“We are the Dead..... . . . .To you from failing hands we throwThe torch; be yours to hold it high:If ye break faith with us who die,We shall not sleep....”
“We are the Dead..... . . . .To you from failing hands we throwThe torch; be yours to hold it high:If ye break faith with us who die,We shall not sleep....”
“We are the Dead..... . . . .To you from failing hands we throwThe torch; be yours to hold it high:If ye break faith with us who die,We shall not sleep....”
There shall be no faith broken. God rest you, merry Gentlemen.
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Itwas still dark when the battle cruisers slipped from their moorings and began to feel their way towards the unseen entrance of the harbour. From the bridge of each mass of towering indeterminate shadows the stern light of the next ahead could be discerned dimly through binoculars, and on those pin-points of light they steered. What the battle cruiser flagship steered by, in the narrow confines of the crowded harbour and the inky darkness, only the little knot of figures on her forebridge knew: the admiraland flag captain, the navigator and officer-of-the-watch, muffled in duffle coats and moving mysteriously about the glow-worm arc of light from the binnacle and charttable.
One by one the long black shapes slid through the outer defences, ebon shadows in a world of shades. The voices of the leadsmen in the chains blended their mournful intermittent chant with the rush of water past the ship’s side; to all but the ears of the watchful figures on the bridges the sound was swallowed by the dirge of the funnel stays and halliards in the cold wind heralding the dawn.
The red and green lights on the gate-marking vessels winked and bobbed in the swell caused by the passage of the grim host. It passed with incredible swiftness; and before the troubled waters began to quiet, the escorting destroyers came pelting up astern, heralded by the rush and rattle of spray-thrashed steel, funnels glowing, and the roar of their fans pouring out from the engine-room exhausts. Night and the mystery of the darkness enfolded them. The gates closed upon their churning wakes and the tumult of their passing. Dawn glimmered pale behind the hills and broadened slowly into day; it found the harbourempty, save for small craft. Beyond the headlands, beyond the mist-enshrouded horizon, the battle cruisers were abroad, unleashed.
Once clear of their protecting minefields, the battle cruisers moved south at high speed, with their smoke trailing astern in broad zig-zags across a grey sky. At intervals they altered course simultaneously and then swung back to their original path, flinging the grey seas asunder from each gaunt, axe-headed bow as they turned.
They scarcely resembled ships, in their remorseless, purposeful rush under the lowering sky. The screening T.B.D.’s spread fan-wise on their flanks were dwarfed to insignificance beside these stupendous destroyers with the smoke pouring from their huge funnels, and nothing to break their stark nakedness of outline but the hooded guns. Men lived on board them, it is true: under each White Ensign a thousand souls laboured out each one its insignificant destiny. They were entities invisible like mites in a cheese; but the ships that bore them were instruments, visible enough, of the triumphant destiny of an empire.
As far as the eye could reach, the battle cruisers were alone on that grey waste of water. But swift as was their passage,something swifter overtook them out of the north as the morning wore on. It was the voice of the battle fleet moving south in support. “Speed so-and-so, on such-and-such a course,” flickered the curt cipher messages through sixty miles of space. And south they came in battle array, battleships, light cruisers, and destroyers, ringed by the misty horizon of the North Sea, with the calling gulls following the white furrows of their keels like crows after the plough.
A division of light cruisers, driving through the crested seas at the speed of a galloping horse, linked the battle fleet with the battle cruisers. Seen from either force they were but wraiths of smoke on the horizon: but ever and anon a daylight searchlight winked out of the mist, spanning the leagues with soundless talk.
It was still early afternoon when a trail of bubbles flickered ahead of the flagship of the battle fleet’s lee line. It crossed at right angles to their course, and a thousand yards abeam of the third ship in the line something silvery broke the surface in a cloud of spray. It was a torpedo that had run its course and had missed the mark. Simultaneously, one of the escorting destroyers, a mile abeam, turned like a mongoose on a snake, and circled questing for a couple of minutes.Then suddenly a column of water leaped into the air astern of the destroyer, and the sound of the explosion was engulfed by the great loneliness of sea and sky. She remained circling while the battle fleet swept on with swift, bewildering alterations of course, and later another far-off explosion overtook them.
“Strong smell of oil; air bubbles. No wreckage visible. Consider enemy submarine sunk. No survivors,” blinked the laconic searchlight, and the avenger, belching smoke from four raking funnels, came racing up to her appointed station.
As the afternoon wore on, a neutral passenger ship crossed the path of the fleet. She was steering a westerly course, and altered to pass astern of the battle cruisers.
The captain wiped his glasses and handed them to one of the passengers, an amiable merchant of the same nationality as himself, and a self-confessed admirer of all things British.
