fog. In fine weather Captain Shepherd was no better navigator than
any other man who has grasped the truths of Norie's Epitome. But in
a thick grey blanket of fog, even amongst the fisher skippers there
were few to equal him. With a sluggish compass on a pole, a handful
of tallow smeared into the bottom of a lead, and a nose to sniff the
wet air, he could feel his way from any one part of the North Sea
waste to any other part with unfaltering accuracy.
At intervals a hand would bring the lead to him, and he would examine
and sniff at the arming.--"H'm, sand and small shells, and one of
them brown creepy things, and that crisp brass wire smell. We are
just off the Sou' East corner of that hole where I carried away a
trawl-beam in Nought-one. Tell Olssen to give her half a point more
starboard, and take another cast of the lead in twenty minutes, and
if there's black sand with these same shells, you needn't bother me
for another hour. I guess that half point will just overtake the
drift."
So on across his chosen line to the German coast. Captain Shepherd
did not trouble with charts. He carried an accurate map of the
contours of the North Sea floor in his head, and had resourcefulness
enough for all other requirements.
Once he was hailed by a hurrying German destroyer, but had backed
away into the fog with a ported helm by the time she had come to look
for him, and so escaped inquiries. But the incident gave him an
idea. He went to the engine room skylight, and hailed down to one of
his impressed stokers.
"Hey, you putty-feller there, what did the Dutchmen do with your
fishing gear when they took you?"
"Slung it overboard, sir."
"All of it?"
"All of it except the warps."
"Did they jettison the otter boards?"
"Yes, sir."
"But didn't Captain Argles carry a spare?"
The two stokers consulted. "Yes, sir, there's a spare otter board
used as a floor to one of the fish boxes."
"Good," said Captain, and proceeded to get it on deck. "We'll call
the depth here twenty-six fathoms, and we'll shackle one of these
devil's machines on to the otter board with enough drift of painter
to keep it just under the surface when we're towing it out a quarter
of a mile a-beam of us. How's that, fellers? Take that mine there
marked 32, that's next under the derrick, and handle it like eggs or
it'll go off 'pop,' and that'll be the end of our tale, and our
job'll be left undone. By Crumbs! fellers, be careful. Keep it in
your heads that we've a big stack of these Dutchmen to kill yet
before our own time comes."
Success came that very night. From out of the mist and the darkness,
a German light cruiser came pelting up at a five and twenty knot
gait, with guns nosing round for a prey, and searchlights blazing.
She sighted the trawler, and hove-to with engines working, full-speed
astern, athwart of the _Bishop Argles'_ trawl warp, bawling questions.
"Yaw! Yaw!" shouted Captain Shepherd in polite response, "No
comprenney." And in the meanwhile Mr. McCrae had set the deck winch
going, and hove in on the trawl warp till he drew the mine and its
murderous strikers into place.
It hit the cruiser squarely beneath her bilge, amidships. It blew
her half in two; it exploded some if not all of her boilers, and
these (or the mine) exploded her magazines. Heaven yelled to the din
of the blasts. The fog lit to a flaming yellow. The _Bishop Argles_
rocked and tossed like a cork in a flooded gutter with the shock, and
when the reeking smoke of the melinite blew to him, Joe, the cat,
spat and swore with excited frenzy.
"Good puss then," said Captain Shepherd. "Hates a Dutchman, doesn't
she, as much as any other Christian would? Get the slack of that
trawl warp hove in Mac, will you, and then we'll steam on again.
Back to your course, Olssen."
"You're going to pick none of them up then, Skipper?" asked Dick.
"Their own boats will have been smashed to sticks."
"I will if they'll give me back my boys--and yours, Dick."
"Aye, I thought you'd be that way," said the old fisherman with a
sigh. "Here's a sandwich for you, Skipper. You missed your dinner,
so you'll need it. The meat's some kind of liver sausage with black
things in it, but I fried it with onions, so you'll never notice the
taste. And here's a mug of good hard-boiled tea."
"Thank you, Dick. Now go and take a spell at the wheel and send
Olssen to me aft here. And Dick, if he doesn't seem to want to come,
or if he shows awkward in anyway, throw him over into the pond."
"Aye," said the burly old man, "I was expecting that too, Skipper.
Olssen's a Dutchman of sorts himself."
Olssen came, and was sharply bidden to stand ten feet from his
interviewer. "And now, my man," said Captain Shepherd, "as the only
feller who speaks German on this packet, why the whiskers didn't you
palaver that brass-edged Dutchman when I told you to? Frightened?"
