ON PATROL
"BRIGHT sort of evening, Meredith," was Wakefield's greeting as he
came on board. "I see you've had the engines running. Any trouble
down below?"
Cedric Wakefield was a burly, pleasant-faced youth of twenty-four,
upon whose broad shoulders rested the weight of responsibility of
M.L. 1071, her crew and equipment. In those far-off days before
practically the whole civilised world was plunged into the throes of
war Wakefield was farming in Canada. Had anyone suggested that within
a few months he would be treading the deck of a diminutive warship
flying the White Ensign, Wakefield would have scouted the idea. The
peril of the German menace had hardly made itself felt as far as
Western Canada was concerned; while the young Englishman, coming
straight from a Public School to the thinly populated slopes of the
Rockies, little thought that the call of duty would bring him home
hot-foot to fight for King and Country.
But when war broke out with startling suddenness Cedric promptly
"packed up," worked his passage from Quebec to Liverpool as a
fireman, and upon arrival in the Old Country promptly joined the
R.N.V.R. as an ordinary seaman. In less than twelve months he was
granted a commission, and after a brief course in gunnery and
navigation was given command of a motor launch.
Quiet-spoken, he found that the fact of being in command was not
without its disadvantages. At first he possessed hardly sufficient
self-confidence to give an order loudly and peremptorily. But by
degrees the force of authority asserted itself, and when necessary he
could bellow like a bull and make himself heard in a gale of wind. He
was daring, but at the same time cautious. He could make up his mind
in an instant, and rarely was his judgment at fault, while his
courageous bearing in many a tight corner had won the admiration and
confidence of his crew.
Judging by their previous occupations, the crew of M.L. 1071 were a
"scratch lot." There were two clerks, a butcher, a chauffeur, an
insurance agent, a London County Council schoolmaster, an hotel
porter, a theological student and a poacher, although the latter was
camouflaged under the designation of farm labourer. And these men,
volunteers all, had been banded together under the White Ensign to do
their level best to make things mighty unpleasant for Fritz by means
of a quick-firer and an assortment of particularly obnoxious
depth-charges. True, up to the present, opportunities for direct
action had been denied them, but nevertheless it was not for want of
trying.
It was certainly a beast of a night. The moon had risen, but her
light hardly penetrated the white eddying wreaths of vapour. Viewed
from the deck of M.L. 1071, the hull of her parent ship appeared to
terminate twenty yards away, while her steel masts and fighting-tops,
grotesquely distorted by the erratic mists, were visible at one
moment like pillars of silver, while at another they appeared to be
cut off at less than fifteen feet above the deck. Already three of
the six vessels detailed for the forty-eight hours' patrol had been
swallowed up in the mist, as with lights screened they groped their
way blindly towards the invisible mouth of the harbour and the
seemingly boundless expanse of sea and fog beyond.
With the air reverberating with the roar of the exhausts and the deck
quivering under the pulsations of the throttled motors, Wakefield and
Meredith made their way to the diminutive wheel-house, where the
coxwain (ex-theological student) was standing by the steering-wheel
and peering with a studied professional manner into the dimly
illuminated compass-bowl.
"All ready?" inquired the skipper in stentorian tones. "Let go
for'ard!... Let go aft!"
The engine-room telegraph bells clanged as Wakefield thrust the
starboard indicator to easy ahead and the port one to half-speed
astern. Literally spinning round on her heel, M.L. 1071 edged away
from the _Hesperus_, the towering hull of which was quickly swallowed
up in the mist.
"Good enough, Sub!" exclaimed Wakefield. "We're right in the wake of
the next ahead. Now carry on. It's my watch below. Give me a shout if
anything's doing, and get them to call me at four bells."
Left in charge, Meredith prepared to make the best of his four hours'
"trick." Experience had long since taught him that warmth and dryness
were absolutely essential on night patrol. Clad in two thick woollen
sweaters, serge-trousers and pilot-coat, and wearing woollen gloves,
sea-boots, muffler, oilskins and sou'wester, he was well equipped for
the work in hand. The three-sided erection known as the wheel-house
afforded little protection from the spray, as the windows had to be
kept wide open otherwise the moisture settling on the glass panes
would render the mist still more baffling than it actually was.