“Ha!” said the captain. “You see? The clenched fist of Britain! It is being pushed under the nose of Germany—so!” He laughingly extended a gnarled fist in the other’s face. The merchant was a frequent passenger of his, and the sort of man (by reason of his aforesaid proclivities) to appreciate the jest. The merchant stepped backa pace rather hurriedly: then he laughed loudly. “Exactly!” he said, “very neat, my friend.” And borrowing his friend’s glasses he studied the far-off tendrils of smoke in silence awhile.
A quarter of an hour later, a light cruiser altered course from the fleet in the direction of the neutral steamer. Then it was that the amiable merchant was struck by a sudden recollection. It was a matter of considerable urgency and concerned an order for a large number of bolts of calico and a customer’s credit. So pressing was the business that he obtained the captain’s permission to send a radio telegram to his firm while the approaching cruiser was still some miles away.
The message was duly dispatched, and, with surprising rapidity, by methods with which this narrative is not concerned (of which, indeed, the narrator is entirely ignorant), reached Wilhelmshaven by nightfall. Here four German battle cruisers were raising steam preparatory to carrying out a bombardment at dawn of a populous English watering-place. The message that reached them had, however, nothing to do with calico or credit, but it bade them draw fires and give the usual leave to officers and men; orders for the bombardment were cancelled.The German battle cruisers were not unaccustomed to rapid changes of programme of this sort, and they asked no questions.
At nine o’clock the following morning, a British taxpayer sat down to breakfast in a house commanding a fine view of the sea from the popular watering-place already mentioned. It was a large house, and incidentally offered an admirable target from the sea. The taxpayer unfolded his morning paper, and took a sip of his tea. Then he put the cup down quickly. “You’ve forgotten the sugar,” he said.
“No, dear,” replied his wife, “I haven’t forgotten it, but there isn’t any.”
“Eh,” said the taxpayer, “why not? why the devil isn’t there any sugar?”
The taxpayer’s wife advanced a number of popular theories to account for the phenomenon, while the taxpayer gloomily stirred his unsweetened tea.
“Then all I should like to know,” he replied, when she had finished, “is, what the blazes is our Navy doing?”
“I don’t know, dear,” said the taxpayer’s wife.
Daybreak, drawing back the dark shroud of night from the face of the North Sea,disclosed a British minelaying submarine making her way homeward on the surface. To the two oilskin-clad figures on the conning tower, chilled and streaming wet in the cheerless dawn, it also betrayed feathers of smoke above the horizon astern. The submarine promptly dived to investigate at closer quarters, and was rewarded by the spectacle of a German cruiser squadron, screened by destroyers, steering a northwesterly course at high speed.
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The submarine did not attempt to attack with her torpedoes. She retired instead to where the sand-fog stirs in an endless groundswell, and the North Sea cod hover about thewrecks of neutral merchantmen. In these unlit depths she lay for an hour, listening to the chunk of many propellers pass overhead and die away. She knew nothing of the mysterious chain of events which sent those cruisers venturing beyond the protection of the far-reaching German minefields. She was as ignorant of popular clamour in Germany for spectacular naval activity as she was of the presence of a large convoy of laden freighters a hundred miles away to the northward, escorted by destroyers and making for a British port. These matters were not her “pidgin.” On the other hand, having once sighted the German cruisers, she became very much concerned with getting the information through to quarters where it would be appreciated. Accordingly, when the last of the water-borne sounds ceased, the submarine rose to the surface, projected a tiny wireless mast above the wave-tops, and sent out the Call rippling through space.
It was addressed to a certain light cruiser squadron, lying at its buoys with the needles of the pressure gauges flickering and the shells fused in the racks beside each gun, waiting day and night in much the tense preparedness with which the fire brigade waits.
Within two hours the light cruisers wereout, ribands of foam and smoke unreeling astern of them, with their attendant destroyers bucketing and plunging on either side of them, flinging the spray abroad in the greeting of a steep easterly swell. The last destroyer swung into station ere the line of minesweepers, crawling patiently to and fro about the harbour approaches, were blotted from view in their smoke astern. Presently the harbour itself faded out of sight; in lodging, cottage, and villa the women glanced at the clocks as the ships went out, and then turned to their morning tasks and the counting of the slow hours....
East into the sunlight went the slim grey cruisers, and then north, threading their swift way through the half-known menace of the minefields, altering course from time to time to give a wide berth to the horned Death that floated awash among the waves. At intervals the yard-arm of the leading light cruiser would be flecked with colour as a signal bellied out against the wind, and each time speed was increased. Faster and faster they rushed through the yellowish seas, fans and turbines humming their song of speed, and the wind in the shrouds chiming in on a higher note as if from an æolian harp.
The spray rattled like hail against the sloping gun-shields and splinter-mats, behind which men stood huddled in little clusters or leaned peering ahead through glasses; cinders from the smoke of the next ahead collected in little whorls and eddies or crunched underfoot about the decks; the guns’ crews jested among themselves in low voices, while the sight-setters adjusted their head-pieces and the layer of each slim gun fussed lovingly about the glittering breech mechanism with a handful of waste....
