[Illustration: cover art]
THE MYSTERY SHIP
GLORIES OF SEA
AND AIR SERIES
_By_
_PERCY F._
_WESTERMAN_
THE MYSTERY SHIP
THE RIVAL SUBMARINES
BILLY BARCROFT OF THE R.N.A.S.
A WATCH-DOG OF THE NORTH SEA
_Publishers_
PARTRIDGE
LONDON
[Illustration: "THE MYSTERY BOAT WAS MOVING SLOWLY, HER TRIPLE
TORPEDO-TUBES READY WITH THEIR DEADLY COMPLEMENTS."]
THE MYSTERY SHIP
A STORY OF THE "Q" SHIPS
DURING THE GREAT WAR
BY
PERCY F. WESTERMAN
_Author of_
_"The Fritzstrafers," "Billy Barcroft of the R.N.A.S."_
_"A Watchdog of the North Sea," "A Sub of_
_the R.N.R.," etc., etc._
ILLUSTRATED BY A. MORROW
Publishers
PARTRIDGE
London
_Made in Great Britain_
_First published 1920_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE TWO SUB-LIEUTENANTS
II. ON PATROL
III. SUNK IN ACTION
IV. THE SPY
V. THE PROWESS OF KAPITAN VON PREUGFELD
VI. PICKED UP
VII. A U-BOAT OF SORTS
VIII. VON PREUSSEN'S BLANK DAY
IX. HOW THE LIGHTERS FARED
X. THE SALVAGE SYNDICATE
XI. VON PREUGFELD'S RESOLVE
XII. PRISONERS OF WAR
XIII. A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE
XIV. A DOUBLE DECOY
XV. CONFIRMED SUSPICIONS
XVI. COVERING HIS TRACKS
XVII. MUTINY
XVIII. A BIG PROPOSITION
XlX. THE TABLES TURNED
XX. THE END OF U 247
XXI. BLUFFED
XXII. ON THE TRAIL
XXIII. "PREPARE FOR IMMEDIATE ACTION"
XXIV. IN THE HOUR OF HIS TRIUMPH
XXV. TRAPPED
XXVI. HER LAST BOLT
XXVII. BATTERED BUT UNDAUNTED
XXVIII. THE HOMECOMING
XXIX. WHO FIRED THAT TORPEDO?
XXX. A NIGHT OF COINCIDENCES
XXXI. THE GREAT SURRENDER
XXXII. A NAVY IMPOTENT
XXXIII. THE RELIEF VESSEL
XXXIV. THE SCUTTLING
XXXV. WHAT THEY FOUGHT FOR
THE MYSTERY SHIP
CHAPTER I
THE TWO SUB-LIEUTENANTS
"BELOW there! You in, George?"
George--otherwise Kenneth Meredith, sub-lieutenant R.N.V.R. and
second-in-command of H.M. Motor Launch 1071--deliberately blotted
five lines of his weekly epistle to the fond ones at home.
Unperturbed by a heavy fusillade upon the deck--the sound being
caused by a broken golf club vigorously manipulated by an as yet
invisible person--Meredith dexterously threw into envelopes and
blotting-pad into a conveniently placed rack, rammed the cork into
the glass ink-bottle, and thrust his fountain-pen, which either
"founted" like a miniature Niagara or else obstinately refused to
"fount" at all, into the breast pocket of his monkey-jacket.
Interruptions are many and varied on board the M.L.'s. At almost any
hour of the day and night when the little craft were lying alongside
the parent ship, casual visitors were apt to drop in, to say nothing
of callers on more or less urgent Service matters. An officer is
supposed to receive visitors with complete equanimity whether he be
in the midst of shaving, dressing, having a meal, or even a bath.
Privacy is practically non-existent. Almost the only exception is
when the lawful occupant of the cabin is engaged in private
correspondence.
Hence Meredith's hurried preliminaries before replying to the noisy
summons on deck.
"Come in," he shouted. "Visitors are requested to leave sticks and
umbrellas in charge of the hall porter--Oh, dash it all! That's my
toe!" he ejaculated, as the steel-shod end of the golf club was
dropped through the hatchway and fell with a dull thud upon the Sub's
foot.
