Sea-Hounds Part 12

"My third shot plumped into her abaft the conning-tower, and the explosion which followed it had a good deal more behind it than the charge of a twelve-pounder sh.e.l.l. Before I had a chance to see what had blown up, however, we had rammed her, and whatever damage that shot had caused dissolved in the chaos of what proved the real _coup de grace_.

That ramming was undoubtedly one of the prettiest little jobs of its kind, one of the most neatly finessed, ever brought off.

"Since running over the submarine and dropping the depth-charges the captain had turned the _Whack_ through thirty-two points, a complete circle. This brought her back to a course just at right angles to the beam of the now helpless enemy, toward which she was driven to the limit of the last kick of the engines. Just before the moment of impact the screws were stopped dead, so as to sink the bow and reduce the chance of riding over the U-boat and rolling it under her stem, as has occasionally happened, instead of cutting it straight in two. The jar, when it came, was terrific, throwing from his feet every man not holding to something; yet there was that in the clean, sweet crunch of it that told me that it had accomplished all the heart could desire, even before the next second furnished graphic ocular evidence of it.

"The sharp, fine bows of the _Whack_ drove home well abaft the conning-tower, and--though the staggering jar told of the resistance met--for all the eye could see, cut through like a knife in soft b.u.t.ter.

Indeed, the amazing cleanness of the cut has always seemed to me the most remarkable feature of the whole show. The bow end of the U-boat, with the conning-tower, was the section which was cut off on my side--port--and the even cross-section of it that gaped up at me was very little different from that I once saw when one of our own submarines was being sawed through amidships in connection with some repairs. Even the plating did not appear to be bent or buckled. The impression that ring of shining clean-cloven steel left on my mind was of a cut as true and even as could have been done in dock with an acetylene flame. This was largely imagination, of course; and yet how photographic my mind-picture is you may judge from the fact that I have distinct recollection of seeing the thin circle of red lead where it showed all the way round beneath the grey of the outer paint.

"The heavily tilted main deck of the interior of this section of the U-boat did not appear to be flooded at this juncture, though any water that had been shipped, of course, would have been in the now submerged bows. I have a jumbled recollection of wheels and levers and switchboards, fittings of bra.s.s and steel, and what I took to be three torpedoes--one on the port side, and two, one above the other, on the starboard. The most arresting thing of all, however, was the figure of a solitary man, the only one, strange to say, that anybody reports having seen. He was scrambling upward toward the opening, and I have never been quite sure whether he was 'Kamerad-ing' with his uplifted hands, or whether they were raised preparatory to the dive it is quite probable he intended to make into the sea.

"Whichever the att.i.tude was, it had no chance to serve its purpose. The stern section of the U-boat--the one most heavily damaged by the depth-charges--was seen to sink abreast the starboard 12-pounder battery by the crew of that gun, but the forward part--the one with the conning-tower, which I had seen into the interior of--buoyed up by the water-tight compartments in the bows, continued to float. Observing this, the Captain ordered the helm put a-starboard, and as we turned, the 4-inch gun and my 12-pounder opened up together. My very first round, fired over the port quarter, hit and exploded fairly inside the gaping end of the section, right where I had last seen the man with upraised hands. That, and the two or three smashing hits by the 4-inch gun, finished the job. A whirlpool in the sea marked the rush of water into the severed end, and this section--for all the world as though it had been a complete submarine--tossed its bows, with their elephant-ear-like rudders, skyward, and planed off on an easy angle toward the bottom. Its disappearance was complete. There were no survivors, and practically no floating wreckage. Only a spreading film of oil and a tangle of torn wakes slowly dissolving in the wash of the driving seas marked the scene of the action. It had lasted something over ten minutes.