Then suddenly, above the thunder of the waves and singing of the wind, a clear hail floated aft from a look-out. Bare feet thudded on the planking of the signal bridge, bunting whirled amid the funnel smoke, and the hum of men’s voices along the stripped decks deepened into a growl.
“Smoke on the port bow!”
A daylight searchlight chattered suspiciously—paused—flashed a blinding question, and was silent.
Orders droned down the voice-pipes. Somewhere a man laughed—a sudden savage laugh of exultation, that broke a tension none were aware of till that moment. Then a fire-gong jarred: the muzzle of the foremost gun suddenly vomited a spurt of flame, and as the wind whipped the yellow smokeinto tatters, the remaining light cruisers opened fire.
Bang!... bang!... bang!... bang!... bang!
On the misty horizon there were answering flashes, and a moment later came a succession of sounds as of a child beating a tray. The light cruisers wheeled to the eastward amid scattered columns of foam from falling shells, and as they turned to cut off the enemy from his base the destroyers went past, their bows buried in spray, smoke swallowing the frayed white ensigns fluttering aft. In a minute they had vanished in smoke, out of which guns spat viciously, leaving a tangle of little creaming wakes to mark the path of their headlong onslaught.
Neck and neck raced the retreating raiders and the avenging Nemesis from the east coast of Britain. Ahead lay the German minefields and German submarines and the tardy support of the German High Seas Fleet. Somewhere far astern a huddle of nervous merchantmen were being hustled westward by their escort, and midway between the two the hostile destroyer flotillas fought in a desperate death-grapple under the misty blue sky.
When at length the British light cruisers hauled off and ceased fire on the fringe of theGerman minefields, the enemy were hull down over the horizon, leaving two destroyers sinking amid a swirl of oil and wreckage, and a cruiser on her beam ends ablaze from bow to stern. The sea was dotted with specks of forlorn humanity clinging to spars and rafts. Boats from the British destroyers plied to and fro among them, bent on the quixotic old-fashioned task of succouring a beaten foe. Those not actively engaged in this work of mercy circled round at high speed to fend off submarine attack; the light cruisers stayed by to discourage the advances of a pair of Zeppelins which arrived from the eastward in time to drop bombs on the would-be rescuers of their gasping countrymen.
The bowman of a destroyer’s whaler disengaged his boathook from the garments of a water-logged Teuton, grasped his late enemy by the collar and hauled him spluttering into the boat with a single powerful heave of his right arm.
All about them cutters and whalers rising and falling on the swell were quickly being laden to the gunwales with scalded, bleeding, half-drowned prisoners. A midshipman in the stern of a cutter was waving a bedraggled German ensign and half-tearfully entreating his crew to stop gaping at the Zeppelins andattend to orders. The barking of the light cruisers’ high-angle guns was punctuated by the whinny of falling bombs and pieces of shrapnel that whipped the surface of the sea into spurts of foam. In the background the sinking cruiser blazed sullenly, the shells in her magazine exploding like gigantic Chinese crackers.
In the bows of the whaler referred to above the able seaman with the boathook sat regarding the captive of his bow and spear (or rather, boathook). “’Ere, Tirpitz!” he said, and removing his cap he produced the stump of a partly smoked cigarette. The captive took it with a watery smile and pawed his rescuer’s trousers.
“Kamarad!” he said.
“Not ’arf!” said his captor appreciatively. “Not ’arf you ain’t, you—— —— son of a—— ——!”
The second bow, labouring at his oar, looked back over his shoulder.
“’Ush!” he said reprovingly. “’E can’t understand. Wot’s the use o’ wastin’ that on’im?” He spat contemptuously over the gunwale.
. . . . .
The following thoughtful description of the action appeared in the German wirelesscommuniquénext morning:
“Our light forces in an enterprise off the English coast put to flight a vastly superior strength of armed merchant cruisers escorted by destroyers. English fleet on coming to the rescue was compelled to withdraw, and our forces returned to harbour without further molestation.”
“Our light forces in an enterprise off the English coast put to flight a vastly superior strength of armed merchant cruisers escorted by destroyers. English fleet on coming to the rescue was compelled to withdraw, and our forces returned to harbour without further molestation.”
Every man to his own trade.
The north-east wind carried the steady grumble of gunfire across the sand-dunes and far out to sea.
The foremost gun’s crew of a British destroyer stood huddled in the lee of the gun-shield with their duffle hoods pulled down over their foreheads. The sea was calm, and the stars overhead shone with frosty brilliance. A figure groped its way forward with a bowl of cocoa, and joined the group round the breech of the gun. They drank in turn, grunting as the warmth penetrated into their interiors.
The distant gunfire swelled momentarily. Above the horizon far ahead intermittent gleams marked the activity of searchlight and star-shell.
