H.M.S Part 19

The pumps began to stamp and clatter as they drove the entering water out again, but above the noise of the pumps the Captain could hear the roaring note of propellers rushing far overhead. If it had not been for those infernal rivets, he thought, he would have been at three hundred feet by now, but he could not risk the extra wetting which a pressure of a hundred and thirty pounds to the inch on the entering water would give to his circuits. The weight of extra water in the bilges was nothing--he could deal with that--though the thought of the six hundred odd fathoms of water between him and the bottom was a thing to remember anxiously in case of his getting negative buoyancy; but if this continual spray of salt water reached his motor circuits it would be fatal. He cursed the men who were vainly trying to block the rivet-holes with wood wedges, and jumping on the periscope table he tried to guide the end of a short plank--intended as a baffle-plate--across the stream. As he stood working, a terrific concussion shook the U-boat from stem to stern. The bows rose till men began to slip aft down the wet deck, and from aft came a succession of cries and shouted orders, "Close all doors! the after-hatch is falling in--Come up and surrender--La.s.s uns heraus!" The Captain rose from the deck beneath the eye-piece, shaky from his fall from the table. He hardly dared look at the gauge, but he kept his head and his wits as he gave his orders. With the motors roaring round at their utmost power and an angle up by the bow of some fifteen degrees, the U-boat held her own, and as tank after tank was blown empty, she slowly gained on the depth gauge and began to climb. As she rose, she was shaken again and again by the powerful depth-charges that were being dropped on the broken water left by the air-bubble from her after compartment--a surface-mark now a quarter of a mile astern.

Beneath the conning-tower more and more men were gathering, some calm, some white, trembling, and voluble. The boat broke surface with her stem and half her conning-tower showing, then levelled a little and tore along with the waves foaming round her conning-tower and bridge. From inside they could clearly hear the sh.e.l.ls that greeted her, and in a moment there was a rush of men up the ladder. Among the first few the Captain saw his First Lieutenant's legs vanish upwards, and at the sight a sneering smile showed on his sunburnt face. The first man to open the lid died as he did so, for a four-inch sh.e.l.l removed the top of the conning-tower before he was clear of it. The escort was taking no chances as to whether the boat's appearance on the surface was intentional or accidental, and they were making the water for a hundred yards around her fairly boil with bursting sh.e.l.l. As the boat tore ahead, holding herself up on her angle and her speed, a few men struggled out of her one by one past the torn body of the first man to get out. Two of them leaped instantly overboard, but the next clawed his way up to a rail, and while others scrambled and fought their way overside, and sh.e.l.ls crashed and burst below and around him on water and conning-tower casing, he stood upright a moment with arms raised high above his head. At the signal the firing ceased as if a switch had been turned by a single hand, and he subsided in a huddled heap on the bridge as the riddled submarine ran under. Down below the Captain still smiled, leaning with his elbows on the periscope training-handles and watching the hurrying men at the ladder's foot, until the great rush of water and men, that showed that the end had come, swept him aft and away across the border-line of sleep.

THROUGH AN ADMIRALTY WINDOW.

The room was exactly the same as any room in any Government building, except that the Naval observer would have at once noticed one fact--that the furniture was of the unchanging Admiralty pattern. The roll-top desk, the chairs, and even the lamp-shades, would have been to him familiar friends. They were certainly familiar to the Post-Captain who sat at the desk. Captain Henry Ranson had been a noted Commander before his retirement--a man of whom many tales, both true and apocryphal, still circulated when Senior Officers of the Fleet forgathered at the lunch intervals of Courts-Martial and Inquiries. He had little opportunity in his present War appointment to display any of the characteristics on which his Sagas had been based, for neither seamanship, daring, or, well--Independent Initiative, were quite in keeping with the routine of an Admiralty Office.

To-day he was feeling the claustrophobia of London more acutely than usual. The sun was shining through the big window across the room, and he wanted to rise and look out at the blue sky and white cloud-tufts that he knew to be showing over the buildings across the Horse Guards Parade. His desk gave him no view through the window--he knew the weakness of his powers of concentration on his eternal paper work too well to have allowed himself such a distraction; but as the door opened to admit his clerk--a firm and earnest civilian with the zeal of monastic officialdom shining through his spectacles--he rose abruptly and moved out into the sunlight glare.