"_Nein_, it was nod dat exactly."
"Kind o' forgot they murdered your brother a few hours ago did you?"
"_Mein Gott, nein._"
"Look here, my feller, what countryman are you? An Olssen should be
some sort of a Souwegian."
"_Deutschland uber alles_," murmured Olssen softly, and rushed.
Captain Shepherd stepped slightly aside, but left one heavy
carpet-slippered foot behind him. Olssen struck wildly, hit nothing,
tripped over the foot, and tumbled over the rail into the North Sea:
where he remained.
"They're everywhere, those Dutchmen," commented Captain Shepherd
patiently, and cut himself tobacco. "They have no feeling for a
brother that's been killed or for anybody else. They'll do with a
lot of weeding out. I must weed."
* * * * *
It was dark again when the _Bishop Argles_ entered the Heligoland
Bight, and she was steaming without lights. Furthermore her
engine-room and cabin skylights were covered with tarpaulins, and the
binnacle light was muffled so that not the smallest ray could escape
seaward. The clothing of her people was dried by now, and Captain
Shepherd's carpet slippers showed their colours in full brilliancy.
A more desperate venture than the one they were set upon, it would be
impossible to find, but none of the bipeds showed emotion. Fishermen
are not a demonstrative lot at any time, and these few survivors of
what was once a happy family ship were perhaps dulled with grief, and
anyway had decided that it was worth dying to encompass a certain
ambition against the enemy, and there was an end of it. So they ate,
drank, kept watches, and behaved as normal fishermen should behave.
Joe, the cat, was the exception. Joe complained personally and
individually to each of the crew in turn (except of course the two
pariahs, in the stokehold) and had his neck tickled or his tail
pulled in good-tempered toleration. Everybody liked Joe, but nobody
was going to be worried too much about his obvious forebodings. He
went to McCrae last of all, as that excellent person came up to cool
off at the fiddley door. Mr. McCrae was wiping grease from his hands
and face with a wad of cotton waste, and thriftily transferring it to
his boots.
"Fey," he said to Dick, who had been trying to tempt the cat with a
bone. "Fey. That's what ails the puir beastie. I thought second
sight of that kind was confined to humans. Here's a proof to the
contrary. It would be a vera' interesting topic to write an article
on for the _E'mbro' Review_ if ever we get hame again, which we
shalln't. Dick, there was an eye in that egg you fried for ma'
breakfast this morning. I'll trouble you to pick the meaty bits out
in the future. They're ower rich for ma' stomach."
A new danger cropped up as they neared their goal. The British Navy
both on the water and below it, though mostly below it, was keeping
watch and ward on the German ships that were cooped up inside.
Captain Shepherd instinctively decided that the British Navy would
not accept him as an ally on any terms whatever. He felt the point
of view to be narrow-minded in the highest degree, but saw no means
just then of changing it. He had no time at the moment to stop and
argue an ethical point with the British Navy. So he did his best to
avoid conversation with any of its units.
Twice, snaky destroyers sighted him, and turned in to speak, but the
fog held his friend, and his old tactics of going astern on a
swerving helm carried him out of reach. He chuckled as one of them
let off a rapid stream of gun fire at some other object which they
mistook for the trawler amongst the sea-mists.
But it was the submarines that worried Captain Shepherd most. A hand
reported "There's a drainpipe cruising alongside us to starboard,
Skipper."
Well, there it was, an insignificant periscope, with a trifling wake
of white water behind it, and nothing to show if it was British or
German, or, for that matter, Venezuelan. There would be a hull down
below too, twice as big as the _Bishop Argles_ and full of men only
too keen to interfere with his righteous work.
Captain Shepherd at last got seriously annoyed. His red face inside
its frame of grizzled whiskers deepened to a fine plum colour. "Hard
a port with that helm," he ordered. "Hard over with it now--yes, and
steady on that. I'll make that chap dive, or I'll scrape his
deckplates."
And dive is what the submarine promptly did. Her periscope slid
under water as though it had been pulled down by a string, and the
little steamboat lumbered over her without touching, and drove ahead
down the North Sea without scathe from her torpedoes. Perhaps they
thought she was an ordinary blundering trawler, and it was an even
chance whether she was their own friend or an enemy ship. Captain
Shepherd could not tell her captain's thoughts. He did not even know
if the submarine was a British or a German craft. But they saw her
no more. Perhaps, again, when once more she got her eye above water
and could see, the _Bishop Argles_ had vanished in the fog. There is
a large element of chance in modern sea-warfare. Anyway Captain
Shepherd and his fellow fishermen were satisfied. They were fully
decided that none of them liked submarines.