“Them’s our guns,” said one of the cocoa-drinkers. He wiped his mouth on the sleeveof his coat, and stared ahead. It never seemed to occur to any of them that they might equally well be German guns.
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“That’s right,” confirmed the sight-setter. “There’s guns going like that for ’undreds an’ ’undreds of miles. Right away up from the sea. Me brother’s there—somewhere....” For a moment they ruminated over a mental picture of the sight-setter’s brother, a mud-plastered stoical atom, somewhere along those hundreds of miles of wire and bayonets that hedged civilisation and posterity from the Unnamable. “Switzerland to the sea,” said the speaker. He jerked the breech-lever absent-mindedly towards him, and closed it again with a little click.
“An’ then we takes on,” said a loading number. “Us an’ these ’ere.” He tapped the smooth side of a lyddite shell lying in the rack beside him.
“An’ this ’ere,” said the man who had brought the cocoa. He thrust forward the cumbersome hilt of a cutlass at his hip. The starlight gleamed dully on the steel guard.
“You won’t use that to-night, my son,” said the gunlayer. “We ain’t goin’ to ’ave noBrokean’Swiftsong an’ dance to-night.” He stared out into the clear darkness. “We couldn’t never git near enough.” Nevertheless, he put out his hand in the gloom and reassured himself of the safety of a formidable bar of iron well within reach. Once in the annals of this war had a British destroyer come to grips at close quarters with the enemy; thereafter her crew walked the earth as men apart, and the darlings of the high gods.
The night grew suddenly darker. It was the mysterious hour that precedes the dawn, when warring men and sleeping animals stir and bethink them of the morrow. The destroyer slackened speed and turned, thewide circle of her wake shimmering against the darkness of the water. As they turned, other dark shapes were visible abeam, moving at measured distance from each other without a light showing or a sound but the faint swish of the water past their sides. The flotilla had reached the limit of its beat, and swung round to resume the unending patrol.
Once from the starry sky came the drone of a seaplane moving up from its base that lay to the southward. Another followed, another and another, skirting the coast and flying well out to sea to avoid the searchlights and anti-aircraft guns of the shore batteries. They passed invisible, and the drone of their engines died away.
“Our spottin’ machines,” said the sight-setter. “They’re going up to spot for the monitors at daylight.” He jerked his head astern to the north, and yawned. “I reckon I’d sooner ’ave this job than screenin’ monitors wot’s bombardin’ Ostend. I don’t fancy them 15-inch German shell droppin’ round out o’ nuffink, an’ no chance of ’ittin’ back.”
“They knocks seven-bells outer Ostend, them monitors,” said another. “Weain’t knockin’ ’ell out o’ nobody, steamin’ up an’ down like one of them women slops in the ’Orseferry Road.” The speaker blinkedtowards the east where the stars were paling.
“We’re all doin’ our bit,” said the gunlayer, “an’ one o’ these nights....” He shook his head darkly. The dawn crept into the sky: the faces beneath the duffle hoods grew discernible to each other, unshaven, pink-lidded, pinched with cold. Objects, shining with frozen dew, took form out of the black void. The outline of the bridge above them, and the mast behind, stood out against the sky; the head and shoulders of the captain, with his glasses to his eyes, appeared above the bridge screen, where he had been all night, watchful and invisible. The smoke trailing astern blotted out the rest of the flotilla following in each other’s wake. Aft along the deck, guns’ and torpedo-tubes’ crews began to move and stamp their feet for warmth.
Away to starboard a circular object nearly awash loomed up and dropped astern. Another appeared a few minutes later, and was succeeded by a third. Mile after mile these dark shapes slid past, stretching away to the horizon. They were the buoys of the Channel barrage, supporting the mined nets which are but a continuation of four hundred miles of barbed wire.
The day dawned silvery grey and disclosed a diffused activity upon the face of the waters. Two great hospital ships, screened by destroyers as a sinister reminder to the beholder of Germany’s forfeited honour, slid away swiftly towards the French coast. A ragged line of coastwise traffic, barges under sail, lighters in tow of tugs, and deepladen freighters hugging the swept channel along the coast, appeared as if by magic out of “the bowl of night”; from the direction of the chalk-cliffs came a division of drifters in line ahead. They passed close to the destroyers, and the figure on the leading destroyer’s bridge bawled through a megaphone. They were curt incoherencies to a landsman—vague references to a number and some compass bearings. A big man on board the drifter flagship waved his arm to indicate he understood the message; which was to the effect that one of the barrage buoys appeared to have dragged a little, and the net looked as if it was worth examining.
The drifters spread out along the line of buoys and commenced their daily task of overhauling the steel jackstays, testing the circuits of the mines, repairing damage caused by the ebb and flow of the tide and winter gales.