Right for'ard the dim outlines of the look-out could be discerned,
as, crouching to dodge as far as possible the clouds of spray, the
man peered through the darkening mist. It was his duty to see that
M.L. 1071 kept fairly in the bubbling wake of the boat next ahead.
Fifty yards astern another M.L., unseen but plainly audible, was
likewise making use of the swirl of No. 1071's twin propellers as a
guide through the fog-laden water.
So well, so good. Provided the flotilla kept station in "single
column line ahead," there was little cause for the science of
navigation except on the part of the navigating officer of the
leading M.L. It was a case of seamanship, a sort of marine
follow-my-leader work, until on arriving at a certain rendezvous the
boats had to work independently; and No. 1071 had been detailed for
the Outer Patrol stunt.
At a reduced speed of ten knots and an M.L. is a difficult craft to
handle at slow speed--the flotilla plugged seawards.
The short steep tide rip at the harbour's mouth gave place to the
long sullen undulations of the North Sea. Although navigation was
carried on without steaming lights, the chances of collision were
hardly worth taking into consideration, since the noise of the
exhausts could be plainly audible for a distance of a couple of
miles.
For the best part of an hour the flotilla held on then just before
midnight came an order from the leading M.L. for the boats to proceed
independently.
Meredith, hitherto inactive, roused himself.
"Port fifteen!" he ordered. "Course east a half north!"
"East a half north it is, sir," repeated the coxwain.
In obedience to the Sub's order, a man made his way aft and paid out
the patent log-line. The mileage as recorded by this instrument and
the course as determined by the magnetic needle were the sole factors
used to take the M.L. to her appointed station, four miles from a
prominent headland and right in the steamer-track of vessels
proceeding northwards from the Firth of Forth. Kenneth felt no
particular enthusiasm for this kind of work. It was Duty, spelt with
a capital D. Whether the patrol were essential to safeguard shipping
had yet to be proved. For the best part of a twelvemonth M.L.'s were
constantly on duty off the headland, yet on no occasion had a U-boat
been definitely sighted. There had been false alarms. A boat-hook
stave floating perpendicularly and drifting with the tide had caused
the waste of a couple of depth-charges and incidentally the slaughter
of thousands of fish; a derelict fore-topmast had been responsible
for the expenditure of twenty rounds of six-pounder ammunition.
On the other hand, what might have happened had the Auldhaig M.L.
Patrol not been in existence can well be conjectured. The slow-moving
tramps chartered by the Admiralty to take naval stores to the Grand
Fleet at Scapa Flow would have afforded easy targets to U-boat
commanders but for the constant vigilance on the part of the M.L.'s.
In effect, the little patrol boats had frightened off the modern
pirates, thereby performing a useful though somewhat monotonous rôle
in the question of Sea Power.
"'Tany rate, I'm afloat," soliloquised Meredith. "Better than sitting
tight in a muddy trench and being strafed day and night by Boche
artillery; but I wish to goodness I'd been in the Dover Patrol.
There's no Zeebrugge this end of the North Sea to make things a bit
lively."
"Wireless message, sir."
Meredith turned abruptly to find an operator proffering a leaf from a
signal pad.
"Anything important?" he asked.
The lad--he was one of the two ex-bank clerks--smiled.
"Looks like business this time, sir," he replied. "A U-boat's been
shelling Aberspey. One of our blimps nearly got one home, and Fritz
sheered off and was lost in the mist."
Switching on an electric torch, Meredith read the message. It was
couched in matter-of-fact official terms and left much to the
imagination. Briefly, the U-boat was believed to be damaged and
incapable of submerging. It was last sighted at 22.30 (half-past
ten), steering eastward and apparently on fire aft.
"Very good; inform the skipper," said Kenneth. "Yes; we stand a
chance of seeing something this time."
In less than a couple of minutes Wakefield was on deck.
"Some wheeze, this, Meredith!" he exclaimed gleefully. "With luck we
may spot little Fritz. I don't think it's much use following the
directions given in this signal. There'll be a swarm of destroyers
and all that sort of fry buzzing around already, and if the skipper
of the U-boat is up to snuff he'll have altered course to the
south'ard. We'll just stand on and keep our wits on the alert. If
he's legging it to the south'ard he'll cut athwart our course. I'll
try what luck we can get with the hydrophone first."
