisted
giving it that man on the nose."
"Very well, I'll be Mr. Martin, and you--let me see--you had better
be Colonel Owen. You don't look like a plain mister. And now about
this steamer. My cable says she's the _Grüda_, nominally Norwegian
owned, and under charter to a Chicago firm with a German name."
"She's a tanker, sir, about 1,800 tons, twin-screw, loaded, and
alongside the levee this minute."
"Then," said Carnforth, who was a business man, "the next thing to do
is to get passages on her through the pretence that we've got to
leave here in a hurry. Afterwards, when we have found out her
rendezvous with the German submarine, we'll take charge." He
produced from his pocket an automatic pistol and a glass tube full of
small tabloids. "If we can't drug the crew with the chemicals, we'll
have to use the cordite."
"I rather object to dope, sir. It leaves an awful head afterwards,
as I know, and doping's not quite a white man's trick."
"My good Captain, you mustn't be too nice-fingered. This war with
Germany is not run under Queensberry rules--they've seen to that.
We've got to win, and you can take it from me we shall have to be
all-in to do it."
"Well, sir," said Kettle, with a sigh, "you're a Member of
Parliament, and ought to know; and anyway you're, so to speak, my
owner on this trip. You give the orders, and I'll see them through."
"Right," said the big man, "that's a bargain. And now, as you've
told me many times you're bad at fiction, I'll go and beard the
skipper on the _Grüda_, and bamboozle passages out of him for the
pair of us. I expect it will only be a case of being able to pay
enough."
To Captain Sir Owen Kettle, K.C.B., who was anxiously smoking his
fifteenth cigar for the day, Carnforth returned three hours later,
flatly discouraged.
"The captain of that tanker was hopeless. I appealed to his better
feelings, and I appealed to his pocket, and one might as well have
tried to work on the conscience of an alligator. I tried the agent:
he said if I didn't get to hell quick on my own accord, he'd send me
there. I rang up the runner who is to supply the crew, and he said
he was full already. And the boat sails with to-morrow's daylight."
Kettle took his cigar from his mouth and examined the tip. "And who
was the runner, sir?"
"Morrissey. Keeps a flash saloon about two blocks off Canal Street,
on the French side."
"That's luck about Morrissey. Well, Mr. Carnforth, we might get
shipped still, but the method won't be pleasant."
"I'll stomach anything to get success. What's the scheme?"
But Captain Kettle would divulge no details. Only after they had
dined, and put in a couple of hours at a movies show where even a
Polar whaling picture could hardly check the perspiration, he led
with easy assurance through the crowded traffic of Canal Street to
Mr. Morrissey's saloon.
"Seem to know your way," Carnforth commented.
"I've been in New Orleans before," Kettle admitted. "Evening, Mr.
Morrissey."
"By the piper! You! I thought, Captain, you'd have died of
lead-poisoning ten times over before this. And why are you
gladdening N'Orleans? You haven't a ship here, or even down at the
quarantine station."
"I want a ship. D'you know of one, Morrissey?"
"That takes a bit of thinking over, and I dare say you don't want to
discuss your particular troubles before the beauty and fashion in the
bar here. Come to my private room. Will you bring your friend?"
"Please. He wants to ship with me."
"We'll see what can be done. Just shut the door behind you,
Mr.--er--Martin, I think you said your friend's name was, Captain?
Bourbon or rye? I know you dislike our Scotch, Captain, because of
its Chicago accent, though I always drink it myself. You see I've a
good memory. Rye for you, eh, and Bourbon for your friend? Help
yourselves. Make it a high-ball, if you like. Here's the squirt.
Mine for the good old Scotch. You're looking at my nose, Captain,
and I tell you it cost me a lot to have it put straight. But that's
all past and over now, isn't it? Here's chin-chin!"
The saloon-keeper brimmed with affability, and, to Carnforth's
surprise, Captain Kettle was affable also. He let the gross
politician suggest rogueries and familiarities unspeakable. He
allowed himself to be plied with whisky, and insisted that Carnforth
should drink level. And he insisted on obtaining from his host
promises of future employment which a child might have known that
apoplectic person had not the smallest intention of making good.
From then onwards the evening seemed to fade out.
Carnforth, awaking with a splitting head and a brazen taste in his
mouth, tried to reconstruct the details of the orgy without success.
One thing he was sure about--he had not been drunk. He knew his
capacity to a glass, and had not been within a bottle of it. And he
was similarly confident about Captain Kettle. That mariner's iron
head could have seen Mr. Morrissey under the table three times over.
But who had taken him back to the hotel and put him to bed, and why
was the hotel so full of grumbling, rumbling machinery?
At that point Carnforth waked a trifle more, stretched himself
gingerly (as he found he was a mass of bruises and aches), and
discovered he was not in the hotel at all. He was in a room that was
warm and smelt of grease, and he was lying on the wooden floor of a
box that reminded him of a coffin. Then he recognized it as a
steamer's bunk.
