The wind and sea had risen, and over an area of several hundred square miles of stormy sea swept the Terror by Night. Bursting star-shell and questioning searchlight fought with the darkness, betraying to the guns the sinister black hulls driving through clouds of silver spray, the loaded tubes and streaming decks, the oilskin-clad figures on each bridge forcing the attack home against the devastating blast of the shrapnel. Death was abroad, berserk and blindfold. A fleeing German Cruiser fell among a flotilla of Destroyers and altered her helm, with every gun and searchlight blazing, to ram the leading boat. The Destroyer had time to alter course sufficiently to bring the two ships bow to bow before the impact came. Then there was a grinding crash: forecastle, bridge and foremost gun a pile of wreckage and struggling figures. The blast of the German guns swept the funnels, boats, cowls and men away as a gale blows dead leaves before it. Then the Cruiser swung clear and vanished into the darkness, pursued by the remainder of the Flotilla, and leaving the Destroyer reeling among the waves like a man that has been struck in the face with a knuckle-duster by a runaway thief. In the direction where the Cruiser had disappeared five minutes later a column of flame leaped skyward, and the Flotilla, vengeance accomplished, swung off through the darkness in search of a fresh quarry.
All night long the disabled Destroyer rolled helplessly in the trough of the sea. The dawn came slowly across the sky, as if apprehensive of what it might behold on the face of the troubled waters; in the growing light the survivors of the Destroyer's crew saw a crippled German Cruiser trailing south at slow speed. Only one gun remained in action onboard the Destroyer, and round that gathered the bandaged remnant of what had once been a ship's company. They shook hands grimly among themselves and spat and girded their loins for their last fight.
The German Cruiser turned slowly over and sank while they trained the gun….
A dismasted Destroyer, with riddled funnels and a foot of water swilling across the floor plates in the engine-room, bore down upon them about noon and took her crippled sister in tow. They passed slowly away to the westward, leaving the circle of grey, tumbling sea to the floating wreckage of a hundred fights and the thin keening of the gulls.
The afternoon wore on: five drenched, haggard men were laboriously propelling a life-saving raft by means of paddles in the direction of the English coast that lay some hundred odd miles to the west. The waves washed over their numbed bodies, and imparted an almost lifelike air of animation to the corpse of a companion that lay between them, staring at the sullen sky.
Suddenly one of the paddlers stopped and pointed ahead. A boat manned by four men appeared on the crest of a wave and slid down a grey-back towards them. The oarsmen were rowing with slow strokes, and eventually the two craft passed each other within hailing distance. The men on the raft stared hard.
"'Uns!" said one. "Bloody 'Uns…. Strictly speakin', we did ought to fight 'em…. Best look t'other way, lads!"
His companions followed his example and continued their futile mechanical paddling with averted heads.
The bow-oar of the German boat, who had a blood-stained bandage round his head, also stared.
"Engländer!" he said. "Verdammte Schweine!" and added, "Fünf!…" whereupon he and his companions also averted their heads, because they were four.
They passed each other thus. The waves that washed over the raft rolled the dead man's head to and fro, as if he found the situation rather preposterous.
Such was the Battle of the Mist, a triumphant assertion after nearly two years of vigil and waiting, of British Sea Power. It commenced with a cloud of smoke on the horizon no larger than a man's hand. Its consequences and effects spread out in widening ripples through space and time, changing the vast policies of nations, engulfing thousands of humble lives and hopes and destinies. Centuries hence the ripples will still be washing up the flotsam of that fight on the shores of human life. Long after the last survivor has passed to dust the echo of the British and German guns will rumble in ears not yet conceived. Princes will hear it in the chimes of their marriage bells; it will accompany the scratching of diplomatists' pens and the creaking wheels of the pioneer's ox-wagon. It will sound above the clatter of Baltic ship-yards and in the silence of the desert where the caravan routes stretch white beneath the moon. The Afghan, bending knife in hand over a whetstone, and the Chinese coolie knee-deep in his wet paddy-fields, will pause in their work to listen to the sound, uncomprehending, even while the dust is gathering on the labours of the historian and the novelist….
But this tale does not aspire to deal with the wide issues or significances of the war. It is an endeavour to trace the threads of certain lives a little way through a loosely-woven fabric of great events. At the conclusion there will be ends unfinished; the colours of some will have changed to grey and others will have vanished into the warp; but the design is so vast and the loom so near that we, in our day and generation, can hope to glimpse but a very little of the whole.
* * * * *
The India-rubber Man sat on the edge of the Wardroom table with his cap tilted on the back of his head, eating bread and cold bacon. The mess was illuminated by three or four candles stuck in empty saucers and placed along the table amid the débris of a meal. The dim light shone on the forms of a dozen or so of officers; some were seated at the table eating, others wandered restlessly about with food in one hand and a cup in the other. The tall, thin Lieutenant known as Tweedledum was pacing thoughtfully to and fro with a pipe in his mouth and his hands deep in his trousers pockets.
There had been little conversation. When anyone spoke it was in the dull, emotionless tones of profound fatigue. One, just out of the circle of candle-light, had pushed his plate from him on the completion of his meal, and had fallen asleep with his head resting on his outstretched arms. The remaining faces lit by the yellow candle-light were drawn, streaked with dirt and ornamented by a twenty-four hours' growth of stubble. All wore an air of utter weariness, as of men who had passed through some soul-shaking experience.
The door opened to admit the First Lieutenant. He clumped in hastily, wearing huge leather sea-boots. Beneath his cap his head was swathed in the neat folds of bandages whose whiteness contrasted with his smoke-blackened faced and singed, begrimed uniform.
"Hullo!" he said, "circuits gone here, too?" He peered round the table. "My word!" he exclaimed. "Hot tea! Who made it? The galley's a heap of wreckage." He poured himself out a cup and drank thirstily. "A-A-ah! That's grateful and comforting."
"I made it," said the Paymaster. "With my own fair hands I boiled the kettle and made tea for you all. Greater love than this has no man."
"Reminds me," said a voice out of the shadows, "that Mouldy got rather badly cut about the head and lost the best part of his left hand. He went reeling past me during the action yesterday evening with young Morton slung over his shoulder: he was staring in front of him like a man walking in his sleep."
"He was," confirmed the Paymaster. "In the execution of my office as leading hand of the first-aid party, I gave him chloroform while the P.M.O. carved bits off him." The speaker rested his head on his hand and closed his eyes. "Next time we go into action," he continued, as if speaking to himself, "someone else can take that job on."
