Chapter VI: Part TWO (3)

Such a day came in due course; misty, windless, with the aftermath of a great storm rolling eastward beneath a sullen swell. A vessel with the outward appearance of a merchantman (the fruits of whose labours for the past six months had doubtless perplexed that section of the Wilhelmshaven bureaucracy concerned with the non-return of U-boats), sighted towards evening the periscope and conning-tower of a submarine a mile away on her beam.

The figure on the bridge of the tramp, who carried, among other papers in his charge, his commission as a Commander of the Royal Navy, laughed as Drake might have laughed when the sails of a Spanish galleon broke the horizon. A tangle of flags appeared at the periscope of the submarine, and the tramp stopped obediently, blowing off steam in great clouds. Her Commander turned over the pages of the International Signal Code, smiling still. "Hoist: 'Cannot understand your signal,'" he said to the signalman, "I want to waste a few minutes," and moved to the engine-room voice-pipe. Obedient to his directions, the screws furtively jogged ahead under cover of the escaping steam, edging the steamer towards the watching enemy. The latter, however, promptly manned her foremost gun, turned, and slowly steamed towards them; she opened fire at a range of half a mile, the shell passing over the funnel of the disguised man-of-war.

In the tense excitement of that moment, when men's nerves and faculties were stretched like banjo-strings, the report of the submarine's gun rang loud through the still air. One of the man-of-war's gun-layers, lying concealed within his collapsible deckhouse, heard the report, and, thinking that the ship herself had opened fire without the customary warning gongs, flung down the screens which masked his weapon. Any further attempt at concealment was useless. The fire-gongs rang furiously at every gun position, the White Ensign was triced up to the mast-head in the twinkling of an eye, and the action started. After the first few hits the submarine lay motionless, with her bows submerged and her stern in the air for upwards of five minutes, while shells burst all about her. The heavy swell made shooting difficult, but eventually she sank in a great commotion of the water and dense clouds of vapour that hung over the surface for some minutes. Two depth-charges were dropped over her, and if ever men had cause for modest self-congratulation on having ridded the seas of yet another scourge, it would seem that the officers and crew of The King's Ship might have laid claim to their share. Yet, by ways unknown and incredible, it was claimed by the enemy that the submarine contrived to return, with shot-holes plugged, to tell the tale.

Once the cat was out of the bag, it was obvious that in the future the enemy would not rise to the surface until his torpedo had found its mark, and it became part of this grim game of bluff for the victim to ensure that she was hit. Then, when the "panic party" had abandoned the ship, the remainder must wait concealed and unresponsive beside their hidden guns, while the submarine rose to the surface and either closed within range or shelled them with sufficient thoroughness to convince him--who judged endurance and self-control by no mean standards--that the limit of human courage had been reached; that there could be no one concealed on board, and that he might with safety approach to loot and burn. Now this, as Mr. Kipling would put it, "was a damned tough bullet to chew." They were no demi-gods, nor yet fanatics, these three-score or so sailor-men. They were just ordinary human beings, with the average man's partiality for life and a whole skin, and the love of wife and bairn or sweetheart plucking at the heart-strings of most of them. But they shared what is not given to all men in this world of human frailty--a whole-souled confidence in a fellow-man, which would have carried them at his lightest nod through the gates of hell.

Under his command, then, they sailed with a cargo of timber in each hold, and in due course, about 9.45 one morning, a torpedo was seen approaching the starboard beam. Observing his rôle as Master of a careless tramp, with poor look-outs, the Commander held on his course. At the last moment, however, the helm was imperceptibly altered to ensure the ship being struck abaft the engine-room, where the torpedo might do least damage. Those whom fate has afforded the opportunity of studying the trail of an approaching torpedo will, if they recall their sensations, appreciate to some extent the iron nerve requisite to such a manœuvre. The torpedo burst abreast No. 3 hold, hurling a wall of water and wreckage to the height of the mast, and blowing a hole in the ship's side 40 feet wide. Half-stunned and deafened by the concussion, the Commander raised himself on his hands and knees, where he had been flung, and shouted to the Navigator: "They've got us this time!" The Navigator, who was inside the chart-house, thrust his head out for a moment, moistening a lead pencil with his lips. "I reckon I've got time to finish working out this sight, sir," he replied with a grin, and withdrew his head.