"Glad to see you're coming round, sir," said a voice from the gloom.
"Morrissey's done it pretty thoroughly, hasn't he? The swine's even
stolen my best leg."
"That you, Kettle? D'you know where we are? Looks to me we're on a
steamer."
"We're where we wanted to get. We're on the _Grüda_, sir, and by the
way her wheel engines are clattering we must be navigating that
twisty bit below the quarantine station before you get to the Port
Edes pass, and the pilot's nervous of piling her up on a sand bar.
Drat these mosquitoes. Do you recognize the good old Mississippi
smell?"
"Then we've been--what d'you call it--shanghaied?"
"That's right, sir. I guess we asked for it, and Morrissey very
kindly did the rest. A man with a good memory, sir, Morrissey, and I
must own I did make a bad mess of his nose, that time I attended to
him. Great James! but I have a head and a mouth on me! I told you,
sir, dope was filthy stuff."
"Well, I've lost my stock of that and my gun as well. It strikes me
that now we are here we can't do any good."
"Oh, that'll be all right when the time comes," said the little
sailor. "No use looking for trouble on ahead, sir. And now I should
advise getting a spell of sleep for as much as we're let, though I
don't suppose that will be for long."
It turned out there were five other drugged men in the bunks beside
them; the _Grüda's_ errand was not sufficiently popular to enable her
to ship a crew by above-board means; and when the pilot was dropped
by the Port Edes light, and the steamer lifted to the heave of a
brisk Norther in the Gulf outside, the need for hands became
apparent, and large-booted mates proceeded to rouse the sleepers
after the time-honoured methods.
All grumbled, and all were driven. Martin Carnforth, Esq., M.P.,
found that his name was Olsen and his destiny the stokehold. He went
there, escorted by a volley of kicks. Kettle, after being yanked
violently out of his bunk on to the iron deck below, was discovered
to be a cripple, and was virulently abused for this misfortune.
"I'll knock the stuffing out of Morrissey next time I see Noo
Orleans," said the _Grüda's_ mate, "for charging me for a whole man
and only shipping a half one. Get up, you unipod."
Captain Kettle was yanked back to the vertical, and lost the remains
of his temper. His skilled fingers shot out and seized a handful of
the Mate's shaggy hair, and with that leverage he banged the man's
head against an iron stanchion till he howled for mercy.
"Will you promise to treat me decently whilst I'm on this ship if I
don't kill you now?"
"Ja----si----yes. What coundymans was you? You're name's nod
Schlich."
"Seems that's the name I was shipped under, and therefore it's good
enough for you. Where's my jury leg?"
"If it was worth a nickel, Morrissey's got it. An' he's beyond
reach. We don' carry no spare legs in our slop-chest, but I'll have
Chips make you one right now, and when you've got that shipped,
you'll turn to as pantryman. Unnerstan'? Say 'sir' when you answer
me."
"Aye aye, sir," said Captain Kettle cheerfully, and the mate, keeping
a wary eye on him, backed out of the forecastle.
The _Grüda_ crossed the Mexican Gulf amongst silvery flying fish and
islands of amber-yellow weed, rounded Florida with its screw-pile
lights, and swirled North with the Gulf Stream. She bellowed her way
through the fogs on the Banks, and missed a Miquelon fishing schooner
by the short hairs. And then she butted her stolid path across the
Western Ocean, exuding smells of petroleum and fried onions.
Her pantryman did his work, and called little attention to himself.
His immediate master, the cabin steward, himself an untidy creature,
commented on his frequent drawings of clothes from the slop-chest.
"You'll have no wages to pouch at the far end if you put so much on
your back," said the steward.
"I know," said Kettle. "But I like to feel clean and neat. Where is
the far end? I haven't the muzziest notion of where I signed on to."
"Oh, 'Kjobnhavn or orders,'" said the steward. "Probably 'orders'!"
"I don't believe there's a soul on board knows where we're bound
for," said Captain Kettle to Carnforth that night as they sat
together on the poop companion.
"What, not even the skipper?"
"Not even the captain, sir. At least he's a liar if he does.
According to Mr. Mate, we're heading about for the middle of
Ireland--say Limerick. I heard Mr. Mate ask the Old Man at tea
to-night if that was our port, and the Old Man said he knew no more
than the ship's tom cat."
But next day a new development showed itself. A span of wires was
hoisted between the two mast-heads, and presently the crackle and
spit of wireless broke out from the chart-house. For another day
nothing happened, and the _Grüda_ loafed along at a steady
half-speed. Then orders sharp and insistent evidently arrived out of
space, and the tanker swung off on to a new course.