"What job?" asked the India-rubber Man, suddenly turning his head and speaking with his mouth full.
"Fore medical distributing station. I've done a meat-course at Smithfield market … slaughter-houses before breakfast, don't you know? I thought I could stick a good deal——" The Paymaster opened his eyes suddenly. "I tell you, it was what the sailor calls bloody … just bloody."
"How is young Morton?" asked the First Lieutenant.
No one appeared to know, for the enquiry went unanswered. The tall figure pacing restlessly to and fro stopped and eyed the First Lieutenant.
"Tweedledee's killed," he said dully. "Dead…" He resumed his thoughtful walk and a moment later repeated the last word in a low voice, reflectively. "Dead …"
"I know," said the First Lieutenant.
Tweedledum halted again. "I wouldn't care if we had absolutely wiped them off the face of the earth—sunk every one of them, I mean. We ought to have, with just such a very little luck…. And now they've slipped through our fingers, in the night." Tweedledum extended a thin, nervous hand, opening and clenching the fingers. "Like slimy eels."
"Some did," said the India-rubber Man musingly, filling a pipe. "Some didn't. I only saw our guns actually sink one German Battleship; but the visibility was awful, and we weren't the only pebble on the beach; our line was miles long, remember."
"I saw one of their Battle-cruisers on fire and sinking," said Gerrard. "I was in the top. And all night long our Destroyers were attacking them. Two big ships blew up during the night." He cut a hunk of bread and spread it thickly with marmalade. "We must have knocked seven-bells out of 'em. And we didn't lose a single Battleship."
"Must have lost a Battle-cruiser or two, though," said the Engineer Lieutenant, sitting with his head between his hands and his forefingers propping open his eyelids. "Damn it, they fought the whole German Fleet single-handed till we arrived! Must have…" His voice trailed off and his fingers released his eyelids which closed instantly. His chin dropped on to his chest, and he slept.
"Any other officer scuppered besides Tweedledee?" asked the Major ofMarines. "What's up with your head, Number One?"
"Only scratched by a splinter. A nearish thing. I haven't heard of anybody else. We really got off very lightly considering they found our range." The First Lieutenant clumped off towards the door. "Now I must go and see about clearing up the mess. I reckon it's all over bar the shouting."
As he went out Thorogood entered the Wardroom. "Would anyone like a nice beef lozenge?" he enquired, removing a packet from his pocket. "Owner having no further use for same."
"Where are we going?" asked the Paymaster. "I should like to go home,I think, if it could be arranged conveniently, James?"
"Not to-day," was the reply. "We're looking for the lame ducks on the scene of yesterday's action. It's very rough and blowing like blue blazes, so I don't suppose there are many lame ducks left afloat—poor devils…. With any luck we ought to get in to-morrow morning, though."
The sleeping figure with the outstretched arms suddenly raised his head and blinked at Thorogood. "Where's the elusive Hun?" he demanded.
"'Opped it," was the reply. "Otherwise vamoosed——"
"Singing 'I'm afraid to go home in the dark,'" interposed the India-rubber Man dryly. He got down off the table and stretched his arms. "Well, I shan't be sorry to get some sleep."
"Sleep!" echoed Thorogood. "You ought to see the stokers' mess-deck. The watch-off have just come up from below after sixteen hours in the stokeholds. They're lying sprawling all over the deck like a lot of black corpses—just all-in."
Tweedledum sat down on the corner of the table vacated by theIndia-rubber Man.
"I wish I knew exactly how many of them we did sink before the Commander-in-Chief called off the Destroyers this morning," he said plaintively.
"So would a lot of people," replied Thorogood. "We're three hundred miles from home, and there's every reason to suppose there are one or two submarines and mines on the way. Those of us who get back will probably find out all we want to know in time. I shouldn't worry, Tweedledum. In fact, I don't see why you shouldn't get a bit of sleep while you can."
"By Jove!" said Gerrard as a sudden thought struck him. "I wonder if they know all about it at home yet. Won't our people be bucked!"
"And the papers," added the Captain of Marines. "Can't you hear the paper-boys yelling, 'Speshul Edition! Great Naval Victory!' My word, I'd like to be in town when the news comes out." He considered the mental picture his imagination had conjured up. "I think I should get tight…!" he said.
* * * * *
The village street had a curiously deserted air when Betty walked up it on her way to the post office. The mail train had passed through about an hour before, and as a rule about this time the tenants of the rooms and cottages on the hill-side made their way to the post office at the corner to collect their letters and chat in twos and threes round the windows of the little shops.
In the distance Betty saw a little group gathered in front of the boards that displayed the contents bill of the morning paper before the windows of the village stationer's. Recognising Eileen Cavendish, Betty quickened her pace, but as she drew near the group dispersed and Mrs. Cavendish entered the shop. Betty stopped for an instant as the flaring letters on the poster became visible, stared, took a couple of paces and stopped again opposite the boards; then she gave a little gasp, and with a thumping heart entered the low doorway of the little shop. The next moment she collided with Eileen Cavendish who was blundering out, holding an open newspaper in front of her. Her face was white under the shadow of her broad-brimmed hat, and her blue eyes like those of a terrified child.
"Have you heard?" she said, and thrust the sheet under Betty's eyes. "There's been a big action…. Our losses are published, but no details."
"Names?" cried Betty. "Oh, let me see!"
"Only the ships that have gone down. Our husbands' ships aren't mentioned."
"Wait while I get a paper," said Betty. "I shan't be a second. What are you going to do?"
The other considered a moment. "I shall go and see Mrs. Gascoigne," she replied. "Will you come too? She may have heard something."
Betty bought her paper and rejoined Eileen Cavendish in the street.
"Poor Mrs. Thatcher…" she said. "Did you see? Her husband'sDestroyer——"
"I know. And there are others, too. There must be five or six wives up here whose ships have gone—— Oh, it's too dreadful …" She was silent a moment while her merciless imagination ran riot. "I couldn't bear it!" she said piteously. "I couldn't bear it! I didn't whine when Barbara was taken. I thought I might have another baby…. But I couldn't have another Bill."
"Hush," said Betty, as if soothing a child. "We don't know yet. We mustn't take the worst for granted till we know. I expect we should have heard by now if—if——" She couldn't finish the sentence.
They reached the door of Mrs. Gascoigne's lodgings and the landlady opened the door. Her round, good-natured face wore an air of concern.
"She's just awa' to Mrs. Thatcher, west yonder. Will ye no' step inside and bide a wee? She'll no' be long, a'm thinkin'."