Seizing the lethal weapon, Meredith stood up and prepared to take
summary vengeance upon the lower portions of its owner, who was
descending the vertical ladder leading to the diminutive ward-room of
M.L. 1071.
Instinctively the newcomer must have realised that reprisals were in
the air, for, grasping the rim of the coaming, he dropped lightly to
the floor and faced the second-in-command.
"Cheerio!" exclaimed the visitor. "Where's everybody? Where's
Wakefield this fine evening?"
Kenneth, without replying, opened the door leading into the
after-cabin and took a lengthy survey; he repeated the tactics in the
galley at the for'ard end of the ward-room. Then, going on his knees,
he lifted the blue baize table-cloth and peered under the swing
table.
"'Fraid he's not here, old man," he remarked. "Now I think of it, I
believe he went on the beach at seven bells. Have a cigarette?"
"Thanks.... Wakefield wasn't on the links this afternoon.
Strange--very. What's his little game, Meredith? Don't tell me he
went ashore in his Number Ones, with his trousers creased an' all
that sort of thing! 'A wedding has been arranged and a
subscription-list will follow in due course,' eh?"
Jock McIntosh lit his cigarette and took stock of the ward-room,
looking for evidence to confirm his suspicions of the absent
Wakefield's mysterious visits "to the beach."
Sub-lieutenant McIntosh and Sub-lieutenant Meredith were widely
different in appearance. The former was a tall, raw-boned Scot with
fair features and close-cut sandy hair that even in its closeness
evinced a tendency to curl. Never cut out for a seafaring life, he
found himself much against his will in the uniform of an R.N.V.R.
officer, while his brother Angus, who simply loved the sea and was
part-owner of a yacht and knew how to handle almost every type of
small craft afloat, was given a commission in a line regiment.
Jock would have made an ideal platoon commander: Angus would have
shone as a skipper of an M.L.; but since from time immemorial the
powers-that-be who run the Admiralty and War Office delight in
putting square pegs in round holes, Jock McIntosh was manfully
sticking to a job that was obviously uncongenial, while his brother
was doing likewise; and each envied the other.
Meredith, on the other hand, was literally "made for the job."
Slightly above middle height, broad and square-shouldered,
heavy-browed and with a firm and somewhat prominent jaw, Kenneth
looked and was a sailor-man, every inch of him. At the age of twelve
he could handle a sailing dinghy with a skill that was the envy and
admiration of many so-called yachtsmen, who would be hopelessly at
sea in a double sense without the assistance of their paid hands.
Between the ages of twelve and fifteen he spent every available
holiday afloat in his father's ten-ton yacht, until he knew
intimately the art of fore and aft sailing, and incidentally gained
first-hand information of practically every harbour and creek on the
south coast of England.
Then came the outbreak of the Great War. Promptly the _Ripple_, Mr.
Meredith's cutter, was laid up, while her owner, exchanging a
yachting suit for a khaki uniform, went to India as second-in-command
of a Territorial battalion.
Kenneth went back to school, bitterly bewailing the fact that he had
not been born three years earlier. Fellows from the senior form--in
many cases physically inferior to him--donned khaki and disappeared
into the mists of Flanders. At intervals some turned up at the old
school, bronzed, aged and ballasted with a more than nodding
acquaintance with life and death: others never returned--their names
figured prominently in the School Roll of Honour as fingerposts to
the path of Higher Duty.
At length Meredith's chance came. He had to admit that it was
influence that did the trick. A certain retired Admiral whose name
Kenneth had never heard, but who knew Mr. Meredith years ago, worked
the oracle, and the lad found himself a full-fledged sub-lieutenant
of the R.N.V.R. The only fly in the ointment was the fact that
Meredith had been appointed to a northern M.L. flotilla, where, in
strange and remote waters, there appeared to be little chance of
seeing the "actual thing." He had hoped to be appointed to the Dover
Patrol, where his intimate knowledge of the Channel would be a
decided asset and where the prospects of smelling powder would be
almost certain to materialise.
M.L. 1071, one of the fifteen motor launches belonging to the
Auldhaig Patrol, was lying next but one alongside the parent ship
_Hesperus_, an obsolete second-class cruiser. It was early in May.