"Now we shan't be long," said Carnforth when he came off watch, and
the pair were for a minute alone together. "I'm hanged if I can see
what we can do. Have you managed to pinch a gun?"
"It's rather astonishing, sir, but I don't think, there's such a
thing on board. They're an amazing lot of haymakers. We must tackle
them, when the time comes, without that."
"Then you have a scheme?"
"I've ten, sir, but I don't know yet which will come into use. We
must 'wait and see,' as you politicians say when your heads are empty
of ideas."
"Well, I'm going to do something. I'll set fire to the petrol as the
submarine's taking it on board, sooner than she shall go off with it.
I suppose we shall get killed, but I'm not going home with nothing
done."
"We shall not get killed, Mr. Carnforth, sir, and we shall do in the
beastly Dutchmen all right. I make a point, sir, of never getting
killed. If you fix in your mind beforehand that you are going to do
your job and come through safe, you'll do it. I've proved that a
hundred times, so I know. The main thing that's troubling me is
Kettline."
"Is what?"
"That mixture of mine that is such death to mildew on roses. Lady
Kettle was, as you know, sir, a business lady before I knew her, and
she's been a business lady most of her life since. But you know what
the sex is when it comes to bucking about gardens. If any one says
how clean our roses are, she'll think no more about giving away the
recipe than you would about telling your fellow politicians the name
of your favourite throat tabloid."
"Well," said Carnforth impatiently. "I don't see that it matters."
"It matters all the time, sir. If that recipe goes to the wrong ear
there's my patent jumped before you can say 'slug.' It's taken me
ten years hard gardening, sir, to bring that mixture to its present
perfection, and now I'm likely to have had all my trouble and
chemistry for nothing."
"Better ask the skipper for the loan of the wireless," said Carnforth
sarcastically, "and ring up your wife and tell her to take care."
"By James, sir," said Kettle, "that's a sound idea. The minute we've
sunk that submarine I'll do it. But, for the time being, the
submarine comes first, before," he added regretfully, "before even
roses. Curse these Dutchmen. They're always getting in the way of
something, and always will, I suppose, till they're all wiped out.
Well, sir, there are a lot of wipers knocking about the world just
now, that's one comfort."
Carnforth was tired and stiff with his unaccustomed work. He got up
rustily. "Well," he said, "wait and see is all right, I dare say,
for our tin-pot politics, but it is rather a poor sort of
prescription for the serious business of war. Can't you give me
something better to go on?"
"Yes, sir, I can. This ship is fitted with iron belaying-pins, and
they're many of them loose. Learn to an inch where the loose ones
are, so that you can always lay your hand on the nearest, either by
night or day, without a wink-time's waste. If you have to hit with
one, hit to kill. This is red war we've ahead of us, Mr. Carnforth,
and it's either us or them, and don't you forget it, because they
won't. Great James, there's my bell. I must go."
Three times the _Grüda_ changed her course in answer to the invisible
orders, which gave a hint that the boat they were hurrying towards
was not waiting for them placidly. Once all heads were drawn to the
rail by the sight of a wrecked trawler's dinghy, and a patch of
floating fish-boxes, and another time they steamed through a
stinking, hobbling shoal of drowned and bloated mules. Three
drowning cattlemen sailed with the mules as a sightless guard.
Here were signs enough of the outskirts of war, but the _Grüda's_
company remained placid. They were neutrals; if a British warship
visited them their papers were all in order; and, for the rest, it
was their full right to sail the seas and gather kroner whilst they
might.
Then the wireless spoke again, and the scent grew hotter. Word was
given to the engine-room that from then till the business was over
the fullest head of steam was to be kept ready for instant use, and
the devil take fuel consumption. Two derrick-booms were slung
overside and their goose-necks dropped into sockets riveted on to the
ship's plating ready for them. The booms had lifts and braces so
that the submarine could be moored between them, and lie there snugly
alongside without danger of some sudden western ocean swell rolling
the steamer down on the top of her. Oil hoses were ranged, pumps
given a trial run, hoists rigged, and all made coolly ready.
The Norwegian captain had little to say in all this. The wireless
man took over complete charge, and the ship's company were given to
understand that here was the complete Prussian Naval Officer who
could and would deal out death, if necessary, without an
afterthought. He, at any rate, would have a revolver handy
somewhere, and Captain Kettle--the ship's pantryman--puzzled as to
where the man had it stowed. But the _Grüda's_ crew regarded the
Prussian with bovine unconcern.
Suddenly out of the near horizon the submarine leapt into sight at
nineteen knots. She swooped down, turning in a narrow circle, and
made fast cleverly to the booms that were waiting for her. Captain
Kettle mentally took off his cap to the smartness of her seamanship.