"Yes, Collins? What is it?"

"A small matter, sir, which is not quite in order. If you will glance through this you will no doubt agree with me."

The Captain took the sheets from the clerk's outstretched hand and moved a little away from the glaring light to read.

SIR,--I have the honour to bring to your notice the conduct of Skipper A. P. Marsh, of the Admiralty tug _Annie Laurie_, on the 22nd-23rd November 1917, and I beg to recommend him for decoration in view of the following facts:--

On November 21st, 1917, the steamer _Makalaka_, homeward bound with corn, was sh.e.l.led by a U-boat when near the Irish coast. The enemy was dealt with by a patrol in the vicinity, but the _Makalaka_, proceeding east at full speed in accordance with instructions, was thrown out of her reckoning by a damaged compa.s.s, and found herself at dusk on a lee sh.o.r.e off the Galway coast, with her shaft broken (a result of sh.e.l.l damage which had not been realised to be serious at the time it was incurred).

Skipper Marsh, seeing her flares from his patrol to seaward, most gallantly closed her and took her in tow in a rising N.W. gale.

In view of the probability of the attempt to tow failing, the crew of the _Makalaka_ were taken aboard the tug, but the towing was continued through a full gale lasting twenty-four hours until the ship was out of danger.--I have the honour to be, sir, &c.

The Post-Captain folded the letter carefully and placed it on his desk. The clerk retrieved it, and moved towards the door. The Captain turned, "What are you going to do with that, Collins?"

"I take it that it needs only the usual reply, sir--that this is not approved--with a reference to the regulation bearing on the case."

"Why not approved, Collins?"

The clerk was shocked, and his tone showed it. "Because that decoration is for gallant action in face of the enemy, and this case does not come within its scope. In any case the man will get salvage." [The Captain made an impatient gesture.] "If the Royal Humane Society care to----" he stopped, because the Captain had walked to the window, and, in obvious inattention to the speaker, was staring out across the wide Horse Guards and far beyond the fleecy clouds that drifted across the sky over the great sea of buildings that hemmed him in.

Captain Ranson had gone on a journey--back through forty years of time, and across eighty-one degrees of longitude.

He ran up the gangway, straightened his helmet and dirk-belt, and approached the Commander, who, a tall dark-featured figure, was standing looking down on the boat as she rose and fell alongside to the gentle heave of the Indian Ocean--"Second cutter manned, sir."

The Commander turned and looked the boy over beneath his heavy eyebrows. "When are you going to set up a new port shroud?" he asked.

The Midshipman fingered the seam of his trousers, and looked carefully at the b.u.t.tons on the Commander's tunic--"I thought, sir, that is, we've got a new shroud all fitted, but I thought--the c.o.xswain said, sir--that the old one would do for to-day as the wind's nothing...."

The barometric indications of the Commander's eyes showed threatening weather. He took the boy's arm in the grasp of a heavy hand and led him to the rail abreast the swinging mastheads of the boat.

"Now listen, young gentleman," he said. "What the c.o.xswain said isn't evidence. It's _you_ that command that boat, and _you_ that will handle and command her. Don't talk to me again as if you were a schoolboy." The Midshipman shivered and squinted cautiously up to see if the storm-signals were still in evidence. The dark stern eyes were looking down at him in a way that made him feel as if he was some luckless worm that had unhappily bored its way up into the publicity of an aviary. The Commander moved his hand and turned the boy to face him. "Now, you remember this, young gentleman, only seamen come through gales safely--it's the fools that go to sea with rusty shrouds and weak rigging. And if you're to be a seaman you must never go to sea, even in a flat calm, unless your ship is ready for a gale of wind. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then don't forget it, or I'll have you beaten till you grow corns. Now shove off, and pull away three cables on the port bow, drop your anchor on the shoal, and fit that new shroud. Remain there till the ship has got under way, done her night-firing, and signalled you to carry on. You will then close and weigh the target moorings, having the target ready for hoisting when the ship comes back to you. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"What have you got on your anchor?"

"A hundred and twenty fathom, sir--of four-inch." "That is enough--there is thirty fathom on the shoal--Carry on!"

