London picture papers, moved across to France, where it was known to
the vulgar as the All-Skirt Warriors, and was avoided by those in
authority. It wore the choicest thing in top-boots and a bushranger
hat, and as long as it was peaceful and did nothing it was allowed to
stay. When it began to flirt with the wounded subaltern in quantity,
it was sent off home one-time, with a flea in its ear. And Dr.
Brown, refusing shelter under the friendly ancestral roof, and
feeling mightily ashamed of herself for the company she had fallen
into, fled to the wilds of Wales to hide her scalding blushes. It
was during one moonlit night of penitence that she saw a submarine
sneak in and suck up supplies from some unseen store beneath the seas.
In the first throb of interest she was minded to go with her news
direct to the Admiralty. But with breakfast and reflection she
changed her mind. She remembered the brutal treatment lately meted
out to her by the Admiralty's sister institution, the War Office, and
was minded to take the credit of whatever praise befell personally,
and to sail for the moment under the somewhat forgotten banner of the
suffragettes. As a point of fact, she cared not one straw for the
creed of the suffragettes, but in war--which this was going to
be--one needs a flag. Even pirates fly a skull and marrowbones,
argent on sable.
As she professed no knowledge of seacraft, an executive was a
necessity, and at once a name leapt to her memory. Years ago she had
met Sir Owen Kettle for an hour on shipboard, and had never forgotten
him. Here was her man, if only she could get him. She delved his
address in Wharfedale from Who's Who, and took train for Grassington
within the hour.
I pass over a somewhat thorny interview with Lady Kettle, who "though
a business lady herself" regarded "female doctors as indelicate," and
get on to the point where Captain Kettle, somewhat by stealth, joined
her at a six-house village on the Welsh seaboard. Lady Kettle
disliked her husband having truck or dealing with any women whatever
outside his own household, and made no bones about saying so, and the
little mariner came armed to the fray with strict admonitions on
these lines, as well as his own natural bashfulness.
The tale, when it had been told him at first had been sufficiently
sensational, but it had grown thinner under discreet
cross-examination. The lady was doubtful about locality, and she did
not know if the submarine was British or German. No, she didn't
think it could have been a fishing-boat she had seen that night; she
was morally certain it must have been a submarine, though she could
not describe it in any way, and she could give no details of how the
vessel was getting the petrol inboard, or where it was coming from.
Only she was convinced that was what the boat was there for. "You
must trust a woman's intuition," said Dr. Mary Brown. But Captain
Kettle didn't. He was always a man without imagination.
"If they've a lot of petrol tins anchored at the bottom of this bay,"
said Captain Kettle, "it's likely they'll have some sort of a buoy
made fast to the end of the mooring."
"Then we could see it from the shore."
"Not necessarily, if the buoy is merely a bit of wood just awash.
But we could hunt for it, Miss, in a boat, if you think it worth
while."
"Call me Doctor, please. Of course it's worth while. I'll hoist my
suffragette flag on that submarine before many days are over, when
you catch it for me, Captain. And in the meanwhile I have a boat, a
motor-boat, round at the fishing harbour. We can bring her here and
leave her in that cove of rocks at the foot of the cliff there, when
we're not using her."
This they did, and during three days quartered the sea without
success, and Captain Kettle grew even more sceptical. But he stuck
manfully to the night watching, which Dr. Brown soon found wearying.
And then, to his surprise, came fulfilment, as has been recorded
above.
Dr. Mary Brown has admitted that she had half a mind to follow
Captain Kettle when he left her to stalk the submarine, but was
deterred by the shrewd notion that he would shake her if she came up
to him. She was sure he would shake her politely, but was confident
he would do it efficiently. So being a young woman with a full sense
of her own dignity, she decided to do as she was told for the time
being.
But it was tedious work waiting. The Germans, as she could see
through the glasses now that she had got accustomed to them, were
full of activity. The submarine was still awash, and wavelets
splashed in mimic surf at the foot of her conning-tower. There was
little to attract the eye in that dark night unless one was looking
for it specially. The Germans might be replenishing their petrol
store, but Dr. Brown could not swear to it. In fact, if plain
evidence was needed, she could swear to little, and she realized this
and felt inclined (in a purely feminine way, of course) to swear at
much.
And in the meanwhile Captain Kettle had disappeared into the
blackness of the night, and might, for all she knew, have thrown up
the whole affair in disgust and returned to his farmhouse
headquarters and bed.