She was an uncouth devil of a vessel with low freeboard and ugly
excrescences along her decks, especially amidships, and she bristled
with dirty, scrubble-bearded men who knew exactly what to do, and did
it at the double. Six of them came on to the tanker, all shod with
especially heavy knee-boots, which they used mercilessly on the
Norwegians--particularly on the boot-using mates and
skipper--whenever the speed of work was not entirely up to their
standard. One with Zeiss binoculars round his neck was bowsed up to
the foremast truck, and swung there on a bo's'n's chair, and peered
round, and declared the seas empty. The rest of them saw to passing
the oil hose, and to whipping up Whitehead torpedoes out of the
carrier's hold, and gingerly transhipping these across to their own
craft.
A grimy stoker crept out of the alleyway into the pantry and hissed a
whisper into the pantryman's ear. "Good God, man, you see what they
are doing. Are we going to do nothing?"
The pantryman cocked his red-pointed beard truculently. "What can we
do?" he snapped.
"Go and bash in an end of one of those Whiteheads, and send the whole
outfit of us to hell together. I'll do the trick. It's worth it."
"The torpedoes won't have their heads filled. They'll do that after
transhipment."
"Then what are you going to do?"
"To use your phrase, sir, you must 'wait and see.'"
"Oh, to the devil with your politics," said Carnforth, M.P., and
flung off in a black rage.
Once from the look-out at the tanker's masthead came an alarm (in
German, of which Captain Kettle could only grasp the general sense),
and work went on at a still more furious pace, though the submarine
was ready to slip and be away at a moment's notice. As certain
people, on their friend, the neutral, seemed restive, they cast loose
the two 3-inch guns they carried forward and aft, and trained them
point blank on the _Grüda's_ bowels. They were unmannerly brutes,
these Germans, but in the business of war they were eminently
business-like. Their motto was, "Win somehow, anyhow. Explain away
awkward details afterwards."
The Whiteheads got handed down without mishap, but an unpleasant
incident came about through the passing across of a 3-inch shell.
Either one of the maltreated Norwegians set the fuse for short time,
or there was a jar that upset the nerves of the high explosive
inside, or some other trifle outside the ordinary routine occurred;
the present deponent is ignorant of the details; but, anyway, the
result was an explosion, half-hearted perhaps, still, anyway vehement
enough to kill outright two German sailors, and seriously damage a
third.
A crisp order spat out from the conning-tower, and all three were
booted over into the Atlantic, and work went on in its smooth
routine. The officers of the submarine had no use for either the
dead or the inefficient.
When they were filled up with fuel and ammunition, they demanded food
and drink--especially drink. The Norwegian captain had no order for
this, and objected. A second afterwards that Norwegian captain was
focusing both his eyes down the black hole which exists in the middle
of a revolver barrel. Expert collectors raided pantry and
storerooms, and the _Grüda's_ pantryman helped them. The pantryman
was thinking hard, but didn't see his way to resist just then. The
pantryman was addressed in German, but not having a good command of
that tongue, replied in fluent Arabic, which he thought at the moment
was less dangerous than English. In the distance a rugged
black-faced stoker danced and raged, but the pantryman declined to
see him.
Finally, when their ship was full of fuel, and munitions, and
provisions, the Germans decided they might stretch their limbs and
their lungs. They were taking no chances, but as their man at the
_Grüda's_ foremast head reported the sea all round as still clear,
they hauled up the chief engineer's two-and-a-half octave harmonium
on deck, and a professional pianist amongst them played waltz tunes.
The rest danced. They danced heavily (being shod with knee boots),
and danced ungracefully, but they danced with energy, as beseems men
who were keeping in condition entirely for the good of their Empire.
When they slackened at all in their dance, one or other of their
officers beat them brutally with a knotted rope's end.
The German officers sat on the engine-room skylight, and drank
Milwaukee beer, which was the only liquor other than water remaining
in the _Grüda's_ store, and smoked their own cigars. They drank this
thin lager to the waltz music at such a rate that the cabin steward
had to call up his pantryman to help open the bottles; and they sat
till they had finished the stock; their crew, be it well understood,
being still employed in that heavy athletic dance.
When no further bottles were forthcoming the German captain gave the
order for all of his hands to get aboard, and followed them himself,
nimbly enough, the submarine lying on the port side of the supply
ship, and curtsying decorously between the booms to which she was
tethered fore and aft.
The Norwegian captain, insulted, flushed, and ashamed, mounted to his
own bridge, and there was present with him also just the
quartermaster at the wheel. On the decks of the submarine men were
battening down the hatches which received the Whiteheads, the stores,
and the petrol. Other hands were standing-by the head and
stern-fasts. She was quite ready to be off again on her cheery game
of murder.
The German captain, somewhat gravid with the beer, climbed by the
outside beckets to the deck of the conning-tower, and then gave the
word to "let go forrard."
At that moment Captain Kettle arrived on the _Grüda's_ upper bridge.