She preceded them into the low-ceilinged parlour, with the horsehair-covered sofa and the Family Bible on the little table in the window, that had been a haven to so many faint-hearted ones during the past two years.
"Ye'll have heard the news?" she asked. "There's been an action. Mrs. Thatcher's man's gone down, and Mrs. Gascoigne, she's awa' to bring her a bit comfort like." She surveyed the visitors sympathetically. "A've nae doot there's mair than Mrs. Thatcher'll be needin' comfort the morn, puir lambs."
"Oh," cried Mrs. Cavendish, "don't—don't! Please don't——" She regained her self-control with an effort and turned to the window with her lip between her teeth.
"Will I bring ye a cup of tea?" queried the landlady. "I have the kettle boilin'."
"No thank you," said Betty. "It's very kind of you, but I think we'll just sit down and wait quietly, if we may, till Mrs. Gascoigne comes in. I don't expect she'll be long."
The landlady departed a little reluctantly, and Eileen Cavendish turned from the window.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm a coward to go to pieces like this. You're a dear…. And it's every bit as bad for you as it is for me, I know. But I'm not a coward really. Bill would just hate me to be a coward. It's only because—because…" She met Betty's eyes, and for the first time the shadow of a smile hovered about her mouth.
Betty stepped forward impulsively and kissed her. "Then you're all right—whatever happens. You won't be quite alone," she said. They sat down side by side on the horsehair-covered sofa and Eileen Cavendish half-shyly rested her hand on Betty's as it lay in her lap.
"I'm a poor creature," said the elder girl. "I wish I had something—something in me that other women have. You have it, Mrs. Gascoigne has it, and Etta Clavering. It's a sort of—strength. Something inside you all that nothing can shake or make waver." Tears welled up in her eyes and trickled slowly down her cheeks. "It's Faith," she said, and her voice trembled. "It's just believing that God can't hurt you…" She fumbled blindly for her tiny handkerchief.
Betty's eyes were wet too. "Ah!" she said gently. "But you believe that too—really: deep down inside. Everybody does. It's in everything—God's mercy…." Her voice was scarcely raised above a whisper.
"I know—I know," said the other. "But I've never thought about it. I'm hard, in some ways. Things seemed to happen much the same whether I held my thumbs or whether I prayed. And now that I'm terrified—now that everything in life just seems to tremble on a thread—howcanI start crying out that I believe, I believe…!" Her voice broke at last, and she turned sideways and buried her face in her hands.
"But youdo," said Betty with gentle insistence.
The door opened and Mrs. Gascoigne entered. There was moisture in her fine grey eyes. "I'm so glad you two have come to keep me company," she said. She walked to the mirror over the fireplace and turned her back on her visitors for a moment while she appeared to adjust her hat. "I've been helping poor little Mrs. Thatcher to pack. She has had a telegram, poor child, and she's off South by the afternoon train."
She turned round, still manipulating hat-pins with raised hands, and in answer to the unspoken question in her guests' faces, nodded sadly. "Yes," she said. "But they've got his body. She's going to Newcastle."
"Have you had any news yourself?" asked Betty. "We have heard nothing."
"No," replied their hostess. "Nothing, except that the hospital ships went out last night. I expect the Destroyers got back some time before the big ships, and we shall hear later in the day. Rob will telegraph to me directly he gets into harbour, I know."
She spoke with calm conviction, as if wars and rumours of wars held no terrors for her. "And now," she said, smiling to them both, "let's be charwomen and drink tea in the middle of the forenoon!" She moved to the door and opened it, and as she did so a knock sounded along the tiny passage from the door that opened into the street.
Eileen Cavendish was busy in front of the glass, and half turned, holding a diminutive powder-box in one hand and a scrap of swans-down in the other.
"Yes," they heard the voice of Mrs. Gascoigne saying in the passage, "I'm here—is that for me?" There was the sound of paper tearing and a little silence. Then they heard her voice again. "Have you any others in your wallet—is there one for Mrs. Standish or Mrs. Cavendish? They're both here."
"I hae ane for Mistress Cavendish," replied a boy's clear treble. "An' there was ane for Mistress Standish a while syne; it's biding at her hoose."
Betty jumped to her feet. "What's that?" she cried. "A telegram?"Mrs. Gascoigne entered the room holding an orange-coloured envelope andhanded it to Eileen Cavendish. "Yours is at your lodging," she said toBetty. Her face was very pale.
With trembling fingers Mrs. Cavendish tore open the envelope. She gave a quick glance at the contents and sat down abruptly. Then, with her hands at her side, burst into peals of hysterical laughter.
"Oh," she cried, "it's all right, it's all right! Bill's safe——" and her laughter turned to tears. "And I knew it all along…" she sobbed.
"Oh," said Betty, "Iamglad." She slipped her arm round Mrs.Cavendish's neck and kissed her. "And now I'm just going to rush up tomy rooms to get my message." She paused on her way to the door. "Mrs.Gascoigne," she said, "did you get any news—is your husband all right?"
Mrs. Gascoigne was opening the window with her back to the room and its occupants. "He's very happy," she replied gently.
Betty ran out into the sunlit street and overtook the red-headed urchin who was returning to the post office with the demeanour of a man suddenly thrust into unaccustomed prominence in the world. Furthermore, he had found the stump of a cigarette in the gutter, and was smoking it with an air.
He grinned reassuringly at Betty as she hurried breathlessly past him."Dinna fash yersel', Mistress," he called. "Yeer man's bonny an' weel."
Betty halted irresolutely. "How do you know?" she gasped.
"A juist keeked inside the bit envelope," came the unblushing reply.
* * * * *
The first rays of the rising sun were painting the barren hills with the purple of grape-bloom, and laying a pathway of molten gold across the waters when the Battle Squadrons returned to their bases. A few ships bore traces in blackened paintwork, shell-torn funnels and splintered upperworks, of the ordeal by battle through which they had passed; but their numbers, as they filed in past the shag-haunted cliffs and frowning headlands, were the same as when they swept out in an earlier gloaming to the making of History.
Colliers, oilers, ammunition lighters and hospital ships were waiting in readiness to replenish bunkers and shell-rooms and to evacuate the wounded. All through the day, weary, grimy men, hollow-eyed from lack of sleep, laboured with a cheerful elation that not even weariness could extinguish. Shrill whistles, the creaking of purchases, the rattle of winches and the clatter of shovels and barrows combined to fill the air with an indescribable air of bustle and the breath of victory. Even the blanched wounded exchanged jests between clenched teeth as they were hoisted over the side in cots.
