Some Naval Yarns Part 5

"Fire!" snapped the captain.

It was no order for men to spring "over the top," no battle-cry that was heard by the enemy, but the word under the water that is the order for the deadly destroyer to be released and speed on its way to the unsuspecting craft. Practice torpedo or not, when under the waves of the North Sea the word works up a dramatic situation hard to equal. The other officers and men are interested, and they told me that never does the word "Fire" fail to stir the soul of everybody aboard. Though the effect is heightened by the knowledge that a great vessel is the target and has been bored in twain, the interest is still thrilling when the submarine is practising. With a shot at the enemy there is, of course, the explosion to dread. If the submarine does not get away far enough, the explosion of the torpedo may be the cause of extinguishing all lights aboard the submarine, and lamps have then to be used.

There was a tiger-like growl or "g-r-rh" of anger as the tube sent out the greased steel complicated missile, and outside I pictured the white wake that streaked in the direction of the warship. It was not visible from the periscope, which a second after the signal to fire had been brought down under the surface. The comparative stillness was gone, and the inside of the submarine seemed to have awakened from a doze. There was all bustle and hurry around me. The captain shot a look at the gyroscopic compa.s.s and gave orders for the motors to go ahead, and for half an hour the submarine pushed about under the surface. Then the commander had the periscope raised, and on the distant horizon I made out the destroyer--a tiny thing even in the gla.s.s of the magnifying lens of the under-sea boat's "eye."

My feet were numbed with cold as I walked for'd and looked at the empty tube. These torpedoes cost 500 (two thousand, five hundred dollars), and in war time they are all set to sink if they fail to hit the target; set to sink because they might be used by the enemy or get in our own way.

The next thrilling moment came when the commander decided to bring his craft to the surface.

"Come to surface and blow external tanks!" ordered the two-striper.

"Open five, six, seven, eight, to blow!"

The round, white perforated lungs of the submarine sucked in the air in the craft.

"Open one, two, three, four, to blow," came from the skipper.

"One, two, three, four, to blow," I heard repeated.

I felt no perceptible motion of ascending; but those lungs were working hard, which could be learned by placing your hand over them. The captain shot a glance at the dial, which told him how far up his vessel had gone, and then mounted the conning-hatch ladder, and soon one observed a spot of daylight. A sea washed over the submarine, filling the commander's boots with water. He was followed by a sailor, who quickly attached the lowered sailcloth bridge to the rails of the conning tower.

Then the captain's expert and watchful eye caught bubbles coming from one of the tanks.

"Close one!" he shouted down the hatch.

"Close one," repeated the sub-lieutenant.

"Two, five, and seven," came from the voice outside, and so on, until soon all the tanks had pumped out their water and were filled with air; and, for the sake of accuracy, each order was sounded again below.

"Bring her around to north," said the commander.

When we submerged it had been a chilly day, with a peep of the sun every now and again. The weather had changed since we left our berth under the sea. The sky was overcast, and snow was falling. And this change in the weather had taken place while the captain had been accomplishing one of Jules Verne's dreams.

We sped farther out to sea; this time on the _qui vive_ for enemy craft.

But the enemy is careful not to give the British submarine much of a chance at his warships, only sneaking out occasionally under cover of darkness with a couple of destroyers. Nevertheless, John Bull's diving boats are ever on the alert; and the man with whom I went under the North Sea had performed deeds of daring which never involved the sinking of a neutral vessel or of endangering the life of a non-belligerent.

It was the time for luncheon. Luncheon! You get an idea that the life aboard a submarine is not all sunshine and white uniforms when you see the berth for the commander and his chief officer. They are just a couple of shelves, and are not used very often at that. It was explained to me that when you are running a submarine you do not go in much for sleep. Luncheon consisted of a cup of coffee and a piece of canned beef on a stale slice of bread. Tinned food is about all that can be used aboard a submarine. It does not take up much room, and it requires little in the way of cooking utensils. We were still having our luncheon below when we dived again, so for the first time in my life I found myself having a meal under the sea.

It was hours afterwards that we slipped into the darkened harbour and found the mother ship, where the officers enjoy some of the real comforts of life.

"Have a Pandora c.o.c.ktail?" asked my captain.

We imbibed joyfully. The commander then changed his clothes, and we sat down to dinner--a late dinner, most of the other members of the mess having finished half an hour before.

And if you ask me about sensations while under the water, again I must confess that I was too busy looking and learning to experience anything but a fear that I might omit something of importance during the time the captain was getting ready for his target. Being under the sea, however, gave me a thrill felt long afterwards, and I left knowing something of the hardships that England's sea dogs suffer while guarding their island kingdom.

XI. LIFE IN A LIGHTHOUSE

The old man led the way to the st.u.r.dy stone structure on top of which were the great horns which sound the warning in foggy weather to ships at sea. He was proud of the lighthouse, of which he was the princ.i.p.al keeper; and just before he started to explain to me the wonders of the compressed-air engines, he remarked:--

"First, you must know that a lighthouse-keeper's job is to watch for a fog."