There was no mistaking him for the ship's pantryman, and the
Norwegian captain did not so mistake him. He limped (because of his
carpenter-made wooden leg), he was dressed in steward's kit, but the
Norwegian's words were:
"What do you here, captain?"
There was no time for argument--or for losing the benefit of the
surprise. Captain Kettle threw the Norwegian skipper violently down
the ladder, laid out the quartermaster with a scientific jab on the
point of the jaw, and slammed down the telegraph of the starboard
engine to "Full speed ahead."
The German captain of the submarine, to give him his due, saw the
whole thing as soon as it was done--and two seconds of time covered
it from first to last--and acted on the tick. He also ordered "Full
speed ahead," and though his engines (being Diesels) were a shade
slower in responding, the mass of his vessel was far less than that
of the _Grüda_, and he got way on her far more swiftly. In the
meantime he whipped out an automatic pistol, and bombarded Kettle
with vicious energy.
That small mariner, however, had the height of the _Grüda's_ bridge
in comparison with the low freeboard of the submarine in his favour,
and with the wheel in his hands, as soon as his tanker gathered
steerage way, had the game his own way. Steamer and submarine met
nose to nose almost, as the gap between them grew smaller; and the
_Grüda's_ forefoot scraped down the war vessel's side, unshipping her
starboard diving rudders, and disarranging her fittings generally;
and then Kettle rang on both engines, and the submarine's stern sank
under the pressure, and the larger ship lifted, and drove over the
top of her.
The submarine's conning-tower hatch was still open, and if she had
been allowed due time she would have filled and sunk. But as
frequently happens at sea, the unforeseen intervened.
The _Grüda's_ forefoot dinged in one of her adversary's plates, which
in its turn depressed a stringer, which impinged on one of her stern
torpedo-tubes. The inbending of the tube pressed home the striker of
the Whitehead inside it, and Vesuvius burst forth in the Atlantic off
the Irish Coast. The yell of the explosion was loud enough to split
Heaven. The submarine was a mere magazine of high explosives, and
the firing of the first Whitehead, in-board, touched off all the lot.
When things calmed down again there was no submarine, or trace of
one, the _Grüda_ was badly by the head, and obviously settling down
for good, and a black-faced stoker was on the upper bridge rather
hysterically demanding of high Heaven how Captain Kettle dared do all
these things without consulting him. Captain Kettle from somewhere
had procured a cigar, which he carried, cocked high in the starboard
angle of his mouth, and from which he was smoking complacently. He
was feeling that pleasant satisfaction which comes to a man after a
good morning's work.
The _Grüda_, as it turned out, descended to the sea-floor much more
hurriedly than anyone expected. "The forward bulkhead will keep her
up," said everybody, but either she was holed aft of that, or the
forward bulkhead gave--which, I do not know, and am not going to dive
to the Atlantic floor to discover. Anyway, she started to sink with
alarming suddenness, and the port quarter life-boat's falls proved to
be rotten, and emptied out her people just before she reached the
water. The starboard life-boat was lowered successfully, but would
take neither Kettle nor Carnforth, though why they objected to
Carnforth I fail to see. However, the wireless man, who said he was
a Prussian, and who carried a revolver (and who showed it to them
then) declined to allow their coming on board, and that starboard
boat rowed off in sulky silence.
"We'd better haul up the other boat and provision her," said
Carnforth, who was always cool at sea, even if he was invariably
ignorant of seafaring matters.
"I'm afraid there's no time, sir," said Captain Kettle politely. "If
you will follow me down the falls we'll try and unhook and then swim
away before this steamboat founders and sucks us down with her.
Incidentally, when the cold water gets to the boilers they will
collapse, and may blow her up any minute."
"Oh Lord, man, don't wait to talk," said Carnforth, and slid down one
fall whilst Kettle gained the water by the other. And promptly they
both swam at the full of their speed away from the danger spot,
though when the man with two legs found he was distancing the man
with one, he pretended tiredness and eased his pace.
But the tanker was not long in her agony. She blew out her decks
quite decorously, reared to the vertical, and sank with hardly a
bubble.
"And now," said Captain Kettle, "about-ship, sir, please, and we'll
try and right that boat."
So back they swam, heavily and wearily (being more than middle-aged
men), and reached the boat some five minutes after each had decided
he could swim no longer, but would hang on just to encourage the
other man. They clung to the boat's life-lines, panting, half
delirious with fatigue and chill, but with pluck and stamina pulling
them gradually round.
At last, just as Carnforth was beginning to put in a suggestion that
they should try and right the boat, there came a fresh surprise.
"_W-s-s-h. Sp-l-o-s-sh!_"
"_W-s-s-h. C-r-r-ash!_"
"My Great James!" said Kettle, "that's shellfire," and worked himself
round to the other side of the boat to see further. Then he came
back again, and---- "Keep your head down, sir," said he.