Half an hour later the destroyers encountered their reliefs, transferred the mantle of responsibility for the left flank with a flutter of bunting and a pair of hand-flags, and returned to their anchorage, where they were greeted by a peremptory order from the signal station to complete with oil fuel and report when ready for sea again. A coastal airship had reported an enemy submarine in the closely guarded waters of the Channel, and along sixty miles of watchful coast the hunt was up.
“My brother Alf,” said the sight-setter disgustedly, as he kicked off his seaboots and prepared for an hour’s sleep, “’e may be famil’r wif tools wot I don’t know nothin’ about. But there’s one thing about ’em—when ’e lays ’em down, ’e bloody-well lays ’em down.”
TheBlimprose from her moorings, soaring seaward, and straightway the roar of her propeller cut off each of the occupants of the car into a separate world of his own silence. The aerodrome with its orderly row of hangars dropped away from under them with incredible swiftness. Fields became patchwork, buildings fell into squares and lozenges without identity. Figures which a minuteor two before had been noisy, muscular, perspiring fellow-men working on the ropes, were dots without motion or meaning, and faded to nothingness.
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A flock of seagulls rose from the face of the cliff, whirled beneath them like autumn leaves, and dropped astern. The parallel lines of white that were breakers chasing each other to ruin on a rock-bound coast merged into the level floor of the Atlantic, and presently there was nothing but sea and blue sky with the rushing wind between, and this glittering triumph of man’s handiwork held suspended like a bauble midway.
The pilot turned in his seat and grinnedover his shoulder at the observer. The grin was the only visible portion of his face: the rest was hidden by flying-helmet and goggles and worsted muffler. The grin said: “It’s a fine morning and the old bus is running like a witch. What’s the odds on sighting a Fritz?”
The observer laughed and shouted an inaudible reply against the roar of the wind. He pulled a slip of chewing gum out of his pocket, bit off a piece, and passed the rest to the pilot. Then he adjusted the focus of the high-power glasses and began methodically quartering out the immense circular expanse of sea beneath them.
Half an hour had passed when the wireless operator in the rear leaned forward and tapped him on the shoulder. His listeners were to his ears, and he was scribbling something on a slate. “S.O.S.—S.O.S.”—a bearing from a distant headland—“fourteen miles—S.O.S.—S.O.S.—come quickly—I am being shelled—S.O.S.—Subma——” The operator paused with his pencil above the slate, waited a moment, and handed the slate forward.
The message, soundless, appealing, that had reached them out of the blue immensity had ceased abruptly. The pilot glanced from the compass to a small square of chartclamped before him, and slowly turned the wheel. Then he looked back over his shoulder and grinned again.
A quarter of an hour later the pilot extended a gauntletted hand and pointed to the rim of the horizon. A faint smudge of smoke darkened into a trailing cloud, and presently they saw ahead of it the forepart of a ship, driving through the water at a speed which clove a white, irregular furrow across the surface of the sea. She was swerving from side to side like a hunted buck, and as the dirigible dipped her nose and the hum of the wind redoubled to a roar in the ears of the crew, they saw away to the west a tiny cigar-shaped object. At intervals a spurt of flame shot from it, and a little pale mushroom-shaped cloud appeared above the steamer as the shrapnel burst.
TheBlimpswooped at eighty miles an hour upon that cigar-shaped object. The observer braced his feet and grasped the bomb release lever, his jaws still moving about the piece of chewing-gum. The sea, flecked with little waves, rushed up to greet them. They had a glimpse of the submarine’s crew tumbling pell-mell for the conning-tower hatchway, of the wicked gun abandoned forward still trained on the fleeing merchantman. The next instant thequarry had shot beneath them. A sharp concussion of the air beat upon the fragile car and body of the airship as her nose was flung up and round. The dirigible’s bomb had burst right forward on the pointed bows, and the submarine was diving in a confused circle of broken water and spray.
TheBlimpturned to drop another bomb ahead of the rapidly vanishing wake, and then marked the spot with a calcium flare, while the wireless operator jiggled a far-flung “Tally ho!” on the sending-key of his apparatus.
The tramp disappeared below the horizon, and they caught disjointed scraps of her breathless tale while they circled in wide spirals above the watery arena.
Three motor launches were the first upon the scene, each with a slim gun in the bows, and carrying, like hornets, a sting in their tails. They were old hands at the game, and they spread out on the hunt with business-like deliberation under the directions of theBlimp’sMorse lamp. The captain of the inshore boat (he had been a stockbroker in an existence several æons gone by) traced a tar-stained finger across the chart, and glanced again at the compass. “Nets—nets—nets,” he mumbled.“The swine probably knows about those to the northwest ... He daren’t go blind much longer. Ha!”
“Feather three points on your port bow,” winked theBlimp. Over went the motor launch’s helm, and the seaward boat suddenly darted ahead in a white cloud of spray. Bang! a puff of smoke drifted away from the wet muzzle of her gun; half a mile ahead a ricochet flung up a column of foam as the shell went sobbing and whimpering into the blue distance.
