The E boat was working a "beat" ten miles to the north of the North
Dogger Bank Lightship--a dull beat, too, as in 1918 the U-boat captains
had long ago given up the idea of passing near lightships in surface
trim. The patrol was not there for enemy submarine strafing, however.
The E boat was a unit of the watching semicircle that dived eternally,
from the Haaks light off the Dutch coast to Hiorn's Reef off Jutland,
watching for a cloud of smoke to the east that would tell of the coming
of the High Sea Fleet. The boat had been on the billet two days, and
had five more to wait before she started her run home to Harwich. She
had spent the short spring night jogging about on the surface at six
knots, charging her batteries, and at 4 A.M. she slowed up and slipped
under. It was her thirtieth patrol trip, and she expected it to be as
dull as most of the others had been; there was a kind of yawning,
done-it-all-before air in the way the crew took her under that
morning, that showed, besides good training, a familiarity with
intricate mechanism that had developed into something approaching
contempt. The boat settled to her day's dive at twenty feet, her
periscope moving slowly along at a speed of about two knots, leaving a
very faint rippling line on the smooth North Sea surface. The Captain
swung the periscope round, wiped the eyepiece with a nominally clean
chamois-leather pad, and then leaned back against the diving gauge,
finishing the fag-end of a cigarette. It was still twilight in the
world above him, and the bad light, combined with the fact that
periscopes are very apt to "fog" for some minutes after diving, when
the engines are still hot enough to make the air in the boat steamy,
would prevent him seeing anything clearly for twenty minutes. It was a
rule of his to keep the early morning periscope watch himself, as he
believed that if anything exciting was going to happen it would always
occur at dawn. Certainly, as far as U-boats go, his ideas were right,
as a boat on passage is humanly liable to hold on to her surface speed
and trim as long as there is a hint of darkness left to protect her,
and in submarine war it is the one that gets under earliest that lives
longest.
The Captain took another look through the periscope, and saw the
familiar level floor of the sea blending with the pink and grey of the
dawn just as he had seen it on so many previous mornings. He looked
forward along his boat and saw the sleeping forms of sailors all the
way along the battery deck cloths till his eye was attracted by a pair
of sea-boots that projected through the gap in the wardroom curtain.
Those were his First Lieutenant's boots, and his First Lieutenant, he
knew well, was snoring loudly beyond them. He threw his cigarette end
impatiently down the periscope well and began slowly moving the heavy
periscope round, shuffling around with it as he swept the clearing
horizon. It seemed a silly thing to be keeping the morning watch, of
all watches, when he had two young and lazy officers to work for him.
Their eyes were younger than his, and his were more valuable to the
country anyway. It seemed absurd that only he and four "diving hands"
should be awake, while all the rest snored. Why should he, an
experienced and skilled officer, be at work at half-past four on a dull
morning? Why, when he was a junior Lieutenant ... he straightened up
from the eyepiece....
"Call the First Lieutenant!"
An hour later the situation in the E boat was the same, except for the
fact that a gloomy officer in a soiled sweater and a pair of still more
soiled grey flannel trousers plodded round the periscope pedestal,
while a pair of stockinged feet showing through the curtain showed
whither the Captain's train of thought had led him. The crew still
dozed fore and aft the boat. At regular intervals the hydroplane motors
buzzed noisily as a turn of the wheels corrected her depth; from right
aft came the monotonous ticking of a main motor that slowly turned the
port propeller and urged the boat lazily along. In the wardroom the
Captain, supremely oblivious to a monotonous drip of leaking water from
a seam directly over his outthrown left hand, was back in the days
before the war, when the Berkeley Hounds had had three forty-five
minute bursts in a day, and he had ridden all three on the same horse.
In his dreams he seemed to hear the drumming of many horses' hoofs on
the sloping pastures, and the clash and tinkle of stirrups touching as
the crowded field fought for room at the first fence. Then he woke and
lay propped on one elbow, with a leg thrown over the side of his bunk,
while his heart missed two complete beats. He had not heard the order
of "action stations," that came from the periscope position, but he
knew well the only possible order that could send men rushing past him
to man the bow tubes. He pulled his sea-boots on as he sat up, then
jumped down and covered the distance aft to the periscope in half a
dozen swift strides. The First Lieutenant, his face alight with
suppressed emotions, stepped clear and spoke: "Fritz--bow-on, I
think--big one"--then dashed forward to superintend the men at the bow
tubes. All along the boat a clatter and ring of metal on metal told of
preparation for firing. Amidships a hiss and splutter of air showed
that the beam tubes were flooding, till a spurt of water coincided with
a sharp cry of "Tubes full, sir!" The Captain spoke into the voice-pipe
at his side, and the ticking sound from the main motors rose to a
steady hum. He lowered the periscope till the eyepiece was level with
the deck, and stood drumming his fingers against the hoisting wires.