But it was to one of these sub-aqueous craft--and the probabilities
point to its being German--that they owed their pilotage through the
enemy's most dangerous defences. A periscope appeared out of the
gloom on their starboard hand, and converged in to their course ahead.
"Follow that feller," said Captain Shepherd to Dick who was in the
wheelhouse, and applied himself to a study of the seascape through
his night glasses.
"Appears 's if he's trolling for mackerel," observed Dick, as
presently the periscope swerved off on a new course.
"Follow every turn he makes, to a fathom," said Captain Shepherd.
"We're going through a hedge of mines just now, and I shouldn't like
to spoil any of them. So as he's got the chart of how they're laid,
and we haven't, we'll just keep narrowly in his wake. But as there
may be other Dutchmen wanting to use this same gap in the hedge after
us, I reckon we'll just put a bramble or two in it that may scratch
them. Mac?"
"Yes, Cap."
"Don't bawl so loud, Mac. That drainpipe affair ahead there may have
ears as well as an eye, for all we know. Just get aft, and dump in
them boilers numbered 32 and 37 over the counter as quick as you
like. The moorings are ready shackled on at the right depth, so
there's nothing to delay you."
"Right, Cap," said the engineer, and with the help of a couple of
hands set about his work. He spat on each mine for luck as they
lowered it over the stern.
"Amazing queer dance this chap is taking us," said Dick, with his
eyes on the faint phosphorescence of the periscope's wake. He sawed
hard at the wheel, with a busy clatter of cogs. "There you are
again. Can you take her through this dance backwards again d'ye
think, Skipper?"
"No, Dick. For one reason Mac's sealing up the hole behind us. For
another we're--we're going into harbour, Dick. We shall see your boy
and mine inside an hour from now. D'ye mind?"
"That's all right, Skipper. You and I have been good shipmates for a
long time now, and we never differed on anything that mattered. We
shalln't differ on this anyway. I'm damn sorry I cooked so badly for
you sometimes, that's all."
"Only person I'm really sorry about is poor old Joe. He's no special
quarrel against these Dutchmen, and he knows what's coming as well as
any Christian, and hates it fit to burst himself. I did think of
heading him up in a cask with a couple of pounds of meat, and setting
him adrift to get a chance. But he might fall into Dutchmen's hands,
and they're such cruel devils, Dick. After the way they killed my
two--my two splendid--oh God damn them, Dick. Joe'll be better off
if he stays aboard here and takes his gruel like the rest of us.
"Now let me think"--He conned over in his head the bearings of the
zigzag course, and mentally reckoned the length of each leg--"We
shall be just over the twenty-five fathom patch, and the North East
point of Heligoland will be bearing about due West, or say West 'n by
North. H'm." He took a cast of the lead himself to make sure, and
smiled with professional appreciation of his own skill when the
depth, and the matter brought up by the arming of tallow, proved the
accuracy of his mental reckoning.
"You may send her along----" he began, when the deep boom of a big
syren close at hand drowned the words. It was answered by another,
lighter in note, on the trawler's other side, and two rockets sped up
into the fog from two more ships ahead. He put his lips to Dick's
hairy ear and bawled. "We're right in amongst the fleet of them, and
if we don't look quick, we shalln't get our work done. Gimme that
wheel, and do you go aft and tell Mac to get those mines overboard
and into the water as quick as he can whip them off the deck."
Somehow, and I hardly think it could have been from the submarine
that unconsciously piloted them through the mine-field, the Germans
had got wind of an enemy's presence, and an alarm spread round the
invisible fleet with furious noise and bustle. Syrens with long
blasts and short boomed messages; searchlights made the fog
iridescent, but did not penetrate it; and there was all the
indescribable turmoil and alarm of a great war fleet caught at anchor
by an invisible destroyer that had penetrated their outer and inner
defences.
The fishermen were the only people who took it coolly. They had
their work to do, and did it, as though it was their daily routine.
Mine after mine--German-made--was lifted from their decks and dropped
into the still water astern, and Captain Shepherd in the steering
pulpit leaned over the spokes of the wheel, and wove his way
accurately between the loudest of the noises.