Already the northern evenings were drawing out and the nights
becoming shorter and shorter. In the land-locked firth the lofty
serrated hills were capped with fleecy mists that threatened with the
going down of the sun to steal lower and lower and envelop the placid
water in a pall of baffling fog.
"The main object of my visit this evening," remarked McIntosh
ponderously--he was rather prone to verbosity--"is to enlist your
assistance in the matter of this mashie."
"I thought it was a patent lead-swinging device," interposed Meredith
drily--"a sort of means of getting me on the sick-list with a
pulverised instep."
"Not at all, laddie," continued Jock, unruffled by the interruption.
"D'ye ken, I'm no hand at splicing, and I'm not giving myself away by
asking any of my merry wreckers to take on the job. Perhaps you'll be
kind enough to do it to-morrow."
"When do you want this instrument of torture?" asked Meredith, as he
examined the fractured ends.
"By three on Wednesday afternoon," replied McIntosh.
Kenneth shook his head.
"Can't be done, old son--that is, if you want me to tackle it
to-morrow."
"Why not?"
"'Cause I'm on patrol to-night."
A terrible reverberation as the engine-room staff gave a preliminary
run with the powerful motors corroborated Meredith's statement.
"But I'll do it now, if you like," he added. "You might ask Coles to
bring along some seaming-twine and beeswax."
"Don't envy you, old thing," remarked Jock, returning with the
required articles. "It's coming on thick. Personally, I'm jolly
glad."
"Why?"
"The matter of those X-lighters," replied McIntosh. "We are handing
them over to the R.A.F., and we've been expecting some one from that
crush down to inspect 'em. And we look like going on expecting. 'Tany
rate, the S.N.O.'s fed up with the lighters, so I've orders to take
'em round to Donnikirk and dump 'em on the R.A.F. people. Hanged if I
want the job! Plugging along with four-knot barges isn't in my line,
so I hope it's foggy."
Meredith nodded sympathetically, as his deft yet horny fingers waxed
the twine and began the intricate task of "whipping" the broken
pieces of the golf club. He little knew the part those unwieldy
X-lighters would play in his subsequent experiences afloat.
The X-lighters were almost flat-bottomed barges, about a hundred feet
in length and with a beam of roughly twenty feet. Originally built
for work in connection with the naval river flotillas in Mesopotamia,
they had found their way to a northern base. Then as a result of
negotiations between the Admiralty and the Air Ministry, the former
expressed their intention of turning over the lighters to the Royal
Air Force for kite-balloon work.
Anxious to get rid of the cumbersome craft, which occupied a large
amount of valuable mooring-space in Auldhaig Harbour, the Senior
Naval Officer had decided not to await the long-delayed visit of the
Air Force representative, but to send the barges round to their new
base.
"You're quite right, old man," observed Meredith, when, the task of
mending the golf club completed, he accompanied Jock McIntosh on
deck. "It's going to be a beast of a night. An' No. 1071's doing the
Outer Patrol stunt this time."
"Well, good luck!" exclaimed McIntosh.
Kenneth smiled sourly.
"Good luck!" he echoed bitterly. "Nothin' doin', I'm afraid. It's out
nosing through the fog, seeing nothing and doing nothing. Haven't had
so much as a sniff at a strafed U-boat yet, and don't seem like doing
so until the end of the war--whenever that comes off."
"Sooner the better as far as I'm concerned," said McIntosh. "I'm fed
up to the back teeth absolutely."
"Think so?" asked Meredith quietly. "From a purely personal point of
view, we'll be jolly sorry when the war is over. Most of us will be
wishing ourselves back in the M.L.'s before many weeks have passed."
"I'll risk it," rejoined Jock. "Give me the piping times of peace any
old day--s'long as we win, which we're bound to do. Hello! here's
Wakefield. Now the fun's about to commence. I'll hook it."
And with a friendly gesture of greeting to the returning officer
commanding H.M.M.L. 1071, McIntosh leapt over the rail, crossed the
deck of an intervening craft, and ascended the accommodation-ladder
of the parent ship _Hesperus_.