Then, like a trick in a theatre, clouds slid away from the moon, and
a green-grey submarine and her people were shown dished up
brilliantly on a glittering metallic sea. But as the scene was lit,
a man crawled out from the broken water on her submerged after-deck,
whipped a revolver from some pocket in his sodden clothes, and sent
three shots in brisk succession. Two men on the conning-tower fell
over into the sea. The third staggered, and in his turn produced a
weapon. But his fire was returned in style, and his knees collapsed
under him.
The man on the submerged deck limped to the base of the
conning-tower, climbed it, and emptied the remaining two shots from
his revolver down the open hatch. Enough light came up this hatch to
illumine Captain Kettle's face, and Dr. Brown shivered when for the
first time she saw it in fighting trim. At the same time, she was
thrilled with the exultation the female always feels for the fighting
male, and, inconsistently enough, felt a sudden distaste for that
plump and matronly person, Lady Kettle. If only that unnecessary
woman were out of the way, she, Mary Brown--"Pish!" said Dr. Brown,
and frowned angrily.
Shots came from below, and the invader's own pistol was empty. He
stripped two from the fallen Germans, and blazed away with these. He
was deliciously resourceful. Then he clapped down the lid of the
hatch, sticking an iron bar in it so that it should not shut
completely, and then with a length of wire rope lashed it firmly in
place. With this much to the good, he proceeded in leisurely fashion
to wring the surplus water from his clothes and to knead his collar
into reputable shape.
The submarine was tethered by nothing stouter than an armoured rubber
hose to something unseen in the black waters off her starboard
quarter. She had no anchor down, nor so much as a line to the oil
source, whatever it was. She was kept in position by her engines
only, and was ready for an instant start at the smallest scare. The
oil, by the way, was a heavy, tar-like stuff, and by no means the
petrol which Dr. Mary Brown had diagnosed; and how it was stored at
the bottom of the sea Captain Kettle did not know, and, for the
moment, did not care.
His main business, for the time being, was to capture that German
submarine intact. He felt at the moment he would like to have on his
tombstone: "Inventor of the Wharfedale Particular Methodists. Also
first to capture a German submarine."
Now, the Germans below-decks on their part by no means went to sleep.
Dive they could not, by reason of an unshut hatch, but motor away for
the open sea they could and did. The armoured hose pulled thin and
burst with the first of the strain, and Captain Kettle, to his
disgust and annoyance, was sprayed from head to foot with stinking
fuel oil. But he saw then how the oil was stored beneath the waters
of that Welsh bay.
Thereafter, he was swirled rapidly away towards the open sea. He
tried at first to control things somewhat with the conning-tower
steering-wheel, and did, indeed, contrive to make the submarine take
an alarming sheer towards the rocks. But they straightened her out
smartly enough with the propellers, and then took matters out of his
hands by disconnecting the upper deck wheel and steering her
themselves from below. So the sailor blinded them by taking the coat
of one of the fallen Germans and wrapping it round the head of the
periscope and stopping it there with a piece of spunyarn, and then
whilst casting around him for further resources of annoyance, came
across a cigar-case and a box of lights on the floor of the
conning-tower.
"Belonged to that first officer I shot," he mused. "Well, I hope he
knew more about choosing tobacco than he did about looking after his
ship. By James, I've got her like a sprit-sail-yarded shark. She
can do nothing but bustle along on the top of the water like a
blinded fool. Only trouble is, she'll blunder into somebody's sight
if only she goes on long enough in this flurry, and I shall have to
take help, as likely as not from some Navy man, instead of doing the
job myself. By James, I should hate that. I must think a way out of
this, and in the meanwhile I'll give them wet feet to keep them busy."
There was a roll of canvas, for sea-going bulwarks, lashed down at
one corner of the conning-tower's top, and from this Kettle contrived
a very simple and efficient water scoop, leading from the bitts on
the submerged foredeck, and delivering its contents through the gap
which the iron bar caused in the fit of the conning-tower hatch. The
interior of the submarine received from it a foaming cataract of
sea-water. As a tribute to the scoop's efficiency the speed of the
submarine was promptly eased, till her pace was too slow to force the
water up from the water level below.
Captain Kettle shook his head doubtfully. "By James," he commented,
"these beastly Dutchmen are getting on. They know enough now to get
in out of the wet. They aren't the easy proposition they used to be.