"The _Whack_ suffered considerable damage from the impact with the submarine, though not enough to give us serious worry, even in so heavy a sea. The stem was bent over to port, like a broken nose, and the buckling plates caused her to make quite a bit of water. We had no trouble coping with this, however, and made port, with the survivors of the _Amperi_ aboard, without difficulty. There we soon had the--well, not unmixedly unpleasant--news that the _Whack's_ wounds were of a nature somewhat comparable to what the Tommy in France calls a 'Blighty.' Without having any real permanent harm done her, she was still enough banged up to need a special refit, the period of which, of course, the most of us would be able to spend at home on leave. Yes, indeed," he concluded, grinning pleasedly, "that was a ripping piece of ramming in more ways than one."

P---- went over and bent above the shivering "Gyro," for a moment, took a long look through his gla.s.ses at the last of the now receding convoy, and then came back and rejoined me by the rail.

"There was one little thing I neglected to tell you about," he said presently, "and that was the part the _Smack_ played in that show.

Although the _Whack_ got all the _kudos_ for the sinking, there is a decided possibility that a bit of a stunt the _Smack_ brought off before ever we came up may have been largely if not entirely responsible for us getting the chance we did.

"_Smack_, you see, was near at hand when the _Amperi_ was torpedoed, and the instant her Captain saw the spout of water shoot up in the air, he altered course and drove at full speed for the point he reckoned the submarine would be most likely to be encountered. He reports that he had the good fortune to hit it, while it was still submerged, and that the shock was severe enough to throw men off their balance. Shortly after that a periscope appeared, and it was this that gave the _Whack_ her chance to drop her depth-charges.

"Now, not unnaturally, the Captain of the _Smack_ had good reason to believe that his striking the U-boat, even if he only grazed her, had something to do with her reappearance on the surface at a moment when she must have known a strenuous hunt for her was in progress. Unluckily, for his claim, however, the bows of the _Smack_, when she came to be docked, did not show sufficient evidences of having been in heavy collision to warrant the conclusion that the U-boat had been enough damaged to have gone to the surface from that cause alone. Under the circ.u.mstances, therefore, there wasn't anything else to do but give the credit for bringing her up to _Whack's_ depth-charges, while of course, the fact that it was also the _Whack_ that rammed her was obvious enough. The consequence was, as I said, that _we_ got all the _kudos_."

He gazed for a few moments at the back-curling bow-wave, before resuming. "Yes, _we_ got all the _kudos_," he said slowly; "but, all the same, I've never been able to figure why Fritz didn't douse his periscope and try to dive deeper when he saw the _Whack_ rounding toward him, if it wasn't because there was something pretty radically wrong with him already. I can't help thinking that the old _Smack_ had a lot to do with starting that Fritz on his downward path, even if it was the _Whack_ that gave him the final shove."

It was very characteristic, that last little explanation of P----'s. If there is one thing more than another that has impressed me in hearing these young British destroyer officers tell the "little games they have played with Fritz," it is the fine sporting spirit in which they invariably insist in sharing the credit of an achievement with every other officer, and man, and ship that has in any way figured in the action. It was the fault of the Hun that we could no longer treat the enemy as we would an opponent in sport; but that only makes it all the more inspiring to see the fellow-players still keeping alive the old spirit among themselves.

CHAPTER XI

BOMBED!

It was generally admitted by flying-men, even before the failure of the attempts to destroy the _Goeben_ while ash.o.r.e in the Dardanelles early in '18, that the air-bomb was a most uncertain and ineffective weapon against a large ship of any cla.s.s, but especially so against a warship with deck armour.

The princ.i.p.al reason for this is that the blunt-nosed air-bomb, no matter from how high it may be dropped, has neither the velocity nor the structure to penetrate the enclosed s.p.a.ces of a ship where its explosive charge would find something to exert itself against.

This is why an 18-pounder sh.e.l.l, penetrating to a casemate or engine-room, for instance, may easily do more damage to a warship than an air-bomb of ten times that weight expending its force more or less harmlessly upon an upper deck.

Merchant ships, with their inflammable and comparatively flimsy upper works, are more vulnerable to air-bombs than are warships, but even of these very few indeed have been completely destroyed as a consequence of aerial attack. Some of the gamest fights of the war on the sea have been those of merchant skippers who, in the days before their ships had guns of any description to keep aircraft at a distance, brought their vessels through by the exercise of the boundless resource which characterises their kind, usually by sheer skill in manoeuvring. A very remarkable instance of this character I heard of a few days ago from a Royal Naval Reserve officer who figured in it.

