Sea-Hounds Part 11

It was rotten shooting at first, as shooting from the very poor platform a submarine affords usually is, but, at about three thousand yards, he put a sh.e.l.l through the fo'c'sl', luckily above the water-line. The next minute or two was the most anxious time I had, for, if he made up his mind to do it that way, there was nothing to prevent his sticking off there and putting us down with sh.e.l.l-fire.

"Perhaps if the two or three shots which followed had been hits, that is what he would have done. It was probably his disgust at the fact that they were all 'overs' that determined him to close in and finish the job with bombs. Possibly, also, the fact that I appeared to be starting to abandon ship at this juncture convinced him finally that the yacht had no fight in her, and it may well be that the temptation to loot had something to do with his decision. I could never make quite sure on those points, for Herr Skipper never confided what was in his mind to the one officer who survived him. At any rate, he came nosing nonchalantly in and did just what I had been praying for the last month he would do--poked right up alongside. The heavy sea that had been running for the last two or three days had gone down during the night, so that he was able to stand in pretty close without running much danger of b.u.mping.

"The extent of my abandoning ship had been to follow the old sea rule of saving the women and children first. Or rather, we put the women off in our only boat; the baby, I won't need to tell you, was somehow 'overlooked.' The boat was lowered in full view of the Hun, who was about fifteen hundred yards distant at the moment, and there was a little unrehea.r.s.ed incident in connection with it that must have done its part in convincing him that what he was witnessing was a genuine piece of 'abandon.' One of the girls--it was the blonde 'Brunnhilde,' I believe--not wanting to miss any of the fun, started to hang back and tried to bluff them into letting her stay by swearing that she'd rather face the Hun than desert her child. As a matter of fact, the 'Gainsborough' had more claim on the kid than 'Brunnhilde,' for she--I mean he--had cadged its clothes from a sweetheart who worked in a draper's shop. If I had been there personally, I'm afraid 'Brunnhilde's' little bluff would have won through, for a man whose wits are keen enough to spring a joke at a crisis has always made an especial appeal to me. To the bo'sun, however, orders were orders, and his answer to the recalcitrant blonde's insubordination was to rush her to the rail by the slack of her middy jacket, and to help her over it with the toe of his boot.

"The 'K----'s' low freeboard made the drop a short one, and, luckily, 'Brunnhilde' missed the gun'nel' of the whaler and landed gently in the water, from where she was dragged by the ready hands of her sisters a few moments later. They do say, though, that she turned a complete flip-flop in the air, and that there was a display of--well, if a Goerz prism binocular won't reveal the difference between a pair of blue sailor's breeches and French lingerie at under a mile, all I can say is that we've much overrated German optical gla.s.s. As I learned later, however, the Huns, observing only the fall and missing the revealing details, merely concluded that the Englanders were jumping overboard in panic, and dismissed their last lingering doubts and suspicions.

"The girls were already instructed that they were to lie low and keep their peroxide curls out of sight as long as they were within a mile or so of the submarine, so as not to tempt the latter to follow them up for a look-see at closer range. The boat had orders to pull astern for a while, and then, if the Hun was observed to come alongside the '----' as hoped, to turn eight or ten points to port and head up in the direction from which he had appeared. The reason for this manoeuvre, which was carried out precisely as planned, you will understand in a moment.

"On came Fritz, coolly contemptuous, and on went the show, like the unrolling of a movie scenario. For a while I was fearful that he might order back my boat to use in boarding me with, but as soon as he was close enough to be sure that I had no gun he must have decided so much trouble was superfluous. He had only one gun, it was evident--the gunners kept sweeping it back and forth to cover from about the bridge to the engine-room as they drew nearer--and presently I saw men, armed with short rifles, coming up through both fore and after hatches. Far from exhibiting any signs of belligerency, I still kept three or four of my 'flannelled fools' mildly panicking. Or, rather, I _ordered_ them to panic mildly. As a matter of fact, they did it rather violently--a good deal more like movie rough stuff than the real thing.