If I'd time I could write some poetry on that." He chewed hard on
his cigar, and stared out thoughtfully through the night.
In the meanwhile Dr. Mary Brown's short supply of patience had
completely evaporated. Moreover, her feet and her back were both
unpleasantly cold. So she made up her mind to ignore Captain
Kettle's explicit instructions, and got up with a haughty air, and
with elevated nose marched resolutely down to the cove behind the
rocks where her motorboat bobbed to its moorings. Captain Kettle and
her--_her_--submarine had disappeared seaward into space without
explanation, and she was going to see into the reason why without
further delay. She might have a sneaking admiration for Captain
Kettle--she might--well, that did not matter. The thing for the
moment was to prove to this small man with the red torpedo beard that
she was all of a woman, and not to be trifled with or neglected. And
for the time being it may be freely owned that she had forgotten all
about the suffragette flag, and was sailing under the banner of her
own injured dignity. Whip up her submarine--here--from under her
very nose, and walk off with it? She'd let him see.
She cranked up her engine, and for a wonder it started readily, and
then tucking herself down to the wheel and advancing spark and
throttle to the full, she swished hardily out into the darkness.
By luck the little zephyr of wind had dropped, and the sea was
glassily smooth. The boat was fast, and Dr. Brown felt the
exhilaration of her speed. What was going to be done when she
reached the Germans she did not know, but she was firmly determined
Captain Kettle should not do it without her. Of her life up to then
she felt she had made a mess, but she saw visions of a brilliant
future. Those visions embraced Captain Sir Owen Kettle. His
position in the limelight should be little inferior to her own. But
he would have to alter some of his ways. He must be taught that lady
doctors were the equals of any male practitioners, and the superiors
of most. And, above all things, he must give up his detestable habit
of praising patent medicines.
Captain Kettle, in a German officer's dry cap and overcoat, received
her without enthusiasm. "Miss," said he, "I wish to James you were
safely at home and in bed. This iron box is packed with Germans, and
they're swine. There ought to be a law passed that no lady should go
within a hundred fathoms of any German. But now you are here I'll
not deny that your boat may have its use."
"Call me Doctor, please, not Miss. What is it you want? Our flag?"
Captain Kettle restrained his remarks. "Here," he said, "come
alongside, please, and I'll make you fast. You can step aboard here
and tell the Germans through this slit in the hatch that you want a
vote, and I'll get busy on something that matters. Starboard your
helm please, Miss."
Doctor Brown stamped, but did as she was told. Presently the
motor-boat, with stopped engines, rode to a tow-line alongside the
conning-tower, with the sea-water slicing up between them. Captain
Kettle stepped across to the smaller craft, and busied himself inside
her engine hatch. He emerged presently with a pair of wires.
"Now, Miss," said he in a whisper, "our Dutchman can't see through
his periscope, and he's steering by compass. He's got a sort of
pole-compass in the roof of his conning-tower, and he's getting his
bearings now by looking up at it from underneath. These wires come
from your sparking coil, and I'm going to take a turn with them round
his binnacle. They'll make the compass cant either to the Eastward
or the West--we shall have to find out by experiment which wire has
to go on to which terminal, and I shall have to bring the bight
towards the compass very gradually. We must go softly. These
Dutchmen are not to be sneezed at nowadays; they're getting to know
quite a thing or two of the white man's savvy; and if they guess
we're tampering with their compass, they'll as likely as not do the
bang opposite to what I want. So quietly does it."
"Ye--es," said the lady.
"Of course, Miss, as you say you're a doctor, you'll understand all
about it, and will be quite competent to manage the trembler end."
Dr. Brown squeezed the little mariner's arm ecstatically. She had
not the vaguest notion of what Captain Kettle was talking about, but
she felt that now at last they understood one another, and said so in
a few well-chosen words. The sailor very nervously pulled his arm
away, and climbed back to the submarine as fast as his wooden leg
would let him, and thereafter found his orders attended to,
frequently with correctness, and always with enthusiasm.
The process of deflecting the German's compass by an induced current
was a delicate one, and officially Captain Kettle was no electrician.
But a man who has earned his living as a master mariner in the
British mercantile marine through any reasonable number of years is
always competent to turn his hand to anything, from abdominal surgery
to tea-planting. The real niceness of the operation lay in the fact
that the little sailor had to carry in his head an invisible course
over an invisible sea, and jockey the German's compass so that she
should steer to it neither more nor less.