"I was in a British ship temporarily in the Holland-South American service at the time," he said, "and we were outward bound from Rotterdam after discharging a cargo of wheat from Montevideo. It was before the Huns had raised any objection to ships bound for Dutch ports using the direct route by the English Channel, and also before the U-boats had begun to sink neutrals on that run. Except for the comparatively slight risk of encountering a floating mine, we reckoned we were just about as safe in the North Sea as in the South Atlantic. Of course, we carried no gun of any kind--no heavy gun, I mean. We _did_ have a rifle or two, as I will tell you of presently.

"Why the attack was made we never had any definite explanation. In fact, the Germans themselves probably never knew, for they tumbled over themselves to a.s.sure the Holland Government that there was some misunderstanding, and that they would undertake that nothing of the kind should occur again.

"My personal opinion has always been that it was a sheer case of running amuck on the part of the Hun aviator responsible for the outrage; for, as I have said, we were empty of cargo, our marks were unmistakable, and we were steering a course several points off the one usually followed by the Dutch boats to England. Anyway, he paid the full penalty for his descent to barbarism.

"It was a clear afternoon, with a light wind and lighter sea, and we were steaming comfortably along at about nine knots, heading for the Straits of Dover, when the look-out at the mast-head reported a squadron of 'planes approaching from the south.

"Presently we sighted them from the bridge--five seaplanes, three or four points off our starboard bow. There had been reports of noonday raids on Calais for several days, and I surmised that those were Hun machines returning from some such stunt.

"Holding to an even course, the squadron pa.s.sed over a mile or more to the starboard of us, and it was already some distance astern when I saw one of the machines--I think it was the one leading the 'V'--detach itself from the others and head swiftly back in our direction. There was nothing out of the way in this action at a time when every ship was held in more or less suspicion by both belligerents, and it seemed to me so right and proper that the chap should come and have a look at us, in case he had some doubts, that I did not even think it necessary to call the 'Old Man' to the bridge, or even send him word of what I took to be no more than a pa.s.sing incident.

"Descending swiftly as he approached, the Hun pa.s.sed over the ship diagonally--from port quarter to starboard bow--at a height of six or eight hundred feet.

"'That'll end it,' I thought. 'Our marks, and the fact that we're in ballast, ought to satisfy him.'

"But no. Back he came. This time he was a hundred feet or so lower, and flying on a line directly down our course, pa.s.sing over us from bow to stern. Again he swung round and repeated the manoeuvre in reverse, this time at a height of not more than four hundred feet. He had done this five or six times before it occurred to me that he was taking practice sights for bombing; but not even then, when I saw him with his eye glued to his dropping-instrument, did it occur to me that he was doing anything more than trying his sights. It was at the next 'run' or two that the thing began to get on my nerves, and I called up the skipper on the voice-pipe and told him I did not quite like the look of the circus.

"The Old Man was in the middle of his afternoon siesta, but he tumbled out and came puffing up to the bridge at the double. He was no more inclined to take the thing seriously than I was, but, on the off-chance--which your careful skipper is always thinking of in the back of his brain-box--he rang up 'More steam' on the engine-room telegraph, and ordered the quartermaster to start zig-zagging, a stunt we had already practised a bit in the event of a submarine attack.

"'If he's just trying his eye,' said the Old Man, 'it'll give him all the better practice to follow us; while, it he's up to mischief, it may fuss him a bit.'

"The Hun had just whirled about three or four cables' length ahead of us, when the smoke rolling up from the funnel and the swinging bow must have told him that we were trying to give him a bit more of a run for his money. Circling on a wider turn, he came charging straight down the line of our new course, flying at what I should say was between two and three times the height of our masts. We were looking at the machine at an angle of about forty-five degrees--so that he must have been about as far ahead of us as he was high, say, a hundred yards--when I saw a small dark object detach itself from under the fuselage and begin to come directly towards us, almost as though shot from a gun.