"Little difference it made to Fritz, though, who seemed to take it quite as a matter of course that the British yachtsman should show his terror like a Wild West film drama heroine. On he stood, and when he came within hailing distance, a burly ruffian on the bridge--doubtless the skipper--shouted something in guttural German-English which I never quite made out, but which was probably some kind of warning or other. I don't think I saw any of my crew exactly 'Kamerading', but I needn't tell you that every man in sight was doing his best to register 'troubled pa.s.sivity', or something like that. I had antic.i.p.ated that I might not be in a position to signal his cue to R----, and so had arranged that he should keep watch from a cabin port, and to use his own judgment about the time of his 'entrance.' I was afraid to have him on deck all the time for fear the 'che-ild' might be subjected to too careful a scrutiny. R---- was just in flannels, understand, so there was nothing suspicious in his own appearance. He did both his play-acting and his real acting to perfection, neither overdoing nor underdoing one or the other.

"The U-boat was close alongside, rapidly easing down under reversed propellers, before R---- appeared, just as natural an anguished father with a child as you could possibly ask for. Two or three of the Huns covered him with their carbines as he dashed out of the port door of the saloon--that one just behind you--but lowered the muzzles again when they saw it was apparently only a half-distracted parent trying to signal for the boat to come back for him and his babe. I have no doubt that there were some very sarcastic remarks pa.s.sed on that U-boat at this juncture about the courage of the English male. _If_ there were, the next act of the coolest and bravest boy I ever knew literally forced the words down their throats.

"The whaler which, following its instructions, had been pulling easterly for some minutes, now bore about four points on the port quarter, so that R----, in his apparent endeavour to call its attention to the deserted babe, could not have seemed to have been doing anything suspicious when he swung the bundle above his head and rushed to the rail almost opposite the U-boat's conning-tower. That rotary upward and backward swing was absolutely necessary for getting distance with, and without it there was no way that forty or fifty pound infant could have been hurled the fifteen feet or more which still intervened. As it was, it landed, fair and square, in the angle formed by the after end of the conning-tower and the deck. At the same instant our machine-guns opened up through several of the port scuttles, which had been specially enlarged and masked with that end in view, and in a few seconds there was not an unwounded Hun in sight. The gunners had been the first ones sprayed, with the result that they were copped before firing a shot.

Their torpedoes, or course, were too close, and not bearing properly enough to launch.

"Immediately following the explosion of the bomb and the opening of the machine-gun fire a strange thing happened. I saw the U-boat's bow-rudders begin to slant, saw her begin to gather way, heard the hum of motors as the rattle of the Maxims (their work completed) died out, and--down she went, and with three hatches open, and a ragged hole abaft the conning-tower where the 'baby' had exploded in its final tantrum. I could never get any sure explanation of this from any of the survivors we fished up out of the water, but everything points to the probability that the skipper--perhaps inadvertently, as the up-kick of the bomb blew him overboard--pulled the diving klaxon, and the officer in the central control room, not knowing just how things stood above, proceeded to submerge as usual. Doubtless the men who should have been standing by to close the hatches in such an emergency had been caught by the machine-gun fire. With every man below tied down with his duties in connection with submerging her, it is quite conceivable that nothing could be done, once she was below the surface, to stop the inrush of water, and that she was quickly beyond all hope of bringing up again. I didn't have a fair chance to size up the hole ripped open by the bomb, but rather think that also was large enough to have admitted a good deal of water.

"It was rather disappointing in a way, having her go down like that, for as things had turned out, it was a hundred to one we should otherwise have captured her almost unharmed. There was a good deal of solace, however, in the fact that none of the Huns were getting back to tell what happened to them, so that this identical stunt was left open for use again. As a matter of fact, variations of it were used a number of times, by one kind of craft or another, before an unlucky slip-up--the one which finished poor R----, by the way--gave the game away and started us veering off on other tacks. I have had a number of successes since that time," concluded K----, pouring me a gla.s.s of the yacht's 1835 Cognac as a night cap, "but never a one which was quite so much like taking candy from a child as that 'opener.'"

CHAPTER X

THE _WHACK_ AND THE _SMACK_

There was always a strange and distinctive fascination to me in standing on the bridge of one ship and watching other ships--and especially lines of ships--push up and sharpen to shape above the edge of the sea.

This feeling, strong enough in ordinary times--when it was but a peaceful merchantman one watched from and but peaceful merchantmen that one saw--is intensified manifold when it is a warship's bridge one paces, and only the silhouettes of ships of war that notch the far horizon. Battleship, battle cruiser, light cruiser, destroyer, sloop, trawler, and all the other kinds and cla.s.ses of patrol craft--each has its own distinctive smudge of smoke, its own peculiar way of revealing its ident.i.ty by a blurred foretop, funnel, or superstructure long before its hull has lifted its amorphous ma.s.s above the sky-line.