"There's another Dutch submarine turned up."
"What's she firing at?"
"Those wretched Sowegians in the starboard life-boat. She's sunk the
lot of them, and now she's motoring away."
"The brutes! Their own friends, too! The unspeakable brutes. My
God, that's the way Germans make war!"
"Dead men tell no tales, sir. They thought those Sowegians knew too
much. We can thank the Lord, sir, they saw this boat was wrong side
up. We'll wait, if you please, till they're hull-down before we try
to right her."
How that port life-boat was turned on to her keel again, baled, and
navigated to the distant Irish Coast, I do not propose to record
here, as there is another tale connected with it which would be too
long in the telling. But a conversation between Captain Kettle and
Mr. Carnforth whilst they were thawing themselves out with bad whisky
and a peat fire after their landing hangs in my mind.
"Is there a telegraph office here, Pat?" asked the M.P.
"There is then, yer 'annar," said the landlord. "It's the best in
Ireland when the lines is working."
"Good, then, I'll get off a wire."
"I'll be obliged, sir," said Captain Kettle, "if you'd let me send a
message first. I want to get early word to my wife to keep quiet
about that use of Quale's Sheep Dip for roses. It is highly
important she shouldn't talk on the subject. I want you to
understand this means a lot to me, sir."
Carnforth was shaken with a gust of laughter. "Oh, go on, man, by
all means," he said at last. "I was only going to tell the Admiralty
about our bag, and they'll probably want to hang us for piracy and
for doing what they hadn't the sense to think of. But don't you
worry about me. Your message is far more important."
II
THE MINE-LAYER
The _Grimsby Twins'_ otter trawl was down, scratching up fish from
the Dogger below, and John Henry Shepherd, the elder of the twins,
was smoking in the wheelhouse, and keeping the little steamboat
approximately on her course. Arthur Cleethorpes Shepherd, his
brother, and the only other hand on deck, was seated with his back
against the main hatch, reading war news from a stale copy of the
_Grimsby Gazette_.
To them came the strains of ecclesiastical music from the cabin
skylight, proving that Captain Shepherd was awake, and was working
his way through Messrs. Moody and Sankey's "Collection of Hymns."
The steam trawler _Grimsby Twins'_ harmonium had a compass of two
octaves only, but Captain Shepherd was a resourceful man, and when
his music encroached beyond these narrow limits, he whistled the
missing notes with his own lips, very efficiently. Mixed with the
music that came from the skylight there drifted a fine aroma of
onions, hinting that tea (with fried cod sounds) was under way, and
that presently the watch would be changed.
"'Ote fresh i' t' paper, Clee?" called out John Henry.
"Aye, they're asking for more hands for them trawlers they've set on
at mine-sweeping. I wish to God the old man would let us go."
"Well, he won't," said the elder twin in a husky whisper. "Said only
just now when I took the wheel from him that all war was a crime and
a mistake, and recommended me when she was steering easy to put up a
bit of prayer to be delivered from the sin of wanting to chip in.
I've a durn good mind---- Hey, Clee, what's that packet coming out
of the mist ahead there?" He grabbed the binoculars from their box,
and clapped them to his eyes. "It's a Grimsby man GY. 4696! Why
there's no such number."
"Looks to me more like a Dutch boat."
"Looks to me like that Lowestoft craft, the _Bishop Something_."
"_Bishop Argles_. That's her. You can tell by that fancy vane Old
Man Argles shipped on his fore-truck. But she's strangely mucked up.
Those Lowestoft fellows have the queerest ideas of fishing. What for
have they got that big derrick rigged aft?"
* * * * *
It was at this moment the steam trawler _Grimsby Twins_ struck the
mine. She had missed it with her bows by a good fathom, but the drag
of the heavy trawl warp over the quarter made her gait somewhat
crab-wise, and with the help of a lifting swell she dropped down on
the infernal machine almost amidships, so that one of its strikers
was rammed thoroughly home by a downward blow from her starboard
bilge keel.
Captain Shepherd's first intimation of disaster was being plucked
from the harmonium stool by some unseen force, and flung violently
against the cabin roof. The yell of the explosion, and the crash of
smashing steel and iron came to him next, and by the time he had
fallen back to the cabin floor, the stink of the yellow melinite
fumes was making him cough and choke. The companionway was gushing
wreckage and seawater, and he reached the deck by a scramble through
the skylight.
His vessel was in two halves. Already the forward half was cruising
away drunkenly by itself, with four dazed fishermen hanging on to the
windlass; the poop end was sinking visibly; and in the churning water
between the two, there swirled about the dead and shattered bodies of
his two twin sons, one of them headless.
