THE GERMAN RAIDERS
As the _Dewey_ settled into the water. Lieutenant McClure and his
executive officer peered intently though the periscopes, hoping to
catch sight of the unknown craft and speculating on her nationality.
The sky was flecked with clouds and there was no convenient moon
to aid the submarine sentinel---an ideal night for a raid! "Little
Mack," as the crew had affectionately named their commander, was in
a quandary as to whether the approaching vessel was friend or foe.
"We'll lie right here and watch him awhile," he told his executive
officer. "Pretty soon he'll be close enough for us to get a line
on his silhouette."
It had been an interesting revelation to the Brighton boys soon after
their entry into the navy to learn that each ship was equipped with a
silhouette book. By means of this it was possible to tell the
vessels of one nation from another by the size and formation of their
hulls, their smokestacks and general outline. Each officer had to be
thoroughly well informed on the contents of the book.
Quietly, stealthily the hidden submarine awaited the approach of her
adversary, for it seemed only too certain that the ship that had
suddenly come dashing up out of the east was out of Cuxhaven or
Wilhelmshaven, and had but a short time before passed under the
mighty German guns on Heligoland.
Chief Gunner Mowrey and his crew in the torpedo chamber forward were
signaled to "stand by the guns ready for action," which meant in this
case the huge firing tubes and the Whitehead torpedoes. Jack and Ted
fell into their places, stripped to the waist, and making sure that
the reserve torpedoes were ready for any emergency.
By adjusting the headpiece of the ship's microphone to his ears Chief
Electrician Sammy Smith kept close tabs on the approaching vessel
with the underwater telephone. With the receivers to his hears he
could hear plainly the swish of the vessel's propeller blades as she
bore down upon the floating submarine. With his reports as a basis
for their deductions, the _Dewey's_ officers were able to figure out
the position of the mystery ship and to tell accurately the distance
between the two vessels.
"Reckon he'll be dead off our bow in a minute or so," observed Cleary
as he completed another observation based on Smith's latest report.
McClure sprang again to the periscope.
"Yes, we ought to get a line on him soon enough now," was his rejoinder.
For a moment the two officers studied the haze of the night sea
around them, unable yet to discern the form of the approaching vessel.
And then came a huge specter, looming up directly off the starboard
quarter of the _Dewey_ in the proportions of a massive warship.
"Looks like a German cruiser," said the American lieutenant as he
gripped the brass wheel of the periscope and gave himself intently
to the task of divining the identity of the unknown ship.
Cleary was making observations at the reserve periscope, the two
officers having plunged the conning tower of the _Dewey_ in utter
darkness that they might better observe the shadowy hulk bearing
down upon them.
"It is a German cruiser---_Plauen_ class---and coming up in a hurry
at better than twenty knots," exclaimed McClure, as the outline of
the ship was implanted clean-cut against the horizon dead ahead of
the _Dewey_.
His hand on the firing valve, the submarine commander waited only until
the bow of the German warship showed on the range glass of the
periscope, and then released a torpedo.
Instantly a great volume of compressed air swirled into the upper port
chamber; the bowcap was opened and the missile sped on its way.
"Gee, I hope that 'moldy' lands her!" shouted Jack at the sound of the
discharged torpedo.
Although but a short time in the North Sea and just getting well
acquainted with their English cousins, the American lads were fast
learning the lingo of the deep. To every man aboard the _Dewey_ a
torpedo was a "moldy," so named by the English seamen.
As the torpedo crew sprang to reload the emptied chamber the _Dewey's_
diving rudders were turned, ballast was shipped and she started to
dive. The plunge came none too soon. A lookout on the German
cruiser, eagle-eyed about his daring venture, had noted the approaching
torpedo and sounded an alarm. At the same moment the ship's rudder
was thrown over and she swung to starboard, paralleling the position
of the _Dewey_. And just as she came around one of her big searchlights
aft flashed into life and shot its bright rays over the water. For a
moment or two a finger of ghostly white shifted aimlessly to and fro
over the surf ace of the sea and then centered full upon the
disappearing periscope of the _Dewey_! Instantly came the boom of
the ship's guns as they belched a salvo at the tormenting submarine.
"Missed him by inches," growled McClure after waiting long enough to
be convinced that the torpedo had sped wide of the mark.
"And he is firing with all his aft guns," added Cleary as he observed
further the flashes of fire from the turrets of the German cruiser.
McClure signaled for the _Dewey_ to be submerged with all speed.
"He'll never get us," he announced a few seconds later as the submarine
dived down out of sight.
Jack and Ted, with the rest of their crew, had by this time shunted
another Whitehead into position, adjusted the mechanism and were
standing by awaiting developments.
"Just our luck to slip a moldy to the blooming Boche and draw a blank,"
grumbled Mike Mowrey, who was mad as a hornet over the "miss."
Ted was inclined to be a bit pessimistic, too; but Jack was sure the
_Dewey_ would make good on her next try. Bill Witt started to sing:
"We'll hang Kaiser Bill to a sour apple tree," but got little response.
The torpedo crew were glum over their failure to bag the German raiding
cruiser and in no mood for singing.
"Cheer up, boys; better luck next time," called out Navigating Officer
Binns as he peered into the torpedo compartment.