Before the sun had set the Battle-Fleet, complete with coal, ammunition and torpedoes, was ready for action once more. Throughout the night it rested, licking its wounds in the darkness, with vigilance still unrelaxed and its might unimpaired. For the time being its task had been accomplished; but only the enemy, counting the stricken ships that laboured into the shelter of the German mine-fields, knew how thoroughly.
The succeeding dawn came sullenly, with mist and drizzle shrouding the shores and outer sea. As the day wore on a cold wind sprang up and rolled the mist restlessly to and fro across the slopes of the hills.
On a little knoll of ground overlooking a wide expanse of level turf covered with coarse grass and stunted heather stood a man with his hands clasped behind his back. In the courage, judgment and sober self-confidence of that solitary figure had rested the destiny of an Empire through one of the greatest crises in its history: even as he stood there, bare-headed, with kindly, tired eyes resting on the misty outlines of the vast Fleet under his command, responsibility such as no one man had ever known before lay upon his shoulders.
Behind him, in the sombre dignity of blue and gold, in a silent group stood the Admirals and Commodores of the Squadrons and Flotillas with their Staff Officers; further in the rear, in a large semicircle on slightly higher ground, were gathered the Captains and officers of the Fleet.
Where the turf sloped gradually towards the sea were ranged the seamen and marines chosen to represent the Fleet: rank upon rank of motionless men standing with their caps in their hands and their eyes on the centre of the great hollow square where, hidden beneath the folds of the Flag they had served so well, lay those of their comrades who had died of wounds since the battle. A Chaplain in cassock and white surplice moved across the open space and halted in the centre, office in hand:
"I am the Resurrection and the Life…"
The wind that fluttered the folds of his surplice caught the words and carried them far out to sea over the heads of the living—the sea where the others lay who had fought their last fight in that grim battle of the mist. A curlew circled low down overhead, calling again and again as if striving to convey some insistent message that none would understand. From the rocky shore near-by came the low murmur of the sea, the sound that has in it all the sorrow and gladness in the world.
At length the inaudible office for the Burial of the Dead came to an end. The Chaplain closed his book and turned away; a little movement ran through the gathering of officers and men as they replaced their caps. A loud, sharp-cut order from the gaitered officer in command of the firing-party was followed by the clatter of rifle-bolts as the firing-party loaded and swung to the "Present!"
"Fire!" The first volley rang out sharply, and the Marine buglers sent the long, sweet notes of the "Last Post" echoing among the hills. Twice more the volleys sounded, and twice more the bugles sang their heart-breaking, triumphant "Ave atque Vale!" to the fighting dead.
In the ensuing silence the cry of the curlew again became audible, this time out of the peace of the misty hills, gently persistent. Faint and far-off was the sound, but at the last the meaning came clear and strong to all who cared to listen.
"There is no Death!" ran the message, and again and again, "There is noDeath, no Death… no Death…!"
The firing-party unloaded, and the empty cartridge cases fell to the earth with a little tinkling sound.
Oberleutnant Otto von Sperrgebiet, of the Imperial German Navy, sat on the edge of a Submarine's conning-tower with a chart open on his knees, and smoked a cigarette. It was not a brand he cared about particularly, but it had been looted from the Captain's cabin of a neutral cargo steamer on the previous afternoon. A man who relies upon such methods to replenish his cigarette case cannot, of course, expect everybody's tastes to coincide with his own.
As he smoked, the German Lieutenant's eyes strayed restlessly round the circle of the horizon. They were small eyes of a pale blue, rather close together and reddened round the rims, with light eyelashes.
The Submarine lay motionless on the surface with the waves breaking over the hog-backed hull. Every now and again a few drops of spray splashed over the surface of the chart, and the Naval man wiped them off with a scrap of lace and cambric that had once been a lady's handkerchief. He had a way with women, that German Oberleutnant.
Nothing was in sight: not a tendril of smoke showed above the arc of tumbling waves that ringed the limit of his vision; the sun was warm and pleasant, and the figure on the conning-tower crossed his legs, encased in heavy thigh boots, and gave himself over to retrospective thought.
There had been a time when Oberleutnant von Sperrgebiet possessed the rudiments of a conscience. It could never have been described as acutely sensitive, and it never developed much beyond the rudimentary stage. Nevertheless, it had existed once: and in the early days of the war it was still sufficiently active to record certain protests and objections in his mind.
The mysterious forces that were at work in Germany, industriously remoulding, brutalising and distorting the mind of Oberleutnant von Sperrgebiet, together with millions of others, had not been blind to the prejudicial effects of conscience to an evil cause. Imperial rodomontade and the inflammatory German Admiralty War Orders had deliberately rejected, one by one, the deep-seated principles of humanity and chivalry in war. It had been done gradually and systematically—scientifically, in fact, and in the majority of cases it succeeded in producing a state of atrophy of the moral sense that was altogether admirable—from a German point of view.
In the case of Oberleutnant von Sperrgebiet, however, these early qualms had a trick of recurring. They pricked his consciousness at unexpected moments, like a grass-seed in a walker's stocking…. And now, as he sat swinging his legs in the warm June sunlight, a whole procession of such reflections trooped through his mind.
For instance, there arose in his intelligence an obstinate doubt as to whether the torpedoing without warning of a liner carrying women and children at the commencement of the war had been quite within the pale of legitimate Naval warfare. He had met the man who boasted such an achievement, and for a long time he carried with him the recollection of that man's eyes as they met his above a beer mug. They had drunk uproariously together, and von Sperrgebiet heard all about it first hand, and even fingered enviously the Iron Cross upon the breast of the teller of the tale. But somehow those eyes had told quite a different story: and it was that which von Sperrgebiet remembered long after the wearer of the Iron Cross had gone out into the North Sea mists and returned no more.
Then there had been the rather unpleasant business of the boat….
It was in mid-winter a long way North during one of the few calm days to be expected at that period of the year. The Submarine was running on the surface when the Second-in-Command (of whom more anon) reported a boat on the starboard bow. They altered course a little and, slowing down, passed within a few yards of it. It was a ship's life-boat, half full of water; lying in the water, rolling slowly from side to side as the boat rocked in their wash, were five dead men. A sixth sat huddled at the tiller, staring over the quarter with unseeing eyes, frozen stiff….
Von Sperrgebiet caught a glimpse of the ship's name on the bows of the boat: it happened to be that of a neutral ship he had torpedoed at the beginning of the previous week during a gale.