The alarm-gongs had already sent the guns' crews to their invisible guns, and immediately after the explosion "Panic stations" was ordered, followed in due course by "Abandon ship." The Navigator, having finished his "sight," and now acting as "Master," abandoned ship with the "panic party." No sooner had the boats been lowered and shoved off from the ship's side, however, than the Chief Engineer rang up from below and reported that the after bulkhead had gone and that the engine-room was filling fast. Peering, on all fours, through a slit in the bridge-screen, waiting for the inevitable periscope to appear, the Commander bade him hold on as long as he could and keep enough steam to work the pumps; when the water had extinguished the fires, and then only, the engines were abandoned and the staff remained concealed. This they did, crawling eventually on to the cylinders to escape from the rising flood.

Shortly after the torpedo struck the ship the periscope of a submarine broke the surface a couple of hundred yards distant, evidently watching proceedings with a deliberate, cautious scrutiny. Moving slowly through the water, like the fin of a waiting shark, the sinister object came gradually down the ship's side, within five yards of the breathless boats, and not ten yards from where the Commander lay beside the voice-pipes that connected him with the Assistant-Paymaster, R.N.R., who, concealed in the gun control position, was awaiting the order to open fire. From the altitude of the bridge, the submerged whale-back hull was plainly visible to the figure crouched behind the bridge-screens, and the temptation to yield to the impulse of the moment, to open fire and end the suspense, shook even his iron nerves. A lucky shot might pierce the lead-grey shadow that moved 15 feet beneath the surface; but water plays strange tricks with projectiles, deflecting them at unexpected ricochets, at angles no man can foretell; moreover, the submarine was in diving trim. The odds against a broadside overwhelming her before she could plunge into the depths and escape were too great. So the Commander waited, with self-control that was almost superhuman, and, prone beside their guns, unseeing and unseen, his men waited too.

The ship had then sunk by the stern until it was awash, and the crew of the gun masked by the wheelhouse were crouched up to their knees in water. A black cat, the ship's mascot, that had been blown off the forecastle by the explosion of the torpedo, swam aft and in over the stern, whose counter rose normally 20 feet above the surface. Still the periscope continued its unhurried observation; it travelled past the ship, across the bow, and then slowly moved away, as if content that the task was done. For the space of nearly a minute bitter disappointment and mortification rose in the Commander's heart. His ship had been torpedoed and was sinking. Their quarry had all but been within their grasp, and was now going to escape unscathed. Then, when hope was flickering to extinction, the submarine rose to the surface 300 yards on the port bow, and came slowly back towards the ship.

Up to this juncture, although the ship was settling deeper every moment, the Commander had purposely refrained from summoning assistance by wireless, lest interruption should come before his grim work was done. Now, however, he saw at one quick glance that the Lord had indeed "placed the enemy upon his lee bow," and the rest was only a matter of a few bloody moments. Accordingly he gave orders for an urgent wireless signal to be sent out forthwith summoning assistance, and waited until the submarine was on a line when all his guns would bear. She reached the desired spot at the moment when the German Commander was complacently emerging from the conning-tower; up went the White Ensign, and the first shot beheaded him; he dropped back into the interior of the submarine, and his wholly unexpected reappearance imparted a shock of surprise to the remainder of the inmates from which they never recovered. The submarine lay motionless as a dead whale, while the avenging broadside shattered the hull, and the grizzled pensioner inside a hen-coop scientifically raked her deck with a Maxim to prevent her gun from being manned. She finally sank with her conning-tower open and the crew pouring shrieking out of the hatchway.