All at once the boys were startled by a cry from Sammy Smith, who had
suddenly leaped to his feet and stood swaying in the wireless room with
both microphone receivers tightly pressed to his ears. Above the
clatter of the _Dewey's_ engines the gunners forward could hear the
electrician talking excitedly to Lieutenant McClure.
"Listen, listen, other ships are coming up," Smith was shouting. "I
can hear their propellers. That's the fellow we missed moving off
there on our port quarter. You can hear at least two more here in the
starboard microphone. We seem to have landed plumb in the nest of a
German raiding party," rattled off the electrician glibly as he passed
the receivers to his commander for a verification of his report.
McClure snatched the apparatus and clamped it to his ears. For a
moment he listened to the mechanical whirr of churning propellers,
borne into his senses through the submarine telephone.
"Great!" he exclaimed. "Some more of the Kaiser's vaunted navy trying
to sneak away from their home base for a bit of trickery."
As he rang the engine room to shut off power, the American commander
added, with flashing eyes:
"If we don't bring down one of these prowlers before this night is over
I'll go back home and ship as deckhand on a Jersey City ferry-boat."
Suspended fifty feet below the surface of the sea, the _Dewey_ floated
like a cork in a huge basin while her officers took further observations
on the movements of the German warships above them. Now that their
presence was known the American officers realized they would be
accorded a stiff reception when they next went "up top.".
"I'm going to try it," announced McClure shortly. "We'll take a chance
and pay our respects to one of their tubs."
The _Dewey_ forthwith began to rise. At the direction of the navigating
officer two hundred pounds of ballast were expelled. Tilting fore and
aft like a rocking horse, the submersible responded gradually to the
lightening process until at last the depth dial showed only a margin
of several feet needed to lift the eyes of the periscopes above the
waves. The little steel-encased clock in the conning tower showed ten
minutes past one---just about the right time for a night raiding party
to be getting under way.
"Guess we'll lie here and wait for them to come along," whispered
McClure to Cleary as the periscopes popped up out of the depths into
the night gloom.
"We seem to be right in their path and may be able to get one of them
as he shoots across our bow," added Cleary as he took another telephone
report from the wireless room.
According to Sammy Smith's observations there were two vessels coming
up to starboard, while the third, the one the _Dewey_ had missed, was
dim in the port microphone and almost out of range. Engines shut off,
the submarine lay entirely concealed, awaiting the coming of her prey.
It was McClure's idea to lie perfectly still in the water until one of
the enemy warships swung right into the range glass of the _Dewey_ and
then give it a stab of steel---a sting in the dark from a hidden serpent!
The waiting moments seemed like hours. Gradually, however, the leader
of the silent ships drew nearer. There was no mistaking the telltale
reports in the wireless room. Basing his calculations on the chief
electrician's reports, McClure figured the leader of the oncoming
squadron to be now not more than half a mile away and moving steadily
forward toward the desired range---a dead line on the bow of the _Dewey_.
Executive Officer Cleary at the reserve periscope was first to detect
the mass of steel looming up out of the darkness. Lieutenant McClure
swung his periscope several degrees to starboard and drew a bead on the
German warship an instant later.
"We'll drop this chap just as he shoots across our bow," declared the
_Dewey's_ commander.
Five hundred yards away came the speeding warship. It was close
enough now for the American officers to make out her outlines in
detail and to satisfy themselves that this was another member of the
raiding party out of the great German naval base in back of Heligoland.
"All right, here goes," shouted the doughty Yankee skipper a moment
later as the German cruiser drew up until her bow edged into the circle
that McClure had marked off on the periscope as the exact spot on
which to aim his fire.
Swish! went the torpedo as it shot from the bow of the _Dewey_ and
straightened out in the water on its foamy trail, cutting through
the sea like a huge swordfish.
It took only a moment---an interval of time during which the torpedo
from the American submarine and the German cruiser seemed irresistibly
drawn toward each other. And then came the crash---the impact of the
torpedo's war-nose against the steel side of the cruiser, the
detonation of the powerful explosive, the rending of the German hull.
And then, loud enough for his crew forward to hear his words, McClure
called out:
"A perfect hit, boys; torpedo landed plumb in the engine room of a big
German cruiser."
A great cheer resounded through the hull of the American undersea craft
as the good news was borne to the torpedo crew forward and to the
engine room aft.
Keeping his eyes to the periscope, McClure beheld the most spectacular
picture that had yet been glimpsed through the eye of the American
submarine. The torpedo had struck squarely abaft the ship's magazine
and wrecked her completely. The night was painted a lurid glow as a
titanic explosion shook the sea and a mass of yellow flame completely
enveloped the doomed warship from stem to stern.
"Look, she is going down by the stern," called out Officer Cleary as
he took one last squint at the _Dewey's_ quarry just before the
stricken warship slipped away into the depths.
The jubilation of the crew knew no bounds. The men were wild with joy
over their success. Jack and Chief Gunner Mowrey were "mitting" each
other like a prize fighter and his manager after a big fight, while
Ted and Bill Witt were clawing each other like a pair of wild men.
Through the main periscope Commander McClure was noting the death
struggle of the German cruiser, when Executive Officer Cleary, swinging
the reserve periscope around to scan the horizon aft the _Dewey_,
suddenly called out sharply:
"Submerge, quick! Right here abaft our conning tower to starboard
comes a destroyer. She is aimed directly at us and almost on top of
us. Hurry, or we are going to be run down!"