Ice was hot compared with the trawler's skipper's coolness then. In
an instant of time all that he loved in the world, and all that he
owned in the world was plucked from him. He did not whimper; he did
not, after the manner of his kind, bombard heaven and all beneath it
with furious curses; instead he gazed with stolid eyes at the other
trawler looming through the mist ahead, and nodded slowly.
"It's what they said," he muttered, "and what I wouldn't
believe--mines sown broadcast over the North Sea by those
dog-begotten Dutchmen. O God, forgive me for not believing before
what the British Government said, and give me life to pay back a bit
of what I owe. Amen."
After which prayer he jumped overboard and swam to the _Grimsby
Twins'_ boat, which had been blown clear and floated undamaged. Then
he clambered into her, and set about rescuing those of his men who
still floated about on wreckage.
* * * * *
The council of war which decided the fate of some 3,000 men, and (it
is said) no less than five German ships of war, took place in the
trawler's jolly boat some twenty minutes later. There were seven men
on board of her, including Captain Shepherd, as survivors of the
fishing steamer's complement, and two of them were wounded, one
badly. Amongst them, also wet and miserable, and with his fur
stained yellow by the explosive, was Joe, the trawler's cat.
"I suppose most of you think that good old Grimsby's the place we
want to see next?" began Captain Shepherd.
"You pet," said Olssen, the Third Hand.
"I'm no' sure," said McCrae, Chief Engineer, looking hard at his
superior officer.
"You're thinking of Jimmy, Mac?" suggested Captain Shepherd.
"I am, Cap. He was ma' sister's son."
"And he's now down--or parts of him are--amongst the cod on the Bank
below. Olssen, your brother's not here, either?"
"_Nein._"
"Nor your boy, Dick?"
"He was smashed to a pulp, with young Olssen by the winch falling on
them," said old Dick. He clutched at a sob in his throat. "A
splendid lad he was, too, the young beggar. And there were your two
pups and all, skipper. I saw them go out, too, in the middle of that
stinking yellow smoke. We've always been a bit of what you might
call a family ship. Very comfortable, too, and no trouble ever that
meant anything. I'm sorry them cod sounds I was frying for you was
wasted, chaps."
Captain Shepherd nodded to the compliment, and then hit the gunwale a
hard blow with his fist to call the meeting to business. "Look here,
men. We've all suffered, and we've got to get busy if we're going to
show ourselves better than Joe and do anything besides meauling.
I'll own up I've been a man with a wrong idea. I've been led away by
a discourse once given in our chapel which said that at bottom the
Dutchmen were fellers just like ourselves, and only wanted a bit of
argument and some prayers to make them reasonable. That's wrong.
What they want is hell, and I'm the man to give it them. Do you come
in on the usual share terms as arranged for this fishing fleet?"
"If we were fitted as a man-o'-war," said McCrae cautiously, "I'd be
wi' ye on the nod." He indicated with the wave of a hand the heavily
built boat that carried them lumberingly over the fog-covered swells.
"This is all I can see beyond the end of ma' neb at present. But
perhaps you've a scheme, Cap?"
"Aye," said Captain Shepherd heavily, "I have what you might call a
strategy in my head. Man and boy I've fished the Dogger (with short
holidays in the Iceland seas) these forty years, and I know it,
sea-bank and sea-top, better than most. I know the ways of the cod,
I know the thoughts of the men that fish them, and I know the tracks
of the shipping, come fog, come fine, as a North Sea fisherman
should. I got but one short look at yon spawn of Beelzebub that was
laying those mines from Tommy Argles' boat--I bet some language came
out when they cut Tommy's throat, by the way--and she was steering
North an' by East to half a tick-tack. Now do you see the scheme?"
They didn't.
Captain Shepherd went on patiently to explain. "They'll lay one line
of mines across the ship track from South to North, and then when
they've covered it they'll turn and lay another parallel to it, so
that a ship that misses one line will be gathered by the next."
McCrae held up a brown hand and spat into it. "That's sound
metapheesics. Cap, it's a pleasure to listen to ye. Go on."
"We'll pull out West from here; we'll with God's help miss the mines
in the first line--and fellers you can take it from me, He will help
us--and we'll wait for Mister Blessed Murder-Spreader as he comes
down on his next trip. Then we'll get aboard and attend to his
people, and when we've done that, I'll tell you what we'll do next.
Any objections?"
They looked at one another thoughtfully, and conned the matter over.
Your East Coast fisherman is always a mightily independent person,
and sees to it that his private opinion has full weight. But there
was no amendment, and the heavy boat was got under way.
Captain Shepherd, wooden-faced and silent, tucked his arm over an oar
in the stern notch and steered. As utensils of navigation, he had a
watch-chain compass, a big silver watch, and his nose, and he held a
course through the fog as unfalteringly as a keeper might tread
across familiar heather. Thrice they saw steam trawlers from Hull
and Grimsby and Scarboro'; once they were hailed; but they made no
attempt to break their voyage, or even to give hint of its purpose.