From the swirling vortex of oil and blood and air bubbles in which the majority vanished, two dazed prisoners were rescued by the exultant "panic party" in the boats, and brought back to the ship. Once on board, however, the imperious necessities of the moment overwhelmed even the elation of victory. Bulkheads were shored in all compartments still accessible, confidential documents destroyed in anticipation of the worst, and then all but the Commander and a handful of men took to the boats and awaited succour. It came at noon in the guise of a congratulatory and businesslike Destroyer, and was augmented later by a couple of Sloops. By 5 P.M. the water had ceased to gain and the ship was in tow, heading for port; there she arrived, and was safely beached after dark the following day.

Thus her crew, emerging triumphant from the ordeal, added at the last a feat of seamanship which saved the ship. It required no great power of imagination to foretell what lay ahead; yet, when the time came for a fresh venture under the command of the man who had brought them victorious through the ordeals that were past, they sailed with light hearts and unafraid. As if for a pledge of that devotion, he wore thenceforward, on the left breast of his ancient monkey-jacket, the scrap of ribbon which it is the King's pleasure men shall wear "For Valour."

3

WON BY WAITING

The disguise adopted by such of his Majesty's ships as were selected to cope with the U-boat menace, varied according to the changing fashions. In the early days of the war the rôle of care-free tramp, steering a steady course, and minus look-outs or gun, was sufficient to lure the enemy to close quarters on the surface. But as the peculiar methods of warfare adopted by the German Government harked back to piracy and rape, so the custom of the seas reverted to the arming of merchantmen for defensive purposes.

For purpose of offence against the enemy, with which this story of a King's ship is concerned, a dummy gun sufficed; at all events for preliminaries. It was mounted prominently aft, attended by a conspicuously vigilant gunner. To outward appearances the ship was then an armed British merchant vessel, steering a zigzag course for home at a good speed, conscious that she was in the danger zone, and, by virtue of her unmistakable gun and position, liable to be torpedoed at sight according to the code of customs and chivalry of the sea--as revised by Germany. Torpedoed at sight she was, at eight o'clock of a misty summer morning, in a blinding rain storm and heavy sea. The torpedo was fired at apparently close range, since it jumped out of the water when one hundred yards from the ship; it struck the engine-room near the water-line, flooding the boiler-room, engine-room, and adjacent hold. The Stoker Petty Officer on duty in the engine-room was killed outright by the explosion, and the Third Engineer, who held a commission as Engineer Sub-Lieutenant, in the Naval Reserve, was half-stunned and badly wounded by flying splinters and fragments of coal. Despite the inrush of water, he contrived to reach the hatchway, and arrived on deck reeling with shock, half-flayed, and bleeding, to stagger to his post in the second act of the grim drama.

One of the lifeboats had been blown to smithereens, fragments of it being lodged even in the wires of the aerial between the masts, so great was the force of the explosion. Under the command of the Navigator, acting the part of Master, the "panic party" abandoned the ship in the remaining three boats as the ship settled deeper in the water. The officers and men whose station was on board were already motionless at their invisible guns; in the majority of cases they were concealed by screens, but the crew of the foremost gun were compelled to lie prone on their faces on the exposed forecastle, unable to stir a muscle until the order came to open fire.

Then for thirty-five leaden minutes, followed the savage ordeal of waiting for the unknown. For aught these motionless figures knew, the submarine might torpedo them again at any moment, might break surface and shell them at extreme range till they sank, or, an even more nerve-racking possibility, might set off in pursuit of a fresh victim and escape. Withal was the consciousness that a single movement on board, so much as a finger raised above screen or coaming, would betray their true character and bring the game of bluff to a swift and tragic conclusion. The periscope of the submarine had broken surface a quarter of an hour after the torpedo struck, about 400 yards distant on the port beam. It turned after a while and steered towards the ship, but the Captain and Signalman, prone at each end of the bridge, with their eyes glued to the observation slits, alone were aware of their quarry's movements. It was in the tense stillness of those moments, a stillness only disturbed by the lapping of the waves round the water-logged hull, and by the hiss of escaping steam, that from the little group of prostrate figures round the foremost gun rose a man's whistle, executing a gay, if somewhat tremulous, ditty of the sea. For a moment those in the immediate vicinity of the performer listened to the eerie music without comment. Then a motionless officer, moved by a sense of what was seemly at such a time and what was not, rebuked the minstrel. "I dursn't stop, sir," said the boy--he was only seventeen--"cos if I stops whistlin' I gits scared."

