At Zeebrugge
It would be no exaggeration to state that Alec Seton "had the wind up
badly" when the U-boat dived suddenly. He knew what it meant right
enough; only on this occasion the positions were reversed. Instead of
being the hunter he was the hunted, and, what was worse--worse from a
strictly personal point--he was being strafed by some of his own
friends, men who, from long practice, had been uncannily adept in
sending German submarines on their last, long voyage.
Had he been on board a British submarine, and had been chased by a
pack of Hun torpedo-craft, he would have borne the situation with
comparative calm, knowing that it was part of the game, and that both
sides could hit unpleasantly hard. But, a captive in an enemy craft,
unable to lift a finger to help himself, Seton had good cause for
being in a mild state of funk.
It seemed to him that the U-boat was diving almost horizontally, for
he slid heavily against the for'ard bulkhead. Then, with a
disconcerting roll, the boat regained an even keel. Men were
shouting, hand-wheels and levers were being manipulated with
undisciplined haste. There was no doubt about it: Fritz was having a
sticky time, and taking his medicine badly.
Then came the muffled detonation of M.-L. 4452's depth charge. The
U-boat, caught by the underwater undulations, rolled and pitched
alarmingly. Gear was carried away, and clattered noisily across the
steel platforms, the electric lights went out, water began to hiss
in--fine but high-pressured jets through the buckled plates and
started rivet-holes. In the darkness there was no telling whether the
U-boat was plunging to the bed of the North Sea.
A sudden impulse prompted Seton to thrust his shoulder against the
steel door. In calmer moments he might have reflected upon the
needlessness of it. If he had to drown, he might just as well remain
in solitude as spend his last moments in the company of a crew of
panic-stricken Huns.
The door resisted the impact, but unaccountably the lock gave.
Stumbling over the raised threshold, the Sub found himself brought up
against a number of complicated valve wheels and tubes. There he hung
on and waited.
Already some of the crew had produced electric torches. The pumps
were set to work to keep the slight but none the less dangerous
influx of water under control. Von Kloster, his eyes fixed upon the
depth gauge, was bellowing out orders, while the unter-leutnant was
feverishly attending to the wheel operating the horizontal rudders.
Right aft, the sweating engineers were trying to coax the
electrically-driven engines into action.
By degrees the Huns, realizing that they were not immediately going
on a visit to Davy Jones, began to calm down. A petty officer, making
his way aft, flashed his torch upon Alec. The latter, still clad in
the dinghy canvas suit, was easily mistaken for one of the crew, for
the petty officer, pointing for'ard, gave a curt order.
Seton had not the faintest notion of what the Hun said, but the
gesture was unmistakable. Entering into the fun of the affair, the
Sub, squeezing through a small oval-shaped aperture in one of the
transverse bulkheads, found himself in the bow torpedo-room.
At that moment, the artificers having renewed the blown-out
fuse-wires, the electric lamps were lighted. Alec was alone in the
compartment. In front of him were the twin torpedo-tubes, which
differed from the British ones in one important detail. Instead of
the breech piece being secured by six butterfly nuts, the German
method was to employ an intercepted thread cam-action, similar to
the breech-block mechanism of a quick-firing gun. Above the tubes
were six oiled steel torpedoes, each ready to be "launched home" into
the tubes.
"By Jove! What an opportunity!" thought Alec, giving a cursory glance
to reassure himself that he was alone. "A gorgeous chance to do the
dirty on Fritz!"
Picking up a heavy adjustable spanner, Seton set to work quickly and
deftly. To each of the rudders of the torpedoes he gave a slight and
almost imperceptible twist. In the excitement of launching home and
firing the deadly missiles, the Hun torpedo men would almost to a
certainty overlook the slight but important bend in the delicately
adjusted metal fins.
"Good enough!" declared Alec. He felt like a schoolboy engaged in
ragging an unpopular fellow's study. It was time to make himself
scarce before his presence was detected.
His luck was in. Without encountering anyone he regained his cell and
closed the door.
"Now Fritz can use his tin-fish as often as he likes," he thought
gleefully. "He's welcome to puzzle his brains to find out why the
blessed things won't run true, for it's a dead cert. they won't."
It was a matter of three or four hours before the U-boat again rose
to the surface. Her batteries were running low. If again obliged to
submerge before regaining her base she would be compelled to rest
helplessly on the bottom of the sea, since her underwater propulsion
powers were almost nil.
When the sailor reappeared with Alec's unappetizing meal--black
bread, acorn coffee, and sausage of doubtful origin--the German
looked suspiciously at the door.
"You haf with the lock played tricks," he declared.
"Must have been the concussion," said Alec. "It was a nasty shock,
wasn't it?"
The fellow scowled with sullen anger.
"Schweinhund Englander," he muttered. "I go tell der kapitan."
He put the food upon the floor and went to the door. Then, half
turning, he inquired:
"Vot you give me, if I not tell der kapitan?"
Seton laughed outright. His sense of humour was tickled.
"Carry on, Fritz!" he replied. "It's your German temperament, I
suppose. You can't help it. So put that in your pipe and smoke it."
The Hun looked puzzled.
"Put vot in mine pipe? Haf you any tobacco?" he asked almost
pleadingly.
"'Fraid you can't understand, Fritz," rejoined Seton. "You'll get
nothing more out of me, so hook it!"
The man went out still puzzling over the idiomatic expression that
Alec had purposely employed. Yet he did not report the incident of
the tampered lock to the kapitan. A little later an artificer came
and secured the door, and once more Seton was a close prisoner.