The German Admiralty Orders of that period contained a clause to the effect that ships were not to be torpedoed without ensuring the adequate safety of the crew. Which meant that those who had not been killed by the explosion of the torpedo could be allowed to launch a boat (weather permitting) and get into it if they had time before the ship sank….
Von Sperrgebiet had given orders for the boat to be sunk by gunfire, but somehow the memory of that stark figure at the helm persisted. Try as he would, he failed to banish from his mind the staring, sightless eyes and grey, famished face….
Altogether it was an unpleasant business. Other memories of this nature came and went with the smoke from his cigarette. For some reason or other he found himself wondering whether, after all, a Belgian Relief Steamer could have been considered fair game. But he did so hate the word "Belgium," and there was always the theory of a mine to account for the incident…. He torpedoed her by moonlight: a very creditable shot, all things considered.
Another moonlight picture presented itself. A boat-load of terrorised Finns rising and falling on the swell alongside the Submarine, and, half a mile away, an abandoned sailing ship with every rope and spar standing out black against the moonlight. In the stern of the boat stood a mighty Norwegian with a red beard and a voice like a bull. One of his arms rested protectingly round a woman's shoulders, and he shook a knotted fist in von Sperrgebiet's face as his ship blew up and sank.
The woman seen thus in the pale moonlight was young and pretty, and the red-bearded man bellowed that she was his wife. The announcement was not an unfamiliar one to Oberleutnant von Sperrgebiet: they usually were young and pretty when he heard that hot rage in a man's voice. Oberleutnant von Sperrgebiet made himself scarce forthwith, it might be almost said, from force of habit….
The glass was falling, and it was in mid-Atlantic that they left that boat. It blew a gale next day, and the Oberleutnant, who had an eye for a pretty woman, sometimes wondered if the boat was picked up.
His mind revolved for a moment round certain incidents in connection with that affair. A German sailor from the Submarine had been sent onboard to place the bombs; he returned with cigars, a ham, and a pretty silver clock. Also a box of sugar plums, half finished.
Von Sperrgebiet took the clock and the sugar plums. The cigars and the ham (the labourer being worthy of his hire) he allowed the sailor to keep.
But even Submarine warfare against unarmed shipping has its risks. There was the ever-memorable incident of the British tug, and even now von Sperrgebiet winced at the recollection. They had sighted a sailing ship in tow of a tug at the entrance to the Channel; von Sperrgebiet was proud of his mastery of the English tongue, and it was this small vanity that led him to adopt tactics which differed somewhat from his normal caution. He submerged until within a couple of hundred yards of the approaching tow and then rose to the surface, dripping, like some uncouth sea-monster. Armed with a revolver and a megaphone, and with pleasurable anticipation in his heart, the Oberleutnant emerged from the conning-tower with a view to a little preliminary banter with these detested and unarmed English before administering a coup de grace. He was just in time to see a stout, ungainly man tumbling aft along the deck from the wheel-house of the tug. Raising a booted leg with surprising agility, the stout man kicked off the shackle of the tow rope, and as he did so over went the helm; the blunt-nosed tug, released from her 3,000-ton burden, came straight for him like an angry buffalo.
They were not forty yards apart when the tug turned, and quick as the German coxswain was, the Submarine failed to avoid the stunning impact of the bows. A revolver bullet crashed through the glass window of the wheel-house; von Sperrgebiet had an instant's vision of a round face, purple with rage, above the spokes of the wheel, and then the conning tower's automatic hatchway closed. The Submarine was in diving trim, and she submerged in the shortest time on record. They remained on the bottom four hours while the sweating mechanics repaired the damaged hydroplane gear and effected some temporary caulking round certain plates that bulged ominously.
But von Sperrgebiet's hatred of England was real enough before this incident. He had always hated the English, even in his youth when for a year he occupied an inconspicuous niche in one of the less fastidious Public Schools. He hated them for the qualities he despised and found so utterly inexplicable. He despised their lazy contempt for detail, their quixotic sense of fairness and justice in a losing game, their persistent refusal to be impressed by the seriousness of anything on earth. He despised their whole-hearted passion for sports at an age when he was beginning to be interested in less wholesome and far more complex absorptions…. He despised their straight, clean affections and quarrels and their tortuous sense of humour; the affectation that led them to take cold baths instead of hot ones: their shy, rather knightly mental attitude towards their sisters and one another's sisters….
All these things von Sperrgebiet despised in the English. But he also hated them for something he had never even admitted to himself. Crudely put, it was because he knew that he could never beat an Englishman. There was nothing in his spirit that could outlast the terrible, emotionless determination in the English character to win.
Von Sperrgebiet's reflections came to an end with his cigarette. He tossed the stump overboard, and raising a pair of glasses he focused them intently on the horizon to the eastward.
For the space of nearly a minute he sat thus staring. From the interior of the Submarine came the strains of a gramophone playing a German patriotic air, and with it the smell of coffee. The crew were at dinner, and a man's deep laugh floated up the shaft of the conning-tower as if coming from the bowels of the sea.
The Oberleutnant lowered the glasses abruptly. Rolling up the chart he hoisted himself on to his feet and bent over the tiny binnacle to take the bearing of a faint smudge of smoke barely visible on the horizon. This obtained, he lowered himself through the narrow hatchway and climbed down the steel rungs into the interior of the compartment.
"Close down!" he said curtly. The gramophone stopped with a click, and instantly all was bustle and activity within the narrow confines of the steel shell.
The Second-in-Command, who was lying on his bunk reading a novel, sat up and lifted his legs over the edge. He was a spectacled youth with a cropped bullet-head and what had been in infancy a hare-lip. His beard of about ten days' maturity grew in patches about his lips and cheeks.
"A ship, Herr Kapitan?" he asked in a thin, reedy voice, and reached for a pair of long-toed, elastic-sided boots that he had kicked off, and which lay at the foot of his bunk.
His superior officer nodded and snapped out a string of guttural orders. The sing-song voices of men at their stations amid the levers and dials repeated the words mechanically, like men talking in their sleep. With a whizzing, purring sound the motors started, and the ballast tanks filled with a succession of sucking gurgles.
Von Sperrgebiet glanced at the compass and moved to the eye-piece of the periscope. For a while there was silence, broken only by the hum of the motors.
The Second-in-Command hung about the elbow of the motionless figure at the periscope like a morbid-minded urchin on the outskirts of a crowd that gathers round a street accident, but can see nothing. His stolid face was working and moist with excitement.
"Is it an English ship, Herr Kapitan?"