Launches and picket boats at high speed began to pant by them unseen
through the fog. One of these presently fouled one of the drifting
mines, and blew it up with an appalling explosion. And then some big
ship got an attack of the nerves and fired into what necessarily must
have been one of her own boats with every light gun she could bring
to bear.
"They're beginning to pay," said Captain Shepherd at the wheel. "Oh
Lord, give me time to send in more of the bill, and make them pay at
least half what's owing." He glanced over his shoulder at the after
deck--"Mac."
"Yes, Cap."
"When you get to the last two of them boilers, hang one over each
quarter, and tell me."
"Right," said McCrae and waved a hand.
Other spurts of firing burst out, and then there was a crash as some
launch's boiler exploded to a shell, and the shrill scream of hurt
men.
"The Dutchmen will call this a raid by the whole British Fleet in
to-morrow's papers," commented Captain Shepherd. "They'll never own
up they've been shooting into their own ships. By whiskers! I shall
have to look lively now. All this firing's bringing on a breeze
that'll clear the fog. Yes, Mac?"
"They're all over in the ditch, Cap, bar those last two. I've slung
one on either quarter, as you said."
"Thank you, Mac." The wheel went over and the _Bishop Argles_ headed
for the line of invisible ships, where the noise of defence was
loudest.
They sighted her when she was a hundred yards away, and saluted her
with a very tornado of fire. Her funnel was shorn off close to the
fiddley top by a shell from a great gun, which did not explode there,
but acted against a friend in the further line. Rifle bullets and
small shells from quick-firers swept over her like a hailstorm, and a
score of heavier missiles skated along her rusty iron sides. But she
was end-on, and so as a target she was small, and there is no doubt
that the gunners were scared and nervous. The German at the range
and the German in action are two very different marksmen.
Normally, at ten knots, that hundred yards' run should have taken
about one-third of a minute, but some of the shells had penetrated
between wind and water and the trawler was sinking fast, and dropping
pace every second.
"Go on, old girl," Captain Shepherd urged. "H'ep now, just another
score of fathoms, and that's all I ask from you. Joe, you brute, get
off my shoulder, or don't claw."
The little steamer with her engines by a marvel untouched, and with
her burden of mines by a greater marvel unexploded, drew up to the
great battle cruiser with still some free-board showing, and then
Captain Shepherd rammed his helm hard-a-port. Her bow almost scraped
along the war ship's flank, and her stern swung in. There was a lull
in the big gun's fire as they could not be depressed enough to get
their sights on her, and the riflemen were firing from the hip and
hurting their friends across the way. And then the starboard quarter
of the _Bishop Argles_ swung in against the big cruiser's side just
below the forward barbettes, and the mine was cracked between them,
and a volcano burst forth that rivalled Etna.
Gun ammunition blew up on board of her, and then a magazine. Boilers
caught the infection, and then more gun ammunition, and more
magazines. The huge ship blew to pieces piecemeal, and sank
compartment by compartment. But she went to the sea floor none the
less efficiently. And she was one of the biggest cruisers on the
world's navy list. As for the trawler, she was spread as mere scum
on the troubled waters of the Heligoland Bight.
* * * * *
Now this ought to be the end of the tale. But history compels me to
record that Captain Shepherd still resides in England. Odd to
relate, he seems well off. In his house is an enlarged photograph of
two young men, curiously alike, and in that wooden attitude affected
by fishermen when they face the camera. It is framed simply in oak,
but the frame is notable. It is studded thickly with curious bronze
spikes, which the intelligent observer will recognize, after thought,
as once having been carried on the helmet of German infantry men, at
the rate of one spike one man.
There are seventy-six spikes round the frame.
A queer-looking tabby tom cat, with one ear missing, and a foreleg
that has been broken and badly mended limps round the garden with
Captain Shepherd. If you shake anything yellow at this cat, he spits
at you.
But how these latter things came to pass cannot be related here.
They belong to another tale.
Underneath the portraits is a newspaper cutting, also framed, which
runs thus:--
"_New York_. Berlin reports by wireless that a British destroyer
flotilla made a determined raid on a German fleet last night, off
Heligoland. The British loss was thirteen destroyers sunk and three
captured. Their loss in men was very heavy. The Germans had one
unimportant cruiser slightly damaged."
III
COTTON
The trouble about this tale is that the best bits may not be written.
