III
That voyage he made in the Polynesian was her usual London to South American ports. And nothing happened until they were homeward bound and making Ushant. It was a glorious day, as clear as it ever is in northern waters, and the Third Mate was astonished to see through his glasses what he took to be land. Ushant already! As he looked, he saw a flash and his wonder deepened. He told himself, well, he’d be blowed! A tremendous bang a hundred yards abeam of the Polynesian nearly shook him overboard. It has come at last, then!
The Old Man came from his room, running sideways, his face set in a kind of spasm, and stood by the rail, clutching it as if petrified. The Third Mate, a friend of Tommy’s, pointed and handed the binocular just in time for the Old Man to see another flash. The morning telegraph clangedand jangled. The Third Mate ran to the telephone and was listening, when the second shell, close to the bows, exploded on the water and made him drop the receiver. Then he heard the Old Man order the helm over—over—over, whirling his arm to emphasize the vital need of putting it hard over. A few moments of tense silence, and then, with a roar that nearly split all their ear-drums, the Polynesian’s six-inch anti-raider gun loosed off at nine thousand yards.
So you must envisage this obscure naval engagement on that brilliant summer day in the green Atlantic. Not a ripple to spoil the aim, not a cloud in the sky, as the two gunners, their sleeves rolled to the shoulders, their bodies heaving, thrust a fresh shell and cartridge into the breech, shoved in the cap, and swung the block into place with the soft ‘cluck’ of steel smeared with vaseline. As the ship veers, the gun is trained steady on the gray dot. Nine thousand and fifty, no deflection—‘Stand away!’ There is another roar, and the gunner, who has stood away, now stands with his feet apart, his elbows out, staring with intense concentration through his glasses.
Down below, the engine-room staff, which included Tommy doing a field-day on the spare generator, were clustered on the starting platform. The expansion links had been opened out full,—any locomotive driver will show you what I mean,—and the Polynesian’s engines, four thousand seven hundred horse-power indicated, driven by steam at two hundred pounds to the square inch from her four Scotch boilers, were turning eighty-nine revolutions per minute and making very good going for her, but nothing to write home about, when a modern submersible cruiser doing sixteen knots on the surface was pelting after her. The tremendous explosions of the six-inch gun discouraged conversation.
The Chief Engineer, a tall man with a full chestnut moustache and a stern contemptuous expression born of his hatred of sea-life, was striding up and down the plates. The Second appeared, like Ariel, around, above, below, intent on sundry fidgets of his own, and whistling—nobody knew why. The Fourth was in the stokehold and back in the engine-room every ten minutes. The Fifth, as though he had been naughty and was being punished by that stern man with the four gold-and-purple wings on his sleeve, was standing with his face to the wall, big rubber navy-phone receivers on his ears and his eyes fixed in a rapt saintly way on two ground-glass discs above him, one of which was aglow and bore the legendMore Revolutions. The other,Less Revolutions, was dull and out of use. So he stood, waiting for verbal orders.
All the revolutions possible were being supplied, for the safety-valves were lifting with an occasional throaty flutter. Unexpectedly the Second would appear from the tunnel, where he had been feeling the stern gland, and would hover lovingly over the thrust-block, whistling, amid the clangor of four thousand seven hundred horse-power, ‘Love me, and the world is mine.’
Suddenly all was swallowed up, engulfed, in one heart-shattering explosion on deck. It was so tremendous that the Fifth’s head involuntarily darted out from the receivers and he looked sharply at the Chief, who was standing stock-still with his long legs apart, his hands in his coat pockets, staring over his shoulder with stern intentness into vacancy. The telephone bell brayed out a call and the Fifth fitted his head once again to the receiver. ‘Yes, sir!’ he sang out; and then, to the others, ‘We’re gainin’ on her! We’re gainin’ on her!’ Tommy goes on methodically with his dynamo. He is close at hand when wanted, ready, resourceful, devoid of panic. The excitement is ondeck, where the shell has struck the house amidships, blowing the galley ranges and bakehouse ovens overboard, killed three men outright, and left two more mere moving horrors on the slaughter-house floor. Another, a scullion, with his hand cut off at the wrist, is running round and round, falling over the wreckage, and pursued by a couple of stewards with bandages and friar’s balsam.
And on that gray dot, now nine thousand five hundred yards astern, there is excitement too, no doubt, for it seems authentic that the Polynesian’s third shot hit the forward gun-mounting, and the list caused by this, heavy things slewing over, the damage to the deck, the rupture of certain vital oil-pipes, and the wounds of the crew, would account for the Polynesian, with her fourteen-point-seven knots, gaining on U 999, supposed to have sixteen knots on the surface.
On the bridge of the Polynesian, too, there is excitement of sorts. The Chief Mate, who has been rushing about, helping the ammunition carriers, then assisting the stewards with their rough surgery, then up on the bridge again, has come up and is prancing up and down, every now and then looking hard at the Old Man, who stares through the telescope at the gray dot.
Something awful had happened. When that shell hit the ship, the Old Man had called out hoarsely, ‘That’s enough—oh, enough—boats!’ and the Chief Mate, to the horror of the young Third Mate, who told Tommy about it, grabbed the Old Man round the waist, whirled him into the chart-room, and slammed the door upon them both. The Third Mate says he saw, through the window, the Chief Mate’s fist half-an-inch from the Old Man’s nose, the Old Man looking at it in gloomy silence, and the Chief Mate’s eyes nearly jumping out of his head as he argued and threatened and implored. ‘... Gainin’ onher,’ was all the Third Mate could hear, and ‘... For God’s sake, sir!’ and such-like strong phrases. So the Third Mate says. And then they came out again, and the Mate telephoned to the engine-room.