The Oberleutnant made no answer, but reached out a hand to the wheel that adjusted the height of the periscope above the water and twisted it rapidly. For twenty minutes he remained thus, motionless save for the arm that controlled the periscope. Once or twice he gave a low-voiced direction to the helmsman, but his Second-in-Command he ignored completely.
That officer moved restlessly about the Submarine, glancing from dial to dial and from one gauge to another; for a few minutes he stopped to talk to the torpedo-man standing by the closed tube. Finally he returned to his Captain's elbow, moistening his marred lip with the tip of his tongue; his face wore an unhealthy pallor and glistened in the glow of the electric lights.
"Is it an English ship, Herr Kapitan?" he asked again in his high, unnatural voice.
"Yes," snapped von Sperrgebiet. "Why?"
"I have a request to make," replied the Second-in-Command. "A favour, Herr Kapitan. It concerns a promise"—he lowered his voice till it was barely audible above the noise of the machinery—"to my betrothed."
For the first time von Sperrgebiet turned his face from the rubber eye-piece and regarded the youth with a little mocking smile that showed only a sharp dog-tooth.
"Don't say you promised to introduce her to me, Ludwig!" he sneered.
"No, no," said the other hastily. "But she made me promise not to return to her unless I had sunk with my own hands a merchant ship flying the cursed English flag."
"She is easily pleased, your betrothed," retorted the Oberleutnant, and moved back from the periscope. "Your request is granted. But remember I shall demand an introduction when we return…. It is a long shot. Fire when the foremast comes on, and do not show the periscope more than a few seconds at a time. I will give the orders after you have fired."
The Second-in-Command took up his position in the spot vacated by the Oberleutnant. His tongue worked ceaselessly about his lips and his hand trembled on the elevating wheel.
"There is smoke astern," he said presently. And a moment later. "The approaching ship looks like a liner, Herr Kapitan!"
"What of that?" said von Sperrgebiet gruffly.
The Second-in-Command looked back over his shoulder at his CommandingOfficer: his face was livid with excitement. "It means women, HerrKapitan," he said. "Children perhaps…."
Von Sperrgebiet shrugged his shoulders. "They are English," he replied. "Swine, sow or sucking-pig—what is the difference? They learn their lessons slowly, these English. We will drive yet another nail into their wooden heads…. You will drive it, Ludwig," he added thoughtfully: and then, as an afterthought, "for the honour of the Fatherland."
"Thank you, Herr Kapitan," replied the youth, and turned again to the periscope mirror. Silence fell upon the waiting men: the minutes passed while the elevating wheel of the periscope revolved first in one direction and then in another. At last the form of the Second-in-Command stiffened.
"Fire!" he cried: his uncertain voice cracked into a falsetto note.
The stern of the Submarine dipped and righted itself again: theOberleutnant's harsh voice rang out in a succession of orders. TheSecond-in-Command leaned against a stanchion and wiped his face withhis handkerchief.
A minute passed, and a dull concussion shook the boat from stem to stern. Von Sperrgebiet showed his dog-tooth in that terrible mirthless smile of his. "A hit, my little Ludwig!" he said.
The Second-in-Command clicked his heels together. "For the honour of the Fatherland," he said. "Gott strafe England!"
"Amen!" said Oberleutnant Otto von Sperrgebiet.
The boat had been travelling in a wide circle after the torpedo left the tube, and ten minutes later the Oberleutnant cautiously raised the periscope. The next moment he swung the wheel round again in the opposite direction.
"Another ship?" asked Ludwig.
"Yes," replied von Sperrgebiet. "One of their cursed Armed Merchant Cruisers." He bent over the chart table for a minute and gave an order to the helmsman.
"A fresh attack?" queried the Second-in-Command eagerly.
Von Sperrgebiet returned to the periscope. "When you have been at this work as long as I have," he replied, "you will find it healthier not to meddle with Armed Merchant Cruisers. They are all eyes and they shoot straight. No, for the time being our glorious work is done, and we shall now depart from a locality that is quickly becoming unhealthy." He glanced at the depth gauge and thence to the faces of the crew who stood waiting for orders.
"The gramophone," he called out harshly. "Switch on the gramophone, you glum-faced swine…. Look sharp! Something lively…!"
* * * * *
At seven minutes past three in the afternoon, Cecily Thorogood, that very self-possessed and prettily-clad young woman, was seated in a deck-chair on the saloon-deck of a 6,000-ton liner; an American magazine was open in front of her, under cover of which she was exploring the contents of a box of chocolates with the practised eye of the expert, in quest of a particular species which contained crystallised ginger and found favour in her sight.
At nineteen minutes past three Cecily Thorogood, still self-possessed, but no longer very prettily clad, was submerged in the chilly Atlantic up to her shoulders and clinging to the life-line of an upturned jolly-boat. To the very young Fourth Officer who clung to the boat beside her with one arm and manoeuvred for a position from which he could encircle Cecily's waist protectingly with the other, she announced as well as her chattering teeth would allow that she
(a) was in no immediate danger of drowning;
(b) was not in the least frightened;
(c) was perfectly capable of holding on without anybody's support as long as was necessary.
The chain of occurrences that connected situation No. 1 with situation No. 2 was short enough in point of actual time, but so crowded with unexpected and momentous happenings that it had already assumed the proportions of a confused epoch in Cecily's mind. There were gaps in the sequence of events that remained blanks in her memory. Faces, insignificant incidents, thumbnail sketches and broad, bustling panorama of activity alternated with the blank spaces. The heroic and the preposterous were indistinguishable….
At the first sound of the explosion of the torpedo Cecily jumped to her feet, scattering the chocolates broadcast over the deck. The ship seemed to lift bodily out of the water and then heeled over a little to port. There were very few people on the saloon deck and there was no excitement or rushing about. The shrill call of the boatswain's mate's pipe clove the silence that followed that stupendous upheaval of sound.
A clean-shaven, middle-aged American, wearing a collar reminiscent of the late Mr. Gladstone's and a pair of pince-nez hanging from his neck on a broad black ribbon, had been walking up and down with his hands behind his back; he paused uncertainly for a moment and then began laboriously collecting the scattered chocolates. That was the only moment when hysteria brushed Cecily with its wings. She wanted to laugh or cry—she wasn't sure which.
"It doesn't matter! It doesn't matter!" she cried with a catch in her breath. "Don't stop now—we've been torpedoed!"
The American stared at the handful he had gathered.