The matter of seeing the tubes cleared away and of keeping the boat's
trim right lay now with his officers. His head was to be concerned only
with the attack and the shot. He alone would be to blame for a miss
now, and he had too well-trained a staff for him to need to worry over
any diving details during an attack. His brain was working outside the
boat in the early sunshine, where a big and confident U-boat was bound
out for her station in the Irish Sea. The enemy was heading straight at
him, and he himself was crossing her bow from port to starboard,
heading north. To get his bow tubes to bear meant a quick rush to the
north to get to a fair range, and then a turn to port till his head was
south and the enemy ran across his sights. He was, in view of the
glassy state of the sea, keeping his periscope out of sight as long as
possible, and intended to keep the instrument lowered till, on his
estimate of the U-boat's course and speed (gauged in his first rapid
glance) and his submarine sixth sense, he had turned inwards from a
point on his target's starboard bow. In sixty-five seconds from the
first sighting of the enemy, peace and quiet reigned again in the E
boat. Except for the occasional slight hiss and gurgle as a tube-vent
was tested, there was no sign to tell that the whole boat was on a
tiptoe of expectant emotion. Three minutes from his first order to
increase speed he starboarded his helm and--still with his periscope
lowered--began his turn through west to south. His hands fidgeted now
on the taut hoisting wires before him, and every nerve in his body
cried for a glance at the enemy just to check his mental estimate. His
first glance when his turn was half through would show him whether he
had judged rightly, or whether he had made a miscalculation which would
be heavy on his soul till the end of his days. But his nerves were well
in hand and his will strong; the repeater of the gyroscopic compass had
ticked slowly round under his gaze until it showed 275°--a trifle north
of west. Then the periscope rose with a sigh and a creak of straining
wires. He stooped and pressed his eye to the instrument as it rose,
waiting for the very earliest glimpse of the upper world. All along the
boat the men leaned from their stations to watch, for they knew exactly
what depended on the quick decision based on that first glimpse he had
taken. To his eye the green flickering circle lightened, paled, and
then changed to a clear pale-blue sky and a sparkling stretch of sea.
He had hoisted the periscope trained to south-west by south, and his
heart gave a jump in gratitude to the training that had given him
brains to judge rightly. The U-boat--very near and big--with a little
foaming line falling away from her bows, was sailing slowly across the
periscope, and he winced as he saw on her bridge the little group of
figures that seemed to be looking straight at his face. Instantly he
lowered the periscope and forced himself--for he felt that he ought to
whisper, in fear of his enemy hearing--to shout the order to "stand by
bow tubes." A few seconds later he spoke again as the periscope
rose--"Midships--steady on one-eight-five--stop starboard."
As the surface view showed again he carefully jerked the great
instrument a fraction round as he set it at his "deflection"--the
angle of lead ahead of the enemy, based on a guess at her speed, that
corresponds to the "swing in front" of a rabbit-shooter. Then he
lowered his hands from the training-handles lest he should be tempted
to move the instrument again, and with the order to fire trembling on
his lips, waited as the grey stem of the U-boat slid evenly into the
view, and the conning-tower and the vertical spider-hair line that
formed his actual sight drew together.
At the bow tubes three men and an officer crouched, the pulses of
certainly one of them working at abnormal pressure. The actual firing
of the tubes would come suddenly, electrically controlled by the
Captain sixty feet away. _Thud!_ the port bow torpedo left with a
faint roar and rattle--_Thud!_ the heavy ball of the starboard
firing-gear came down decisively, and another "18-inch short
range--high speed setting" went away on its last run. Two men by the
tubes jerked up the vents to let the water rush back into the space
that the torpedoes had left vacant, and each of the crouching group
held his breath in agonising expectation. It was really only ten
seconds (but it must have felt like a hundred) before the great
question was answered: and the answer was savagely and brutally clear.
A great clanging report shook the E boat, and the hull quivered as if
she had lightly touched something forward. A torpedo man leaned across
and closed the two spouting tube-vents, then looked aft and, grinning
with relief, sang a pæan of victory along the glittering tunnel of the
E boat--"_Wow!_" he said. "Good-bye-ee-ee!"