If they were written, and put in print, I personally should be
clapped in gaol. Of course, in the good cause of enlightening the
public (at so much per reader) I might be expected with reason, at
any rate in theory, to welcome gaol or worse. But this would not be
the end. The book in which the dangerous article appeared would be
suppressed promptly. It would merely be a case of martyrdom without
result. So the very much expurgated tale may be given (without
prejudice) as follows:--
The man who brought the whole thing about was an actor.
About his acting powers I can say nothing, never having seen him on
the boards, and being unwilling to take his own word for his
histrionic powers. But about his personal appearance there was no
doubt. Young Arthur Hunter saw him first coming up the road to the
farm.
"Grandfather," said he, "there's a man coming up from the road."
"Ah," said Captain Kettle from behind the _Craven Herald_.
"And Grandfather, he's--he's an actor."
"Mind you never come as low as that," said Sir Owen, stretching out a
hand to hitch his wooden leg into an easier position.
"And Grandfather--Grandfather! _He's coming to the front door!_"
"I'll go myself," said Captain Kettle, getting briskly to his feet.
"You stay here, boy."
The caller stood on the door-step, swept off his hat, stood
bare-headed, and bowed. "Captain Sir Owen Kettle, K.C.B., I believe?
I have not brought a letter of introduction, as I felt you would say
it was not needed. I am Holly Holroyd."
"I don't know you, and I never heard of you."
"Then I am afraid you have been out of touch with the Profession
these last two years."
"On the contrary, though retired, I take in _The Syren and Shipping_
and read it from cover to cover, including advertisements, every
week."
"Ah, you do not take me, Sir Owen. I meant, of course, the
theatrical profession. All England that goes to a theatre knows that
my 'Jasper Kay' in 'The Reptile' was the finest thing in juvenile
leads that has ever been seen on the stage."
The sailor's red torpedo beard stuck out unpleasantly. "I've never
been inside a theatre in my life. What do you want?"
"Your help and advice."
"If you go round to the kitchen door the girl will give cheese,
bread, and a glass of beer."
"Thank you, Sir Owen, but this is a little premature. I hope to feel
my knees under your good old mahogany whilst we compare reminiscences
over your good old port a little later. Sweetly quaint old spot
you've settled down in here, Sir Owen, and you can believe me when I
say I'm a judge. I was land-agent to Sir Berkeley Craig before I
joined The Profession. But am I not keeping you standing here too
long?"
"You are. Good afternoon."
"You don't take me. I was going to suggest that you should smoke one
of my prime cigars in your study--I have them specially blended and
made for me in Havana, with my name printed in three colours on the
band."
"I import my own cigars direct from a tobacconist in Skipton, and I'm
not out to buy any 'Just-as-goodados' at the door."
"Sir Owen, you are a tough guardian of your own privacy. I see I
must give you the password. I have come to speak to you
on--hist!--England. Ha! You get me now?"
Captain Kettle stood squarely in his doorway and nodded towards the
field opposite. "That pond down there, with the ducks on it," he
explained, "is deep, and you haven't told me if you can swim. If
you've business, say in three words what it is. If you waste any
more of my time, you'll bathe. Got that?"
"You are a man after Holly Holroyd's own heart, Sir Owen--brisk and
curt and business-like. The stage, I'll admit it, leads one to
rigmarole. You should have seen me in former days when I was on the
Stock Exchange. But to my business, and in three words, as you say.
Do these thrill you? Cotton; Germany; Stop?"
"Not a bit. They're in the paper every morning. If you'd a workable
plan for stopping cotton, there might be something in that."
"Holly Holroyd is the one man in this Empire who has that plan. Are
we observed?"
"We are. Those ducks are listening for all they're worth. Come in
if you like. But if you waste my time, and I tell you I'm in the
middle of a very important article on manures in the _Craven Herald_,
you'll learn what a duck's life really is."
"M'Lord, lead on," said Mr. Holroyd with simple dignity. "An I
capture not your interest, may I be writ down failure and dolt."
Now, from a commencement so unpromising, it says a good deal for Mr.
Holroyd's power of persuasion that he gained so tough a subject as
Captain Kettle as ally through the medium of less than an hour's talk.
"This War," he said, as he got into a chair, "this War is kept going
by our politicians. I suppose we're agreed on that, Sir Owen?"
Captain Kettle stared. Then he got a box of cigars from a cupboard
in the wall and offered them.