“Periscope dipped,” waved a pair of hand-flags from the boat that had fired. And a moment later, “Keep out of my wake! Am going to release a charge.”
For an hour that relentless blindfold hunt went forward, punctuated by exploding bombs and depth charges, and the crack of the launches’ guns as the periscope of the submarine rose for an instant’s glimpse of his assailants and vanished again. Twice the enemy essayed a torpedo counter-attack, and each time the trail passed wide. Then, crippled and desperate, he doubled on his tracks, and for a while succeeded in shaking off the pursuit. Nets, as he knew, lay ahead, and nets were death; safety lay to the southward could he but keep submerged; but the water, spurting through the buckled plating and rivets started by the bursting depthcharges, had mingled with the acid in the batteries and generated poison gas, which drove him to the surface. Here he turned, a couple of miles astern of his pursuers, and manned both guns, a hunted vermin at bay. As his foremost gun opened fire, a heavy shell burst a few yards abeam of the submarine, and the captain of the nearest motor launch raised his glasses. It was not a shell fired from a motor launch.
“The destroyers,” he said. “Now why couldn’t they have kept away till we’d made a job of it?” On the horizon the masts and funnels of a flotilla of destroyers appeared in line abreast, approaching at full speed, firing as they came. The next instant a shell from the submarine burst on the tiny forecastle of the launch, shattering the gun, gun’s crew, and wheelhouse. The coxswain dropped over the wrecked wheel and slowly slid to the deck like a marionette suddenly deprived of animation. The lieutenant R.N.V.R. who had once been a stockbroker stood upright for an instant with his hands to his throat as if trying to stem the red torrent spurting through his fingers, and then pitched brokenly beside the coxswain.
The captain of the submarine counted the approaching destroyers, opened the seacock to speed the flooding of his doomed craft, gavea swift glance overhead at theBlimpswooping towards them for thecoup-de-grâce, and ordered Cease Fire. Then he waved his hands in token of surrender.
V.Overdue
The thin light of a sickle moon tipped the crest of each swift-running sea with silver. The rest was a purple blackness, through which the north wind slashed like a knife, and the sound of surf on a distant shoal was carried moaning. At intervals a bank of racing clouds trailed across the face of the moon, and then all was inky dark for a while.
It was during one of these periods of obliteration of all things visible that a slender, perpendicular object rose above the surface of the sea. Gradually the dim light waxed again: a wave, cloven in its path, passed hissing on either side in a trail of spray, and the object slowly projected until it topped the highest wave. Presently about its base a convulsive disturbance in the water was followed by the appearance of a conical shape, a solid blackness against the streaked glimmering obscurity of the water breaking all about its sides and streaming in cascades from the flat railed-in top. A hatchway opened, and two figures crawled out, clingingto the rail of their swaying foothold while the full force of the wind clawed and battered at their forms. They maintained a terse conversation by dint of shouting in turn with their lips to each other’s ears, while the conning-tower of the submarine on which they stood moved forward in the teeth of the elements.
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For half an hour they went plunging andlurching onwards, clinging with numbed hands to the rail as a green sea swept about their legs, wiping the half-frozen spray from their eyes to search the darkness ahead with night-glasses. Then one pointed away on the bow.
“How’s that?” he bawled. A point on the bow something dark tumbled amid the waves and flying spindrift. The other stared a moment, shouted an order to the invisible helmsman through a voice-pipe, and the wind that had hitherto been in their streaming eyes smote and buffeted them on the left cheek. A scurry of sleet whirled momentarily about them, blotting out the half-glimpsed buoy; the taller of the two figures put out an arm and smote his companion on the back. They had made that buoy at dawn the previous day, and then, according to the custom of British submarines in enemy waters, submerged till nightfall. Now, despite the set of the tides and currents and the darkness, they had found it again, and with it their bearings for the desperate journey that lay ahead.
For two hours they groped their way onwards through what would have been unfathomable mysteries to a landsman. Compass, chart, and leadline played their part: but not even these, coupled with thestoutest heart that ever beat, avail against unknown minefield and watchful patrols. Thrice the two alert, oilskin-clothed figures dived through the hatchway into the interior of the submarine, and the platform on which they had been standing vanished eerily beneath the surface as a string of long, dark shapes went by with a throb of unseen propellers. Once when thus submerged an unknown object grated past the thin shell with a harsh metallic jar, and passed astern in silence. Then it was that the captain of the submarine removed his cap, passing his sleeve quickly across his damp forehead, and the gesture was doubtless accepted where all prayers of gratitude find their way.