As luck would have it, the moon had slid back again behind coy
clouds; the bold headlands of Wales had dissolved out into starless
dark; and the ordinary man, stuck out there in that lonely sea with
only a compass known to be lying, would have felt as hopeless as a
blind puppy on a prairie. Captain Kettle, however, held on to his
work with a brazen confidence. He probably had some glimmer of his
bearings not to be guessed at by the lay mind, and if he had not, he
showed no tremor; and, anyway, Dr. Brown, who "found the compass
detestable even when it was working" (as she confesses in her
Memoirs) had the fullest confidence in his skill and knowledge. She
wanted to board the submarine; she even demanded this as a right, and
the shy sailor, with the dread of companionable fingers on his
shoulder, was hard put to it to keep her at a safe distance in the
motor-boat.
Just as the chill of dawn was gripping them, they came in sight of
the trawler.
To be precise they nearly ran her down, but by dint of some
manipulation of wires that verged on the miraculous, Captain Kettle
gave a jolt to the compass (and incidentally to the nerves of the
German quartermaster below) and the submarine swerved like an eel and
escaped the blow.
Now in the ordinary course of events, that should have been the
beginning and end of the episode. German submarines are notoriously
unhealthy for British fishing craft, and this one was as unmistakably
German as the trawler (by her marks) was indisputably a Grimsbyman.
The steam trawler _Ulfrida Crump_ she was by name, and the fishy
smell of her caused Captain Kettle emphatically to spit. Her habits,
however, were peculiar. She sidled down alongside and began to
talk--in German.
Captain Kettle had, as his record shows, the gift of tongues, but it
had always been a matter of pride with him never to speak German.
His habit was to force Germans with whom he came in contact to speak
one of the civilized languages--English for choice. But in this
process of strenuous tuition he had picked up a good understanding
knowledge of the tongue, and it was of use to him now.
"Miss," he whispered huskily down to Dr. Brown, "lie down in the
bottom of that motor-boat, please, and don't shift till I tell you.
They think by my cap and coat I'm a blessed Dutchman. There's going
to be some fancy shooting in about ten ticks. The _Ulfrida Crump's_
got into bad hands."
"I've--I've got a revolver of my own here."
"Then for the Lord's sake drop it over into the ditch. I'd be as
nervous as a canary with a new bath if you started any fancy shooting
down there."
The stream of voluble German from the steam trawler's pilot house
changed in tone from civility to menace.
"If you don't stop that language, you cross-eyed son of a Dutch
thief," shouted the little sailor grimly, "I'll come across to that
packet and kick your backbone through your hat."
The German gaped. Then, "_Gott strafe_----" he began, and lugged at
something in his pocket.
"You must be a lot quicker on the draw than that, my lad," said
Kettle as he shot him, "to have a chance of growing up in this wicked
world. The rest of you aboard there, listen. The next man who tries
to pull a gun, or to get on to that topside deck, drops too. And by
James, let me tell you, you Dutchmen are a jolly sight easier to
shoot than Upper Wharfedale rabbits, though less interesting when
dead."
A man, with both hands thrust high above his head, stammered a reply:
"But, Most Gracious, you do not understand. We are your relief ship.
Our own was sunk. We took this, and transferred our supplies. And
here we are as good Germans as yourself, though sailing in this
condemned trawler."
"What did you do with the English crew? Can they tell tales?"
"Oh, that is all right, Gracious Herr. We set them swimming. You
would have laughed to see them in their high boots. We laughed, I
tell you. They did not swim for long. All is safe. This is war,
and it does not do to leave these things to chance."
"I see. She carried about ten of a crew. I suppose?"
"Thirteen, Gracious Herr."
"It's an unlucky number. Unlucky for them, poor devils, and just as
unlucky for you."
"_Herr Gott!_ What----"
"Half a minute. How many of the blighters alongside you understand
English?"
"English? What, you are English? Has our U-boat been captured?
Say, are you English?"
"As a matter of birth, I am Welsh, though it is an item that is often
overlooked by those who know me. But for working purposes you can
call me English, and not be far out. There, I told you not to try
and shoot, and now you've got it in the department where you stow the
sausage, a very dangerous place according to the doctors."