"Folks'll tread on 'em, I guess," he replied, and suddenly raised his head with a whimsical smile. "A man likes to do something useful at times like this—it's just our instinct," he added as if explaining something more for his own satisfaction than hers. "I'm not a seaman—I'd only get in peoples' way messing round the boats before they were ready—so I reckoned I'd pick up your candies."
There were very few women onboard, and Cecily found herself the only woman allotted to the jolly-boat. She climbed in with the assistance of the very young and distressingly susceptible Fourth Officer. For a moment she found herself reflecting that his life must be one long martyrdom of unrequited affections. The stout American followed her with a number of other passengers. The Fourth Officer gave an order and the boat began to descend towards the waves in a succession of uneven jolts. The crew were getting their oars ready, and one was hammering the plug of the boat home with the butt of an enormous jack-knife. The stout American surveyed the tumbling sea beneath them distastefully.
"When I get to Washington," he said, "I guess I'll fly round that li'll old town till some of our precious 'too-proud-to-fight' party just gnash their teeth and shriek aloud 'How can we bear it?'"
He suddenly remembered that his pneumatic life-saving waistcoat was not inflated. Seizing the piece of rubber tubing that projected from his pocket he thrust it into his mouth and proceeded to blow with distended cheeks and his serious brown eyes fixed solemnly on Cecily's face.
He was still blowing when they capsized. How the accident happened Cecily never knew: principally because she was concentrating her mind on the bottom of the boat and wondering how soon the pangs ofmal-de-mermight be expected to encompass her. But the fact remains that one moment the boat was rising and falling dizzily on the waves and the next, with a confused shouting of orders and a crash, they were all struggling in the water.
Cecily's life-saving jacket brought her to the surface like a cork, and a couple of strokes took her to the side of the capsized boat and situation No. 2 already described. Here she was presently joined by the American, puffing and blowing like a grampus, who was placed in possession of statement (c) referred to above. He appeared either not to hear, however, or to incline to the view that it was a mere theory based upon a fallacy….
The remaining late occupants of the boat attached themselves along the sides and awaited succour with what patience they could. Then a muffled sound like an internal explosion came from within the stricken hull as a bulkhead went. The great ship lurched sickeningly above them as a wall totters to its fall. Cecily looked up and saw for a moment the figure of the Captain standing on the end of the bridge; true to his grand traditions he was staying by his ship to the last. She listed over further and began to settle rapidly. Then, and only then, the Captain climbed slowly over the rail and dived.
The stern of the ship rose slowly into the air, then swiftly slid forward with a sound like a great sob and vanished beneath the surface. One of the life-boats approached the capsized jolly-boat, and the figures that clung to her were hauled, dripping, one by one into the stern.
Then they picked up the Captain, clinging to a grating, an angry man.He scowled round at the long green slopes of the sea and shook his fist.
"The curs!" he said. "The dirty scum…. Women on board…. No warning…." Anger and salt water choked him.
"They wouldn't even give me a gun because I was a passenger ship. Unarmed, carrying women, torpedoed without warning…. I'll spit in the face of every German I meet from here to Kingdom Come!"
A little elderly lady with a bonnet perched awry on her thin grey hair suddenly began a hymn in a high quavering soprano.
"That's right, ma'am," said the Captain approvingly, as he wrung the water out of his clothes. "There's nothing like singing to cure sea-sickness. And we shan't be here very long." He pointed to the high bows of a rapidly approaching ship. "One of our Armed Merchant Cruisers, I fancy." He waved to the other boats to close nearer.
He was no mere optimist; before a quarter of an hour had elapsed the boats were strung out in a line towing from a rope that led from the bows of the Cruiser. A hastily improvised boatswain's stool was lowered from a davit, and one by one the passengers, then the crew, and finally the officers of the torpedoed liner were swung into the air and hoisted inboard while the Armed Merchant Cruiser continued her course.
The sea-sick Cecily, swaying dizzily for the second time that day between sky and water, looked down at the tumbling boats beneath her and for a moment had a glimpse of the stout American and the Fourth Officer. They were both standing gazing up after her as she was whisked skyward. Their mouths were open, and the expression on their faces gave Cecily a feeling of being wafted out of a world she was altogether too good for.
The sensation was a momentary one, however. The davit swung inboard as she arrived at the level of the rail and deposited her, a limp bundle of damp rags—in fact what Mr. Mantalini would have described as "a demmed moist unpleasant body"—on the upper deck of the Armed Merchant Cruiser. With the assistance of two attentive sailors Cecily rose giddily to her feet; most of her hair-pins had come out, and her hair streamed in wet ringlets over her shoulders. She raised her eyes to take in her new surroundings, and there, standing before her with his eyes and mouth three round O's, was Armitage.
Now Cecily had gone through a good deal since seven minutes past three that afternoon. But to be confronted, as she swayed, with her wet clothes clinging to her body like a sculptor's model, deathly sea-sick, red-nosed for aught she knew or cared, with the man who but for her firmness and mental agility would have kept on proposing to her at intervals during the past eighteen months, was a climax that overwhelmed even Cecily's self-possession.
She chose the only course left open to her, and fainted promptly. Armitage caught her in his arms, and as he did so was probably the first and last Englishman who has ever blessed a German Submarine.
She recovered consciousness in Armitage's cabin, with the elderly lady who had sung hymns in the boat in attendance; she lay wrapped in blankets in the bunk, with hot-water bottles in great profusion all round her, and felt deliciously drowsy and comfortable. But with returning consciousness some corner of discomfort obtruded itself into her mind. It grew more definite and uncomfortable. With her eyes still closed Cecily wriggled faintly and plucked at an unfamiliar garment.
Then, slowly, she opened her eyes very wide. "What have I got on?" she asked in severe tones.
"My dear," said the elderly lady, "pyjamas! There was nothing else.They belong to the officer who owns this cabin. I think the name wasArmitage. And the doctor said——"
Cecily groaned. A knock sounded, and the ship's doctor entered carrying something in a medicine glass.
"Well," he asked brusquely, "how are we?"
"Better, thanks," said Cecily faintly.
"That's right. Drink this and close your eyes again."
Cecily drank obediently and fell asleep. Twenty-four hours later the Cruiser was moving slowly up a river to her berth alongside a wharf. Cecily, clothed and in her right mind, stood aft in a deserted spot by the ensign-staff and stared at the dingy warehouses and quaysides ashore as they slid past.
Armitage came across the deck towards her; Cecily saw him coming and took a long breath. Then, woman-like, she spoke first:
"I haven't had an opportunity to thank you yet," she said prettily, "for giving up your cabin to me—and—and all your kindness."