"What's your name?" I asked. He was the first real lighthouse-keeper I had met.

The lighthouseman looked at me and then at one of the coast-watchers. He was a slender man of about sixty years, who, I had been told, was enjoying the work he had set out to do long, long before there was a thought of a great war.

"T. G. Cutting," he replied, "the P.K. here."

It was on the western Cornish coast, where, as in other places in and off English sh.o.r.es, the lighthouses, war or no war, from sunset to sunrise cut the darkness with their long beams of whiteness and, when necessary, sound the foghorn. You do not see any young men who are not in khaki or navy blue, and the old men are wonders, with their binoculars and telescopes. Mr. Cutting had been within sound of the sea ever since he was born. First, he had seen service on a lighthouse on the rocks, as they say, and from the rocks he graduated to a land job, and thence back to the rocks, and again on to the land. We read stories of the lighthouse-keeper; but little is written on the modern man of this species. Mr. Cutting is not accustomed to the glare of the city's lights, but he knows the glare of a lighthouse-lantern and all the various wonders of the work.

Inside the annex to the lighthouse were the duplicate engines for filling tanks with compressed air. This air is used for blowing the foghorns, and when they sound everybody in the locality knows it.

"Enough air is stored in those tanks," declared Mr. Cutting, "to keep the foghorns going for twenty minutes. That gives us time to get the engines running."

He went into details of the engines, showing that he knew them by heart, and I could almost imagine the blurring, deafening sound which for seven seconds rent the air through the roar of winds every minute and a half.

"Fog, as you know, is the dread of every sea captain," said Mr. Cutting.

"Out yonder you see the 'Three Stone Orr Rocks.' This is a dangerous bit of scenery in foggy weather. When we have a fog, two men are on duty; one if it is clear."

We then went to the lighthouse tower, which stands nearly 200 feet above high water. To the right, on entering that building, was a blacksmith's shop, with an anvil, forge, and various implements. This forge is occasionally needed to make repairs, spare parts, and accessories of the engines of the lighthouse. To the right, in a corridor, were speaking-tubes.

"Those tubes go to the bedside of every man employed here," said Mr.

Cutting. "We have only to blow, and in a few minutes he comes up to the lighthouse. Our houses are over there, in the same structure as the tower. They are practically the lower portion of the main building."

He conducted the way up the narrow, winding stairs. At the head of the first flight I saw a green-covered book, in which every man on watch makes his entry of the weather, the velocity of the wind, and so forth.

"Many a man's word has been corrected by that book," said the P.K. "And here's the book for privileged visitors, for n.o.body comes here without the proper credentials."

There were names of famous persons inscribed in the book, which was kept as neatly and cleanly as everything else in the place.

"Now we'll go up to the lantern," said the old man. Old, but lithe, strong, and keen-eyed. He is particularly fond of this lantern, and was remarkably lucid in explaining everything concerning the working of it.

"Does the sea ever come up as high as this?" I asked.

"We get the spray, and that is all," answered the P.K. "It's dirty weather when that happens. But the water usually has spent its force when it reaches this height."

The exterior windows of the lantern were diamond shaped and of plate gla.s.s. In the middle of the lantern was the large concentric-ringed gla.s.s of great magnifying power.

"You can turn it round with your little finger," said the P.K. "That's because it floats in a mercury bath. And in turning that you are moving four tons. When the lantern is lighted, it shows dark for seven and a half seconds, then two sets of four flashes, making a complete revolution every half-minute. They can see the light at sea on a clear night for nineteen miles. The light is worked by vaporised oil. The compressed air drives the oil to the lantern, up through that burner in a hole hardly big enough to take a pin point. It is nearly half a million candle-power. This type of light is considered even better than electricity. In the old-style oil-lights they burned five quarts in the same time that this one consumes a pint with better results."

The actual burner of the lantern is disappointing, as one expects to see a giant burner. Really, it is only about twice the size of the average household one.

Mr. Cutting observed that the light was carefully timed, and called attention to the half-minute hand on the clock in the tower. Persons are always asking the P.K. how he spends his time, and he wondered why. He believed that anybody ought to see that there was plenty for a man to do while he is on a four hours' watch in the tower. The turning of the light, showing black outside and then flashing its warnings, after his many years of experience of such things, is only taken for granted by this P.K.

"And when I've finished lighting the lamp, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g up things a bit,"

said the P.K., "I sit down like anybody else. Lots of people seem to forget that the lighthouse-keeper is not the coast-guard or the head of the crew of a life-saving station. They have their work to attend to, but we watch for fogs night and day. When a man is stationed at a lighthouse like the Longships, which is a little distance out on a rock, he may be a couple of months without being relieved. But he has others with him, and a good stock of food. If he wishes to communicate with the land, he does so by signals; and that's the way men over there talk with their wives who live in cottages on sh.o.r.e. The telephone has not been found feasible, wires breaking all the time; so their wives have learned to wig-wag to them.