The first gleam of dawn, however, found no submarine on the surface. It showed a business-like flotilla of destroyers on their beat, and a long line of net drifters at anchor in the far distance amid sandbanks. An armed trawler with rust-streaked sides and a gun forward was making her way through the cold, grey seas in the direction of the drifters; a hoist of gay-coloured signal flags flew from her stump of a mast, and at the peak a tattered German ensign. The crew were clustered for warmth in the lee of the engine-room casing, their collars turned upabove their ears, and their hands deep in their pockets. They were staring ahead intently at the line of nets guarding the entrance to the harbour they were about to enter. None noticed a black speck that peeped intermittently out of their tumbling wake thirty yards astern, and followed them up the channel. Three or four fathoms beneath that questioning speck, in an electric-lit glittering steel cylinder, a young man stood peering into the lens of a high-power periscope, both hands resting on a lever. He spoke in a dull monotone, with long intervals of silence; and throughout the length of that cylinder, beside valve and dial and lever, a score of pairs of eyes watched him steadfastly.
“She’s given her funnel a coat of paint since last month ... port ten—steady! steady!... There’s the gate vessel moving.... The skipper is waving to hurry him up.... Wants his breakfast, I suppose.... That must be the big crane in the dockyard.... There are flags hung about everywhere.... Starboard a touch.... It’s getting devilish light.... There’s something that looks like a battle-cruiser alongside....”
There was a long silence, then the figure manipulating the periscope suddenly stood upright.
“We’re through,” he said quietly. “And that’s their new battle-cruiser.”
. . . . .
In the smoking-room of a British submarine depot a group of officers sat round the fire. Now and again one or other made a trivial observation from behind his newspaper; occasionally one would glance swiftly at the clock and back to his paper as if half afraid the glance would be intercepted. The hands of the clock crept slowly round to noon; the clock gave a little preliminary whirr and then struck the hour.
“Eight bells,” said the youngest of the group in a tone of detachment, as if the hour had no special significance. A grave-faced lieutenant-commander seated nearest the door rose slowly to his feet and buttoned up his monkey jacket.
“You goin’, Bill?” asked his neighbour in a low voice.
The upright figure nodded. “He’d have done as much for me,” he replied, and walked quickly out of the room.
No one spoke for some minutes. Then the youngest member lowered the magazine he was holding in front of him.
“Do they cry?” he asked.
“No,” said two voices simultaneously. “’Least,” added one, “not at the time.”
The silence settled down again like dust that had been disturbed; then the first speaker leaned forward and tapped the ashes out of his pipe.
“Well,” he observed, “they didn’t get him cheap, at all events. I’m open to a bet that he sent a Boche or two ahead of him to pipe the side.”
The group nodded a grim assent.
“Yes,” said one who had not hitherto spoken. “I reckon you’re right. But we shan’t hear till the war’s over. They know how to keep their own secrets.” He puffed at his pipe reflectively.
“Anyhow, thank God I’m a bachelor,” he concluded. He lifted a fox-terrier’s head between his hands and shook it gently to and fro. “No one need go and tell our wives ifwedon’t come back—eh, little Blinks?” The dog yawned, gave the hands that held him a perfunctory lick, and resumed his interrupted nap sprawling across his master’s knees.
. . . . .
Among the letters intercepted shortly afterwards on their way to a South American State from Germany was one that contained the following significant passage:
“ ... Yesterday all Kiel was beflagged: we were to have had a half-holiday on the occasion of the trials of the great new battle cruiser——. Owing to an unforeseen incident, however, the trials were not completed. Our half-holiday has been postponed indefinitely....”
“ ... Yesterday all Kiel was beflagged: we were to have had a half-holiday on the occasion of the trials of the great new battle cruiser——. Owing to an unforeseen incident, however, the trials were not completed. Our half-holiday has been postponed indefinitely....”
The herring were in the bay, and the fleet of sailing smacks went trailing out on the light wind with their eager crews of old men and boys straining at the halliards to catch the last capful of wind. After them came the armed guard-boat of the little peaceful fleet, a stout trawler with a gun in her bows, fussing in the wake of her charges.
The skipper of the guard-boat was at the wheel, a tall, gaunt old man with a fringe of grey whisker round his jaws and a mouth as tight as a scar. He it was who located the herring and placed the fleet across their path, and all that day the smacks lay to their nets till the porpoises turned inshore and drove the silvery host eastward. After them went the smacks, with holds half-full, lured on by the promise of two quarters’ rent as good as paid. Finally, the old Trawler Reserveman checked the pursuit.
“Fish or no fish,” he cried. “Here ye
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bide the night.” They had reached the limit of the safety zone in those waters, and he rounded up his flock like a sagacious sheep-dog, counting the little craft carefully ere he took up his position to seaward of them for the night. At the first hint of dawn he weighed anchor and counted again: his grim old face darkened. He turned to seaward where the sky was lightening fast, and searched the mist through glasses. Three smacks were discernible some miles outside their allotted area. The burly mate stood beside his father, and watched thedelinquents hauling in their nets with a speed that hinted at an uneasy conscience.
“They’m drifted in a bit of a tide rip, mebbe?” he ventured.