The Midshipman ran down the gangway, and, jumping into the cutter, "Carried on." The Commander was an officer of whom the boat-midshipmen stood in awe, and they were always thankful when the ordeal of reporting a possibly unready boat to him as "ready" was over.

The last shot kicked up a yellow fountain of spray in the glare of the searchlight, and ricochetted, humming, over the target and on towards Malaya. A rocket sailed up from the distant ship--the searchlight flickered out a couple of Morse signs and went out, and in the velvety darkness of a tropic night the hands went forward in the cutter to weigh the anchor, the process of "shortening-in" having been accomplished a full hour ago. As the Midshipman stood up to superintend the operation, he saw a queer white line spreading and brightening along the horizon to the westward. A dash of rain struck his face, and a little gust of wind moaned past him. The crew looked up from their work to wonder, and in a matter of seconds the squall was on them. The wet hawser slipped and raced out, the hands jumping aft to get clear of the leaping turns as the cutter swung and drew hard on her anchor to the pressure of a tremendous wind. The white line rushed down on them, and showed as a turmoil of frothing sea, beaten flat by the wind into a sheet of phosph.o.r.escence veiled by low-flying spray. For a few minutes they crouched and endured the sudden cold and wet, then a yaw of the boat sent the bowmen forward with suspicion in their minds. "Up and down, sir--anchor's aweigh,"

came the report, in a voice that started as a roar, but reached the Midshipman aft as a faint high wail. The Midshipman faced round to leeward, and thought hard. He had been anch.o.r.ed on the only possible shoal, and once driven off that there was no holding-ground till he should reach the edge of the surf off Trincomalee, twenty miles away--all between being chartered as "Five hundred and no bottom." He called to the c.o.xswain and clawed his way forward, picking up men by name as he pa.s.sed them. They hove up their anchor, secured mainsail, awning, and mainmast in a dreadful tangle of rope and canvas to the anchor-ring--hitched an outlying corner of the tangle to a bight far up the hawser, and threw all over the bows. The cutter steadied head to wind, and the hands moved aft to raise the bow and protect themselves against the steady driving of the spray.

The Midshipman lay across the backboard, staring out to the port-quarter. Through the white haze he could see, at regular intervals, a quick-flashing gleam of yellow light. He knew what it was, and it did not comfort him. It was all he could see of the twenty-thousand candlepower of Foul Point Light, and although it was not getting much clearer it was certainly "drawing" from aft forward.

He had the rough lie of the coast in his head, and he was just realising two things--first, that in spite of the sea anchor he was being blown to leeward and ash.o.r.e at an incredible rate; and second, that if he could not round Foul Point across the wind, he was going to be food for the big surf-sharks before the morning.

He roused the crew again, and set them to the oars. Before half the oars were out he had realised the futility of the effort, and was trying to get them back without further damage. He corrected his error with the loss of four oars and several feet of the cutter's gunwale--broken off when the wind tore the long ash oars away. As he remembered later, it was at this point that Foul Point Light began to show clearly through the spray, and that his c.o.xswain began to sing an interminable hymn in the stern-sheets, and that the dark-faced Celtic stroke-oar, a man who had the reputation of being the worst character in all the ship, took over the helpless c.o.xswain's duty. The Midshipman was staring fascinated at the swinging beam of light that was beating on them from the sand-spit broad on the quarter, when the stroke-oar's voice in his ear changed him from a boy to an officer--"What'll you do now, sir?"

The question was answered on the instant--"All hands, up masts and sails. Close-reef both, and pa.s.s the hawser aft. Lash out now, lads, and get down to it."

That twenty-minute evolution, by the light of a hurricane-lamp, was a nightmare. The mainsail and mainmast were all snarled up in miscellaneous turns of roping. The hawser was wet and cold, and seemed fifty times its original length, but the work was done. He had felt that no shroud, however new, would stand the strain he was going to put on the masts, and though the men cursed and swore at the delay and toil involved, he got what he wanted from them. One at a time the masts were hove up and clamped in position against the half-solid wind--the hawser, cut to length, clove-hitched round each masthead, and frapped clear round the cutter, with the whole hove taut with "Spanish Windla.s.ses," till his clumsy hemp shrouds were braced to the strain. Then he braced himself by a glance at the light, swinging well over their heads now that they were close enough in to feel the first lift and heave of the outer surf, and yelled an order. The foresail rose, clattered furiously a moment against the mast, and then filled with a bang. "_Set mainsail!_" The cutter heeled over till her lee gunwale dipped--the masts bent and creaked, and the old boat went tearing into the wind on the best and last sail of her varied life.