And now to the sky-line riddles one was given to read, and to be thrilled by as the puzzle revealed itself, had been added the great troop convoy from America, my first sight of one of which was just unfolding. H.M.S. _Buzz_, in which I chanced to be out at the time, was not one of the escorting destroyers, and it was only by accident that the course she was steering to join up with a couple of other ships of her flotilla on some kind of "hunting" stunt took her across that of the convoy, and pa.s.sed it in inspiring panoramic review before our eyes.

From dusky blurs of smoke trailing low along the horizon, ship after ship--from ex-floating palaces with famous names to angular craft of strange design which were evidently the latest word in standardised construction--they rose out of the sea (as our quartering course brought us nearer) until a wide angle of our seaward view was blocked by an almost solid wall of steadily steaming steel.

There was a lot to stir the imagination in that sight--aye, fairly to grip you by the throat as a dawning sense of what it portended sank home. In the abstract it was the living, breathing symbol of the relentless progress of America's mighty effort, a tangible sign of the fact that her aid to the Allies would not arrive too late. What it stood for concretely is best expressed in the words of the young R.N.R.

sub-lieutenant who was officer of the watch at the time.

"It looks to me," he said, with a pleased smile, as he lowered his gla.s.s after a long scrutiny of the advancing lines of ships, "as though there'd be jolly near forty thousand new Yanks to be catered for in Liverpool by to-morrow evening."

"Yes," I said somewhat dubiously, my mind suddenly a.s.sailed by a misgiving awakened by the thousands of yards of torpedo target presented by the sides of those placidly ploughing ships, "that is, a.s.suming that they get there safely. But they're only just entering the danger zone now, and there's a lot of water got to stream under their keels before they berth in the Mersey.

"I don't know anything about convoys, or the ways of protecting them; but all the same, it looks to me as though that bunch of troopers would offer a mark like the map of Ireland to a U-boat, and a lot more vulnerable one."

Young P---- laughed as he bent, squint-eyed, to take a bearing on a destroyer zigzagging jauntily with high-flung wake in the van of the approaching fleet.

"That's what everyone--even an old sailor--says the first time he sights one of the big transatlantic convoys," he said; "and if there are any skippers new to the job in that lot there, that's just what _they're_ saying. It's all through failure to appreciate--indeed, no one who has not seen the ins and outs of it would be in a position to appreciate--the effectiveness of the whole anti-submarine scheme, and, especially, what almost complete protection thoroughly up-to-the-minute screening--with adequate destroyers and other light craft--really affords. As a matter of fact, every soldier in that convoy is probably a good deal safer now--and right on in through this so-called danger zone to harbour--than he was marching down Broadway to the pier--at least, if Broadway is like it was when I used to put in to New York as a kid in the _Baltic_."

"But will you tell me," I protested, "how a U-boat, firing two or three torpedoes from, say, just about where we are now, could possibly miss a mark like that?"

"Well, it would take a bit of missing from hereabouts, I admit," was the reply; "only, if there is any Fritz still in the game with the nerve to try it, he would also be missing himself."

"What would happen to him?" I asked.

"One or all of two or three things might happen,----" P---- answered, after ordering a point or two alteration in course to give safe berth to the nearing destroyer.

"He might get his hide holed by gunfire, he might get split open by a depth-charge, he might get rammed, and he might get several other things. With all the luck in his favour, he might even get a transport.

But there's one thing I can a.s.sure you he wouldn't get--and that's back to his base. There may be two or three bearings from which one of these big convoys appears to present a mark as wide and unbroken as the map of Ireland; but there's nothing in heaven or earth to save the Fritz who hasn't learned by the sad example of no small number of his mates that it is quick suicide for him to slip a mouldie down one of them."

"You mean that he doesn't try it? that he's afraid to take the chance?"

I asked somewhat incredulously, for I had somehow come to regard Fritz, though a pirate, as a dashing and daring one when the stake was high enough.