Captain Kettle slipped from his perch, and stood on the plating
below, knee-deep in swirling sea-water. A hailstorm of bullets
whistled across the top of the conning-tower, and continued to
whistle. The Germans had good aim, but little moderation. At
intervals Captain Kettle peeped from the shelter of the
conning-tower, and took rapid shots. He seldom missed. He had
always been deadly with a revolver, and of late years on the
Wharfedale farm, practice with a shot gun at rabbits which dodged in
and out of the limestone rocks of Craven, had if anything smartened
his eye.
A smothered voice came from the motor-boat below. "Are you killed,
Captain?"
"As right as the mail, thank you, Miss. I've only one trouble."
"What is it? C--can I do anything?"
"If you could provide me with a rhyme to 'Submarine' I'd be happier.
I've just been making up the dinkiest little verse you ever listened
to, and it's stuck in the last line."
At this point a muffled risp-rasping noise obtruded itself on Captain
Kettle's attention, and he looked up and noted that some one had
pushed a hacksaw through the gap in the conning-tower hatch and was
vigorously cutting at the wire rope that held it down. The sailor
seized the end of the tool and pulled. The owner at the other end
pulled too, and he was, if not the stronger, at least as strong a
man. But Kettle with a flick broke the brittle blade, and then with
a sharp wrench snapped the cast-iron spreader, and--"Uneasy lot these
Dutchmen are," he commented. "If I don't look out they'll be giving
trouble yet, and I suppose there must be thirty of them still
stinking away together inside this tin box. I did design taking them
ashore for the Government to pamper, but I'm sure the country would
be better if I made good Germans of them here in the wet. As for
those blighters on the _Ulfrida Crump_, they've followed their
beastly nature and laughed in the wrong place once too often, and
they're going to hell fire as soon as it can be managed. Yes, Miss?"
"If you're really in earnest, would 'Britain's Queen' do for your
rhyme?"
"Perfectly, Miss, and thank you greatly. We've a King in charge at
the moment, but I can work in his lady wife all right. Let me think
now.... 'Huns obscene' ... Ah, got that swine with the blue nightcap
fairly in the liver wing. That makes five I've bagged on the
_Ulfrida Crump_, Miss. Not bad, for an early morning's shoot.
There, I thought so. The blighters are sheering off out of pistol
range."
"Oh, what are they going to do now?"
"Try and worry out how to communicate with their fellow-sausages in
the tin coffin here, Miss, and then try to join forces and eliminate
us. I tell you that bit of verse is coming into shape grandly, Miss."
"Please don't frivol, and for goodness' sake call me Doctor. Can't
you see that everything's deadly serious? I do believe you're
actually enjoying yourself."
The little sailor heaved an immense sigh. "Miss, it's abominable,
but I've been in places I've liked. worse. You see, between you and
me, up on the farm in Wharfedale there are moments (for a man that's
spent a busy life) when it is a bit quiet; though, of course, there
is always the chapel on Sunday to look forward to, and my sermon to
get up. Lady Kettle," he added rather bitterly, "has had the
advantage of occupying our pulpit these last two Sundays, and, if
she's increased the congregation of the Wharfedale Particular
Methodists, I'll eat my wooden leg. She's a clever woman, a vastly
clever woman, Miss, but she's not got the knack of preaching to suit
the stomachs of our chapel members, and that's a fact. I wish you
could see our chapel, Miss, on a nice, rainy Sunday in autumn----"
"Look, Captain, look! The Germans are trying to press up that
lid--thing."
"Then we'll give them some asphyxiating gases," said the little
mariner genially, and thrust a revolver muzzle in through the crack
in the hatch and fired three rapid shots. "There, those will
ricochet grandly inside that tin box, and they can share the proceeds
amongst them. Did it ever occur to you, Miss, that it's a terribly
sad thing to be born a German? Since I've given up handling them at
sea, and taken to the Ministry, I've often sent up a prayer that no
more of them should undergo the unpleasantness of being born. Fancy
a world clean of Germans! There's a chance for poetry! My Great
James!"
"Whatever is it, Captain?"
"Just something I thought of, Miss, though it is a hundred-to-one
chance."
The little sailor climbed nimbly back to the top of the
conning-tower, and made rapid inspection. At one corner was a small
iron box, locked. With a neat blow of his sound foot he kicked open
the lid. Inside were six switches--switches to the six torpedo
tubes--each with its appropriate brass label.