They were all of them silent except Joe, the cat. Joe having less
control than his betters, spat and swore aloud as he licked the
yellow melinite stain from his salty fur.
"We don't want the Navy butting in," Captain Shepherd had said as an
afterthought; "we'll make this a fisherman's job; and if afterwards
they say we're a pack of pirates, well, I hope they'll have to own
we're efficient pirates. The dead were our dead, and we're going to
arrange the funeral ceremony without help or interference. Spell-o
at those oars. Two of you other fellers take a turn now."
The mine-laying trawler crossed their track on its return trip
exactly as Captain Shepherd had calculated, and though her look-out
saw them and commented, the officer in charge made no attempt to slow
down or pick them up. But some such courtesy as this had been
anticipated; the boat lay in the steamer's track, stern to bow, and
at full pressure on her oars; and under Captain Shepherd's handling
she presently rasped down the trawler's side. Men who spend their
lives boarding fish on to the carriers in all varieties of North Sea
weather are impossible to beat at that sort of game.
What followed was by no means massacre. The seven men tumbled over
on to the mine-cluttered decks without resistance, certainly, the cat
following them; they had two iron belaying pins amongst them, and
quickly picked up other weapons; but if it had not been for the
surprise of their boarding they would have been driven over into the
sea whence they came in quick time. But the surprise gave them the
first start, and their toughness and the wild ferocity of their
attack did the rest.
Captain Shepherd found an axe, and wielded it bloodily. They cleared
the main deck under a spray of revolver bullets from an officer in
the pilot house. Captain Shepherd went for him, ignoring the
revolver, and got the axe well home on his right shoulder blade. He
clove him through to the middle. There was no asking for or giving
quarter on the English side, and when two or three of the Germans
threw up their hands in surrender they were merely clubbed and slung
overside as though they had been dog-fish.
The invaders cleared the decks of Germans, and then went below to
forecastle, engine-room and cabin, and killed there, leaving only two
alive. These two were English and in the stokehold, and heard hard
things from their saviours about Englishmen who even under duress
work for Germans and do not kill them. "So back to your kennel, you
whipped pups," said Captain Shepherd at the end of his discourse on
their personal appearance and behaviour, "and keep a full head of
steam. We're away to the S'uth'ard and East'ard on pressing
business.... Are you other fellers all sound? Where's Albert Henry?"
"Albert Henry got a bayonet in his stomach, and clapped his arms
round the Dutchman that put it there and jumped with him into the
ditch."
"And I think Hull Harry died just as we boarded. He must have been
worse hurt than we guessed at when the _Twins_ blew up."
"That leaves five," said Captain Shepherd. "You, Olssen, take the
wheel. Your course is Sou' East 'n by East. Mac, get below and
learn up the coffee mill, and rub the fear o' God into those
putty-livers that are firing her. And the rest of you swill down
decks. I'm going to worry out how these mines are launched, and I
want a clear head for it, so don't any of you fellers disturb me....
Oh yes, and there's one other thing. One of you hunt up a Dutch
ensign: they're bound to have one aboard: and get it bent on to the
signal halyards and ready to break out if any of their cruisers
overhaul us."
The fishermen obeyed these orders none too promptly. They were all
of them more or less cut and scratched, and to start with they gave
one another rough first aid. Then (at Dick's suggestion) they raided
galley and larder and pocketed a meal; and then (with food to refer
to between whiles) they started to work, and each, according to the
North Sea habit, set himself to do two men's toil.
In the meantime Captain Shepherd, who had never in his life seen a
floating sea-mine, either on a ship's deck or elsewhere, set to work
to puzzle out from the mass of boiler-iron and steel cable before him
how he could sink, burn, and destroy his hated enemies without
blowing up the steam trawler _Bishop Argles_ in the process. After
he had done a given amount of execution he did not in the least mind
what became of her or for that matter of himself or his crew. He was
a man now entirely reckless, and if he gave a thought for his mates,
concluded they were the same. He had received irreparable injury:
the bigger injury he could do to any German in return, the happier he
would die: that was all.
The ravelling out of the plan for a fleet of floating sea-mines is no
job for an amateur. But Captain Shepherd was not the ordinary layman
in this matter. He was a North Sea fisherman, which is as much as to
say that he was mechanic, sailorman, carpenter and rule-of-thumb
scientist combined, and he picked up intelligently the details of
mooring tackle, riding cables, depth adjustment, striker adjustment,
and all the rest of the intricate detail. He reasoned it out
piecemeal from A to Z, and back again tediously from Z to A, slurring
over nothing, concentrating thoughtfully on every doubtful point till
it became entirely clear. Now and again Joe bumped a sympathetic
nose against his leg, and he always pulled the cat's tail gratefully
in recognition of the attention.