"Except under very favourable circ.u.mstances, yes," was the reply; "and now that, with the coming of the American destroyers and patrol boats, we are able to do the thing the way we want to, what Fritz might reckon as 'very favourable circ.u.mstances' are becoming increasingly fewer and farther between. Now a few months ago, when we were just getting the convoy system under weigh, and when there was a shortage of every kind of screening craft, things were different. Fritz's _moral_ was better then than it is now, and we didn't have the means of shaking it that we have piled up since. At our first convoys, straggling and little schooled in looking after themselves, he used to take a chance as often as not, if he happened to sight them; but even then he rarely got back to tell what happened to him. There was the one that tried to celebrate the advent of 'Peace-on-Earth-Good-Will-to-Men' last Christmas Day by sinking the _Amperi_, which was one of a convoy the _Whack_ (in which I was Number Two at the time) was helping to escort. Well, I couldn't say much for his 'Good-Will-toward-Men,' but he certainly found a short cut to 'Peace-on-Earth,' or at least the bottom of the sea.

"Now that chap took a real sporting chance, and got his reward for it--both ways. I mean to say, that he sunk the ship he went after all right--which was his reward one way; and that we then sunk him--which was his reward the other way. There was a funny coincidence in connection with that little episode which might amuse you. We were----"

He paused for a moment while he spelled out for himself the "Visual"

which one of the escorting destroyers was flashing to the convoy leader, but presently, with a smile of pleased reminiscence, took up the thread of his yarn. This is the story that young Sub-Lieutenant P----, R.N.R., told me the while we leaned on the lee rail of the bridge and watched the pa.s.sing of those miles-long lines of packed troopers as, silently sure of purpose, superbly contemptuous of danger, they steamed steadily on to deliver their cargoes of human freight one step further towards the fulfilment of its destiny.

"It was Christmas Day, as I told you," he said, bracing comfortable against the roll, "and a cold, bl.u.s.tering, windy day it was. Several days previously we had picked up a small slow convoy off a West African port, and were escorting it to a port on the West Coast of England. The escort consisted only of the _Whack_ and the _Smack_, the skipper of the latter, as the senior officer, being in command. None of the ships--they were mostly slow freighters--had had much convoy experience to speak of at the time, and we were having our hands full all the way keeping them in any kind of formation. They seemed to be getting worse rather than better in this respect as we got into the waters where U-boat attacks might be expected, but this may have been largely due to the weather, which was--well, about the usual mid-winter brand in those lat.i.tudes. In fact, we were just becoming hopeful that the rising wind and sea, both were about 'Force 6,' might make it impossible for submarines to operate during the day or so that still must elapse before reaching port, when trouble began.

"All the morning the _Plato_, which had been a bad straggler throughout, had been falling astern, and finally the _Smack_ ordered _Whack_ back to prod her on and do what could be done in the way of screening her. She still continued to lose distance, however, so that, at noon, we were nearly out of sight of the main convoy, of which little more than smoke and topmasts could be seen on the northern horizon.

"At that hour the _Smack_, doubtless because he had received some report of the presence of U-boats in his vicinity, ordered us to rejoin the convoy. We left an armed trawler to do what it could for the loitering _Plato_, and started off at the best rate the weather would allow to make up the distance lost. It was at this juncture that the amusing little coincidence I mentioned a while ago occurred.

"A patrol-boat, of course, does not carry a padre, any more than it does a number of the other comforts and luxuries provided in cruisers and battleships, and for that reason we hadn't been able to do very much in the way of a Christmas service. Several of the ship's company were somewhat religiously inclined, however, and these, in lieu of anything better, had asked for and received permission to hold a bit of a song service, in case there was opportunity for it, during the day. As the morning had been a rather full one, no suitable interval offered until their rather poor apology for a Christmas dinner was out of the way, and we were headed back to join the convoy. Then they went to it with a will, and for the next hour or more fragments of Yuletide songs came drifting back to my cabin to mingle with a number of other things conspiring to disturb the forty winks I was trying to s.n.a.t.c.h while the going was good. After a while, it appears, having run through their repertoire of Christmas songs, they started in on Easter ones, 'Bein'

that they was mo' or less on the same subject,' as one of them explained to me later. They had just boomed the last line of a chorus which concluded with 'We shall seek our risen Lord,' when a signal was received stating that a periscope had been sighted by some ship of the convoy, and, sure enough, off they had to go to seek--well, I wouldn't take the Hun quite so near his own valuation of himself to put it as the song does, but all the same that quick new kick of the screws told me as plain as any words, even before I read the signal, that the old _Whack_ was jumping away to seek _something_ that had risen.