The M.L.'s engines were stopped, and the boat rolled heavily in the
oily swell. Over her starboard side a weird contraption of wires
was lowered, the wires terminating in submerged metal plates, while
inboard they led to a complicated device known as a hydrophone. In
the wireless-room a man sat with receivers clipped to his ears. He
was not listening to wireless messages, but for the sound of a
U-boat's propellers.
"Anything doing?" inquired Meredith for the twentieth time, as the
minutes slowly passed.
This time the listener did not shake his head.
"Fancy I hear something, sir," he reported. "Would you like to
listen?"
Kenneth took the proffered ear-pieces and clipped them to his head.
Very faintly he could hear the characteristic thud of a marine motor.
"Evidently she's knocking around," he observed, as he handed the
apparatus to the operator. "All right; carry on."
Slowly the man revolved a handle until the thudding sound reached a
maximum intensity. A glance at the compass showed that the
hydrophones were pointing east by south. Still turning the handle, he
noted that the volume of sound gradually decreased until a certain
point; then it began to increase again, reaching a state of maximum
intensity in a bearing south by east. That was all the operator
required. Experience had taught him that the source of emission of
the sound came from a direction midway between the two maxima, while
a further test revealed the fact that the U-boat was moving in a
southerly direction.
"If only this blessed fog would lift!" exclaimed Wakefield when his
Sub communicated the result of the hydrophone test.
"Get the gear inboard, Meredith. See that the ammunition is brought
up and the gun cleared for action. Now for a game of blind man's
buff."
"None of our submarines are about here, I suppose?" asked Meredith.
"Not within seventy miles," replied the skipper. "So if we do have
the luck to run across a submarine, we'll go for the brute
bald-headed."
"And if Fritz can't dive?"
"Then, of course, we'll have to try our best to tickle his ribs with
a shell while he's on the surface. Tricky work, but we'll keep him
fully occupied with our little pea-shooter"; and Wakefield indicated
the six-pounder, by the side of which the gun-layer was standing
ready and alert to train the weapon upon its objective.
A quarter of an hour passed. Both officers realised that in this game
of hide-and-seek the U-boat stood a better chance, since she could
hear the noisy explosions of the M.L.'s exhausts, especially if she
floated motionless with her motors switched off. Again, if it came to
a trial of gunnery, the odds were tremendously in favour of the Hun,
since the U-boat mounted a couple of 4.7-inch or even 6-inch weapons.
Wakefield was counting on the chance of catching his foe napping, and
that, if the U-boat were able to dive, she would submerge
precipitately. It was then that the depth-charges would play their
deadly part.
Conscious of a peculiar sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach,
Meredith confessed to himself that "he had the wind up." Faced with
the possibility of going into action for the first time, he both
dreaded and welcomed the chance. Fervently he gave thanks for the
fact that it was dark, and that none of his comrades could see his
face. For his own part, he felt that every vestige of colour had
vanished from his usually bronze features.
Again M.L. 1071 was brought to a standstill and recourse made to the
hydrophone. The result was disappointing. Except for a faint rumbling
that could only be ascribed to the surf lashing the distant cliffs,
not a sound was recorded. Apparently the U-boat was again capable of
submerging, and was lying doggo on the bed of the North Sea, while
the destroyers engaged in hunting her had passed beyond the range of
the M.L.'s hydrophone.
"We'll just carry on," decided Wakefield. "The fog looks like
lifting."
Overhead the moonlight was streaming down through a thin layer of
mist, while the range of visibility varied from fifty to five hundred
yards as banks of dispersing vapour bore down before the light
easterly wind.
Wiping the moisture from the lenses of his powerful night glasses,
Meredith raised the binoculars and scanned the limited expanse of
visible sea. Even as he did so a weird greyish object swept across
his field of vision.
"By Jove!" he ejaculated.
"By Jove, what?" asked Wakefield sharply. "Good heavens! Yes, there
she is!"
He jerked the telegraph indicator to full speed ahead.
"See her, Clarkson?" he shouted to the gun-layer. "Two points on your
starboard bow. Let her have it."