With her pumps going continuously to keep under the steady inflow of
water--for, in spite of "stoppers" and patches applied to the gaping
plates, she leaked badly--the U-boat passed between the ends of the
moles and entered Zeebrugge Harbour. Owing to injuries she had
sustained, it was considered desirable to pass through the lock gates
and take her up the Bruges Canal for repairs. Although the locality
was not a healthy one, there was less risk of the U-boat being
smashed by British guns or bombs than had she remained at Zeebrugge.
Accordingly the returned pirate craft was temporarily berthed
alongside the Mole in order to land certain members of her crew and
also spare stores before proceeding.
Count Otto von Brockdorff-Giespert was the first to step ashore.
There was a smile of satisfaction on his face: he made no attempt to
conceal his joy at leaving the badly-strained U-boat, and he mentally
vowed that, if the matter were left to him, it would be a long time
before he went on a voyage again. He would be quite content to
exercise his valuable submarine knowledge ashore, and let the U-boat
commanders put his theories to the test.
Two-thirds of the crew, including Unter-leutnant Kaspar Diehardt,
also landed. They showed little enthusiasm on their stolid faces, for
they knew perfectly well that there was no respite for them. Owing to
the shortage of skilled submariners, they would be promptly drafted
to other U-boats, and be sent to sea again on their ruthless and
inglorious task of attempting to wipe out of existence the British
Mercantile Marine. Practically all the German submarine service
suffered in the same way. Constantly employed, exposed to perils seen
and unseen, ill-fed on very inferior food the men were already on the
high-road to mutiny.
Guarded by a couple of armed men, Sub-lieutenant Alec Seton was taken
ashore. Still clad in the loaned canvas suit and carrying his
saturated uniform in a bundle under his arm, Seton set foot for the
first time upon the now historic Zeebrugge Mole.
He made good use of his eyes during his progress. It was part of his
training to do so. He had seen aerial photographs of the place, but
these, useful though they were, conveyed but a slight idea of the
formidable nature of the German defences.
The stone wall, rising full thirty feet above low water-mark, was of
massive construction. It had been additionally protected by concrete
works and thousands of sand-bags. There were emplacements for heavy
guns by the dozen, and for quick-firers by the hundred, while
machine-guns bristled everywhere. There were plenty of evidences of
the activity of the British guns and aeroplanes, for the wall had
been repaired in fifty different places. Some of the havoc played by
bombs was of recent origin, men, both Belgian and German, being
employed to make good the damage. Almost abreast of the berth where
the returned U-boat was lying was a hole twenty feet in diameter, and
perhaps a dozen feet deep, while the wall on the seaward side was
bulging ominously under the strain.
At intervals, beneath the level of the outside parapet, several
block-houses had been built on the Mole, machine-guns commanding the
roadway on the breakwater. Evidently the Huns expected a landing, and
with true Teutonic thoroughness were taking precautions accordingly.
Within the harbour were swarms of small craft of all
types--ocean-going torpedo-boats, patrol-boats, submarines, lighters,
suction-dredgers, captured merchantmen, and paddle-wheelers. All,
more or less, showed signs of being badly mauled, for, almost daily,
British sea-planes swarmed overhead and let the Huns know that they
meant to make things hot for the pirates' nest.
At the present moment the guns were silent. Nevertheless, it was easy
to see that Fritz was on thorns. Above the town floated four
observation balloons; a Black Cross aeroplane flew discreetly along
the sea-front, ready to hark back to its hangar on the first sign of
the dreaded British sea-planes. From an elevated wooden tower on the
extremity of the Mole, signalmen, brought specially from Kiel, swept
the horizon with their telescopes. Anti-aircraft gunners were
continually standing by, while in bomb-proof shelters artillerymen
awaited telephonic orders to man their guns, should a 17-inch salvo
from the monitors beyond the horizon announce that yet another strafe
was beginning.
Against the base of the parapet were bundles of barbed wire, one end
of which was securely fixed to stout ring-bolts in the granite wall.
On the inner edge of the Mole were massive iron posts, each post
being abreast a corresponding roll of wire. This was a part of the
German defences, for at night the wire was stretched across the Mole
roadway, forming twenty or more barriers, in which narrow gaps were
left to enable men to move to and fro. These barbed-wire defences
were augmented by live wires, the whole forming a truly formidable
obstacle should any attempt be made to storm the Mole.
All this Seton was freely permitted to see. His captors intended that
he should do so, otherwise they would have bandaged his eyes. It was
part of von Brockdorff-Giespert's scheme. Confident in his belief
that the prisoner would never leave Zeebrugge until the conclusion of
a victorious German peace, the Count spared no pains to humiliate and
intimidate his captive.
Presently the guards halted at a distance of less than eighty yards
from the head of the Mole. Here was an abandoned big-gun emplacement.
The seaward aperture had partly collapsed, leaving a gap of about
four feet in width and two in height. This had been prevented from
completely caving in by several thick steel bars fixed at four-inch
intervals, the whole forming an impassable grille. The gun had been
removed from the emplacement, leaving a space of twenty-five feet by
twelve, and eight feet between the stone floor and the steel-girdered
and concrete reinforced roof. The door was of steel, and furnished
with three slits for rifle-fire. Within was a plank-bed with a straw
mattress, a wooden stool, a shelf holding tin plates and cups, and a
couple of blankets. This was Alec Seton's cell.
"Evidently the old brigand is keeping his word," thought the Sub as
he was roughly bidden to enter and the door locked upon him. "He said
he'd leave me to the attentions of our bombing 'planes and long-range
guns. Ah, well! It's no use moaning about it. Make the best of a bad
job, Alec, my boy, and keep a stiff upper lip. Many a man's been in a
tighter hole than this before to-day and has lived to tell the tale.
Never say die till you're dead."
And, with a series of similar trite maxims running through his head,
Seton prepared to shake down in his new abode as a guest of the
Imperial German Government.