"It was the only bomb I ever saw fall while I was in a sufficiently detached state of mind to mark what it looked like. 'Fall' hardly conveys a true picture of the way the thing seemed to approach, for the swift machine, speeding at perhaps a hundred miles an hour, must have imparted, at the instant of releasing, a good deal of lateral velocity.

"At first it was coming almost head on to the way I was looking at it, and, greatly foreshortened, it had so much the appearance of a round sand-bag that it is not surprising that the skipper took it for some kind of practice dummy. 'Probably a dud,' I remember him saying; 'but don't let it hit you. Stand by to duck!'

"My next recollection is of the thing beginning to wobble a bit, probably as the nose began to tilt downward; but still it seemed to be coming straight toward us rather than simply falling. I seem to recall that the seaplane pa.s.sed overhead an appreciable s.p.a.ce before the bomb, but I must have heard it rather than seen it, for I never took my eye off the speeding missile.

"The latter seemed at the least from fifty to a hundred feet above my head as it hurtled over the starboard end of the bridge, and I saw it with startling distinctness silhouetted against a cloud that was bright with the light of the sun it had just obscured. It was still wobbling, but apparently tending to steady under the combined influence of the downward pull of the heavy head and the backward drag of the winged tail. It appeared to be revolving.

"I have since thought, however, that I may have got the latter impression from a 'spinner' that is often attached to this type of bomb to unwind, with the resistance of the air, and expose the detonator.

"Down it came until it whanged against some of the standing rigging of the foremast--seeming to deflect inboard and downward slightly as a consequence--missed the mainmast by a few feet, and struck squarely against the side of the deckhouse on the p.o.o.p.

"The scene immediately after the explosion of the bomb is photographed indelibly on my memory; the events which followed are more of a jumble.

The detonation was a good deal less sharp than I had expected, and so was the shock from it. The latter was not nearly so heavy as that from many a wave that had crashed over her bows, but, coming from aft rather than for'ard, the jolt had a distinctly different feel, and by a man 'tween decks would hardly have been mistaken for that from a sea.

"It was the flash of the explosion--a huge spurt of hot, red flame--that was the really astonishing thing. It seemed to embrace the whole afterpart of the ship, and everything one of the forked tongues of fire was projected against burst into flame itself.

"The ramshackle deckhouse, which had been reduced to kindling wood by the explosion, roared like a furnace in the middle of the p.o.o.p. Even the deck itself was blazing. I had once been near an incendiary bomb in a London air raid, and knew that nothing else could have produced so sudden and so fierce a fire.

"But I also knew that the first burst of flame is the worst in such a case, and that most of the fire came from the inflammable stuff in the bomb itself.

"As I had always heard that sand was better than water in putting out a fire of this kind, and knowing we carried several barrels of it for scrubbing the decks, I ordered it to be brought up and thrown on the flames, but stood by on the bridge myself in case the skipper, who was bawling down the engine-room voice-pipe for more steam, needed me for anything else.

"Luckily the sand was close at hand, and they were scattering it from buckets over the blazing deck within a minute or two. Except for the debris of the deckhouse, the fire was put out almost as quickly as it was started, and, between sand and water, even that was being rapidly got under control, when suddenly the Hun, whom I had almost forgotten in the rush of undoing his dirty work, flashed into sight again.

"The skipper had our ship zigzagging so short and sharp by this time that her wake looked like the teeth of a big, crazy saw, and this the Hun was unable to follow closely enough to get a fore-and-aft sight down her as he had done the first time.

"Coming up astern, he kicked out a bomb just before he was over her port quarter, but it only shot across her diagonally, and struck the water on her starboard side, about a hundred feet away. It went off with, if anything, a sharper crack than the one which had struck the p.o.o.p, and the foam geyser the explosion shot up flashed a b.l.o.o.d.y red for the instant the water took to chill the glow of the molten thermit.

"Vanishing even more quickly was a ragged red star which fluttered for a moment beneath the surface of the water itself as the flame stabs shot out in all directions from the central core of the explosion.