"The convoy was dead ahead of us at a distance of about seven miles when I reached the bridge, and, the visibility being unusually good for that time of year, I could see all of the ships distinctly, as they steamed in two columns of three abreast. I was even able to recognise the _Amperi_ in the centre of the leading line. We were just comforting each other with the a.s.surance that it was getting too rough for a U-boat to run a torpedo with any chance of finding its mark, when a huge spout of water jumped skyward right in the middle of the convoy. When it subsided, the _Amperi_, with a heavy list to port, could be seen heading westward, evidently with her engines and steering gear disabled, while the rest of the convoy, smoke rolling from their funnels, were 'starring' on northerly courses.

"The alarm was rung, and as the men rushed to action stations a signal was made to the _Smack_ asking what was wrong. She replied, '_Amperi_ torpedoed; join me with all dispatch.' This, of course, we had already started to do, though the wind and sea were knocking a good many knots off our best speed. It was evident enough that the _Amperi_ had received a death-blow, so that we were not surprised to find them abandoning ship as we began to close her.

"Rotten as the weather was for it, this was being conducted most coolly and skilfully, and three boats had already left her before we came driving down to her a.s.sistance. _Smack_ had signalled us to pick up survivors, and we had stood in, at reduced speed, to 250 yards of the now heavily heeling ship, with the intention of proceeding on down, to the leeward of her to the aid of two of her boats, when we sighted three or four feet of periscope sticking out of the water, one point on the starboard bow and at a distance of about a couple of hundred yards. To see anything at all in rough water like that, you understand, a periscope has to be poked well above the slap of the waves, and that about equalizes the greater difficulty there is in picking up the 'feather' when it's choppy.

"I was at my action station with the 12-pounder batteries at this juncture, but as it looked like a better chance for the depth-charges than the guns, no order to open fire was given just yet. The captain ordered the helm to be steadied, and rang up 'Full speed ahead' to the engine-room. We pa.s.sed the periscope ten yards on the port side, and when the stern was just coming abreast it, two charges were released together. As they were both set for the same depth it is probable that the one staggeringly powerful explosion we felt was caused by their detonating simultaneously. The shock was as solid as though we had struck a rock, and I could feel a distinct lift to the ship before the impact of it. There was something so substantially satisfying about that m.u.f.fled jar that it seemed only in the natural course of things that it effected what it was intended to. The bow of the U-boat broke surface almost immediately, the fact that it showed before the conning-tower proving at once that she was hard hit and heavily down by the stern.

Indeed, the deck of her from the conning-tower aft was fated never again to feel the rush of sea air.

"She was now less than a hundred yards right astern of us, and heading, in a wobbly sort of way, like a half-stunned porpoise floundering away from the 'boil' of a depth-charge, on just about the course the _Whack_ had been on when she kicked loose her 'cans.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LOOK-OUT ON A DESTROYER AND PART OF HIS VIEW]

"The skipper put the helm hard-a-starboard, with the idea of turning to ram, at the same time ordering me to open fire with the port twelve-pounder. That was what I had been waiting for. The gun-crew was down to three--through the others having been detailed for boat work in connection with picking up the survivors from the _Amperi_--but that didn't bother a good deal in a short and sweet practice like this one.

The ship was bobbing like a cork from the seas, in addition to her heavy heel from the short turn and the vibration from the grind of the helm.

But neither did any of these little things matter materially, for we'd always made a point of carrying out our target practice under the worst conditions.

"The first round, fired at three hundred yards, was an 'over' by a narrow margin, but the second, at two hundred yards, was a clean hit on the conning-tower, carrying away the periscope and the stays supporting it. The explosion of this sh.e.l.l appeared to split the whole superstructure of the conning-tower, from the bridge to the deck. I did not see anyone on the bridge at this moment, and if there had been he must certainly have been killed. The fact that the submarine seemed to have been blown to the surface by the force of our exploding depth-charges rather than to have come up voluntarily, may account for the fact that no head was poked above the bridge rail as she emerged. If she had come up deliberately it would have been the duty of the skipper and a signalman to pop out on to the bridge at once to be ready for eventualities. Evidently they had no chance to do so on this occasion, and as a consequence spun out their thread o' life by anywhere from twenty to thirty seconds--whatever that was worth to them.