Armitage stood squarely in front of her, a big, kindly man who was going to be badly hurt and more than half expected it.
"There is a curious fatality about all this," he said. "It was no kindness of either yours or mine." He glanced over her head at the rapidly approaching wharf ahead and then at her face.
"For eighteen months," he said, speaking rather quickly, "I've been like the prophet Jonah—looking for a sign. I looked to you for it, Miss Cecily," he said, "and I can't truthfully say it showed itself in a single word or look or gesture." He took a deep breath. "I'm not going to let you tell me I'm labouring under any misapprehensions. But this"—he made a little comprehensive gesture—"this is too much like the hand of Fate to disregard. Miss Cecily," he said, "little Miss Cecily, you've just twisted your fingers round my heart and I can't loose them."
"Please," said Cecily, "ah, no, please don't…." Some irresponsible imp in her intelligence made her want to tell him that it wasn't Jonah who looked for a sign.
"Listen," said Armitage. He was literally holding her before him by the sheer strength of his kindly, compelling personality. "When this racket started—this war—I told them at the Admiralty my age was forty-five. It was a lie—I am fifty-two. I've knocked about the world; I know men and cities and the places where there are neither. But I've lived clean all my life and I was never gladder of it than I am at this moment…."
Cecily had a conviction that unless she could stop him she would have to start crying very soon. But there were no words somehow that seemed adequate to the situation.
"I know, dear," he went on in his grave quiet voice, "that at your age money, and all the things it buys, seem just empty folly. But, believe me, there comes a time when being rich counts a lot towards happiness. I'm not trying to dazzle you, but you know all mine is yours—you shall live in Park Lane if you care to—or I'll turn all wide Scotland into a deer forest for you to play in…."
He paused. "But there is one thing, of course, that might make all this sound vulgar and sordid." He considered her with his clear blue eyes. "Are you in love with anyone else?" he asked.
Cecily clutched recklessly at the alternative to absurd tears.
"Yes," she said.
Armitage stood quite still for a moment. His calm, direct gaze never left her face, and after a moment he squared his big shoulders with an abrupt, characteristic movement.
"Then he is the luckiest man," he said quietly, "that ever won God's most perfect gift."
He gave her a funny stiff little inclination of the head and walked away.
* * * * *
Otto von Sperrgebiet did not raise the periscope above the surface again for some hours. The Submarine, entirely submerged, drove through the water until night. After nightfall they travelled on the surface until the first pale bars of dawn appeared in the eastern sky. Von Sperrgebiet was on the conning-tower as soon as it was light, searching the horizon with his glasses.
"It is strange," he said to his Second-in-Command. "We ought to have sighted that light vessel before now." At his bidding a sailor fetched the lead line and took a sounding. Together they examined the tallow at the bottom of the lead, and von Sperrgebiet made a prolonged scrutiny of the chart. "H'm'm!" he said. "I don't understand." Submerging again, they progressed at slow speed for some hours and he took another sounding. The sky was overcast and no sights could be taken.
This time von Sperrgebiet returned from comparing the sounding with the chart, wearing a distinctly worried expression.
The hawk-eyed seaman beside him on the bridge gave an ejaculation and pointed ahead.
"Land, Herr Kapitan!" he said.
"Fool!" replied his Captain. "Idiot! How can there be land there unless"—he glanced inside the binnacle half contemptuously—"unless the compasses are mad—or I am."
He raised his glasses to stare at the horizon. "You are right," he said. "You are right…. It is land." He gnawed his thumbnail as was his habit when in perplexity.
The next moment the seaman pointed again. "The Hunters," he said.
Von Sperrgebiet gave one glance ahead and kicked the man down through the open hatchway of the conning-tower. He himself followed, and the hatch closed. The helmsman was standing, staring at the compass like a man in a trance.
"Herr Kapitan," he said, as von Sperrgebiet approached, "it is bewitched." Indeed, he had grounds for consternation. The compass card was spinning round like a kitten chasing its tail, first in one direction, then in another.
"Damn the compass!" said von Sperrgebiet. "Flood ballast tanks—depth thirty metres—full speed ahead!"
He thrust the helmsman aside and took the useless wheel himself.
"Ludwig," he said, "to the periscope with you and tell me what you see."
The Second-in-Command waited for no second bidding; he pressed his face against the eye-pieces. "There are small vessels approaching very swiftly from all sides," he said. And a moment later, "They are firing at the periscope…"
"Down with it," said von Sperrgebiet. "We must go blind if we are to get through." His face was white and his lip curled back in a perpetual snarl like a wolf at bay. As he spoke there was a splutter and the lights went out.
The voice of the Engineer sounded through the low doorway from the engine-room. "There is something fouling our propeller, Herr Kapitan," he shouted. "The engines are labouring at full speed, but we are scarcely making any headway. The cut-outs have fused."
Von Sperrgebiet cursed under his breath. "Stop the engines," he said. "If we can't swim we must sink." He gave the necessary orders and the boat dropped gradually through the water till she rested on the bottom.
"Now," said von Sperrgebiet. "Turn on the gramophone, one of you, if you can find it."
There was a pause while someone fumbled in the darkness, and a click.Then a metallic tune blared forth bravely from the unseen instrument.
"That's right," said von Sperrgebiet in a low voice, speaking for the last time. "'Deutschland unter Alles!'" His laugh was like the bark of a sick dog.
Twenty fathoms over their heads, under the grey sky, and blown upon by the strong salt wind, a large man in the uniform of a Lieutenant of the Naval Reserve was standing in the bows of an Armed Trawler; his gaze was fixed on something floating upon the surface of the water ahead; but presently he raised his eyes to the circle of Armed Trawlers around him riding lazily on the swell. In the rear of the gun in the bows of each craft stood a little group of men all staring intently at the floating object. The Lieutenant waved an arm to the nearest consort.
"They reckon they'll take it lying down," he said grimly. "Well, I don't blame 'em!" He nodded at the figure in the wheel-house.
"Full speed, skipper!" The telegraph clinked, and they moved ahead, slowly gathering way. Then the Reserve-man turned, facing aft.
"Let her go, George," he said, raising his voice. The trawler fussed ahead like a self-important hen that has laid an egg. There was a violent upheaval in the water astern, and a column of foam and wreckage leaped into the air with a deafening roar.
The Reserve Lieutenant pulled a knife out of his pocket, and, bending down, thoughtfully added another nick to a long row of notches in the wooden beam of the trawler's fore hatch.