The old man growled an oath. “Tide rip? Nay! They’m just daft wi’ greed. There’s no wit nor dacency in their sodden heads. An’ I’ll larn ’em both. By God I’ll larn ’em to disobey my orders.” ... He watched the far-off craft hoisting sail, with eyes grey and cold as flints beneath the bushy brows. “Aye,” he said threateningly, “I’ll larn ye ...” and clumped forward to the wheel-house.
The sun had not yet risen, and the thin morning mists wreathed the face of the waters. As the trawler gathered way a sudden flash of light blinked out of the mist to the northward. The report of a gun was followed by the explosion of a shell fifty yards on the near side of the most distant fishing-smack.
The trawler skipper measured the distance from the flash to the fishing fleet, and thence to the truants bowling towards them on the morning breeze.
“Man the gun!” he roared. “Action Stations, lads!” He picked up a megaphone and bellowed through it in the direction of his charges: “Cut your warps an’ get terhell outer this!” Then he wrenched the telegraph to full speed and put the wheel over, heading his little craft towards the quarter from which the flash had come. The gun’s crew closed up round the loaded gun, rolling up their sleeves and spitting on their hands as is the custom of their breed before a fight.
“There’s a submarine yonder in the mist,” shouted the skipper. “Open fire directly ye sight her and keep her busy while the smacks get away.” Astern of them the small craft were cutting their nets away and hoisting sail. Three or four were already making for safety to the westward before the early morning breeze that hurried in catspaws over the sea.
Bang!
The trawler opened fire as the submarine appeared ahead like a long, hump-backed shadow against the pearly grey of the horizon. The breech clanged open and the acrid smoke floated aft as they reloaded.
“Rapid fire!” shouted the skipper. Shells were bursting all about the fleeing smacks. “Give ’em hell, lads. Her’ve got two guns an’ us but the one....” He glanced back over his shoulder at the little craft he was trying to save, and then bentto the voice-pipe. “Every ounce o’ steam, Luther. Her’ll try to haul off an’ outrange my little small gun.”
Smoke poured from the gaily-painted funnel; the “little small gun” barked and barked again, and one after the other the empty cylinders went clattering into the scuppers. A shell struck the trawler somewhere in the region of the mizzen mast, and sent the splinters flying. A minute later another exploded off the port bow, flinging the water in sheets over the gun’s crew. The sight-setter slid into a sitting position, his back against the pedestal of the gun-mounting, and his head lolling on his shoulder. They had drawn the enemy’s fire at last, and every minute gave the smacks a better chance. Shell after shell struck the little craft as she blundered gallantly on. The stern was alight: the splintered foremast lay across a funnel riddled like a pepper-pot. The trawler’s boy—a shock-headed child of fourteen who had been passing up ammunition to the gun—leaned whimpering against the engine-room casing, nursing a blood-sodden jacket wrapped about his forearm.
The mate was at the gun, round which three of the crew lay. One had raised himself on his elbow and was coughing outhis soul. The other two were on their backs staring at the sky.
In the face of the trawler’s fire, the submarine turned and drew out of range, firing as she went. One of the British shells had struck the low-lying hull in the stern, and a thin cloud of grey smoke ascended from the rent. Figures were visible running aft along the railed-in deck, gesticulating.
“Ye’ve hit her,” shouted the skipper from the wheel. “Give ’em hell, lads——”
A sudden burst of flame and smoke enveloped the wheel-house, and the skipper went hurtling through the doorway and pitched with a thud on the deck.
The mate ran aft and knelt beside him. “Father,” he cried hoarsely.
The inert blue-clad figure raised himself on his hands, and his head swayed between his massive shoulders.
“Father,” said the mate again, and shook him, as if trying to awaken someone from sleep. “Be ye hurted terrible bad?”
The grim old seadog raised his head, and his son saw that he was blind.
“Pitch the codes overboard,” he said. “I’m blind an’ stone deaf, an’ my guts are all abroad under me, but ye’ll fight the little gun while there’s a shell left aboard....”
The mate stood up and looked aft along the splintered, bloody deck, beyond the smoke and steam trailing to leeward.
“The gun’s wrecked,” he said slowly, as if speaking to himself. “The little smacks are clear o’ danger.... The destroyers are comin’ up.... Ye have fought a good fight, father.” The submarine had ceased fire, and as he spoke, she submerged and vanished sullenly, like a wild beast baulked of its prey.
. . . . .
An old woman sat knitting beside the fire in the heart of a Midland town next day. The door opened and a girl came in quickly, with a shawl over her head and a basket on her arm.
“There’s a surprise for supper,” she said.
The old woman looked inside the basket. “Herrin’!” she said. “What did they cost?”
“Tuppence apiece,” replied the girl lightly, as she hung up her shawl.
“They was cheap,” said the old woman as she fell to larding the frying-pan.
But all things considered, perhaps they were not so very cheap after all.