The Midshipman and the stroke-oar clung to the long tiller that was curved like a fishing-rod under the strain. There were no gusts or variations in the wind: it beat solidly against the canvas, heeling the cutter to the verge of capsizing, and driving her through the water at steamer speed. The leeway was extraordinarily great--the boat going sideways almost as fast as she went ahead; but that leeway saved her from going over. They cut through the outer surf off the point, the boat leaking from the sprung keel to the opened seams where the frapping hawser-turns bit into her thin sides--the crew baling furiously to keep their minds from the expectation of a great crash that would tell of a mast tearing its heel up and out through the weather side. It lasted for barely half an hour, but the arm-weary Midshipman felt as if it had been a four-hour watch. As the light drew aft, he eased his sheets and swung up the channel, still at racing speed, but safely bound for harbour. His memories in after years of the next few hours were vague and clouded by sleep. He remembered the sun rising as they drew in towards the silent white-walled dockyard; the _swish_ of sand under the keel as he ran her hard up the boat-camber beach, and nothing more, till he woke to see the dreaded Commander--a tall white-clad figure--standing over him, looking with keen appraising eyes at the ma.s.s of hawser-turns that swathed boat and masts, and at the bodies of the snoring crew that lay on the hot sand around her.

The Clerk fidgeted. He had been kept waiting for a matter of seconds, and he did not like it. The Captain turned to face him, and, to the surprised eyes of the Clerk, seemed to have changed suddenly into a young man--alert, quick, and decisive. "_No_, Collins," said a strange voice; "the man _did_ act in the face of the enemy, and I will endorse the recommendation." He turned his eyes again to the window, but saw only the yellow gravel, the houses, and the smoke; the fetters of Routine seemed to clank warningly in his ears. "Yes," he said, "I have no reason to suppose the U-boat had not followed the steamer, or that she was not present all the time."

A MOST UNTRUE STORY.

The War was only in its first childhood and patrol work was still amusing, having not yet become a monotonous and unexciting business. The submarine was due to start back from patrol that night, and was just loafing along at twenty odd feet depth waiting for dark. The Captain was on watch at the periscope, swinging the instrument round from time to time to take a general survey of the horizon, but for the most part confining his scrutiny to the island to leeward. The island showed up clearly--the light of the setting sun flashing back from the windows of the buildings that looked out over the Bight. As the Captain took one of his all-round glances, he checked suddenly and concentrated his gaze to one point of the compa.s.s. A man who leaned against a pump six feet away--a man who had seemed to all appearance to be on the verge of sleep--opened his eyes, straightened up, and stood alertly watching the brown hands that held the periscope training handles. The signal seemed to be telepathically pa.s.sed on, as in a few seconds there were six or eight pairs of eyes watching the observer, who still peered at the unknown sight which no one else in the boat could see. Then the Captain moved his head back from the eye-piece, smiled (and at the smile six of the watchers reverted to their oil-stained reading matter), and called to the First-Lieutenant, who was at the moment engaged with an Engine-room Artificer in a mumbled inquest over a broken air-valve spindle. As the First-Lieutenant approached, the Captain stepped to one side and indicated the eye-piece by a nod. His subordinate took his place, and for a full half-minute remained slowly swivelling the great instrument through four points and back again. When he raised his head he was scowling and sullen.

"Well?" said the Captain. "A good few there, eh?"

"_Lord!_" The First-Lieutenant's voice indicated the deepest disgust.

"Thousands and thousands--and we can't get a shot at 'em!"

"Well, there's over a thousand, anyway. I've seen at least that lot of teal in the last couple of minutes."

"_Teal!_ Why, sir, I can see mallard now for the next half mile, and I could swear there'll be geese among them too."

"Here, let me look. Yes, by gum, and not one's getting up either."