As the submarine drew nearer to the ship the Commander on the bridge of the disguised man-of-war cast a swift glance round to see that all was well, and saw the old and trusted Quartermaster lying face downwards beside the wheel. "For God's sake," he called, "don't show yourself, he's nibbling...." "Aye, aye, sir," said the faithful seaman. And then, so ingrained apparently had become the habit of disguise on board, he furtively dragged a lifebelt over the most prominent portion of his anatomy.

When fifty yards off the ship the periscope vanished, to reappear a few minutes later directly astern. Very deliberately, as a cat plays with a mouse before dealing the last stroke, the periscope travelled on to the starboard quarter, turned, and came back round the stem to the port beam, where the boats were lying. The stage management of the drama then passed into the hands of the Navigator in charge of the boats. His task was not lightened by a disposition on the part of the "panic party" to regard the affair in the light of high comedy, despite the cold scrutiny of the periscope. In no measured terms he reminded them that they were presumed by the Teutonic intelligence beneath the waves to be terrified mariners, not a boat-load of grinning buffoons; and then, mindful of the shortness of the visibility and the known weakness of the enemy for light banter with castaways in boats, he began pulling towards the ship. As he had foreseen, the submarine promptly rose to the surface and followed in pursuit, closing to within a few yards of the masked guns on board. An angry Hun shouted abuse through a megaphone from the top of the submarine's conning tower, and was reinforced a moment later by an equally abusive and impatient gentleman of the good old Prussian school, clasping a Maxim in his hands.

The prospect of being shot by either party at this juncture of the performance was none too remote. Yet the boat continued pulling as if manned by deaf mutes until the submarine had been lured into the desired position. Then suddenly the eagerly awaited White Ensign shot up to the masthead. Screens clattered down along the length of the ship's side, and a broadside of yellow flame leaped out over their heads. The submarine was suddenly plastered by bursting shell and half hidden by leaping waterspouts, as she slowly listed over to her side, with oil spouting from the rents in her hull. Her crew scrambled wildly out of the conning tower and waved their hands above their heads in token of surrender. Fire instantly ceased on board the British man-of-war, when unexpectedly the crippled enemy, her stern submerged, shot ahead and made off at high speed. The would-be "Kamerads" on her deck were swept into the sea by her last wild rush through the water, and the British guns broke out again in vengeful chorus. Fire was continued until she blew up and sank, one wretch clinging to her bows as she disappeared.

In spite of the heavy sea, the boats succeeded in rescuing two prisoners from the water before returning to the ship. An American Destroyer arrived a few hours later, accompanied by two Sloops. With their assistance the ship was brought safely into port, and of all who had passed through the soul-stirring events of the day none exhibited greater satisfaction or surprise at living to see it close than the late upholders of German freedom of the seas.

By command of his Majesty the King, one officer and one man were selected by ballot for the honour of the Victoria Cross from among the ship's company in recognition of the fact that, where all played so valiant a part, the distinction was earned by the ship rather than by the individual. Yet their task, the task required of them by the England which reads these lines at a well-found breakfast table, was still unfinished. They sailed again in another ship, knowing full well that they alone could never accomplish it entirely. But the name of that ship* shall be a household word some day wherever the English tongue is spoken, because of the ordeal these men endured behind her shattered bulwarks for England's sake.

* H.M.S. _Dunraven_.

4

THE SPLENDID FAILURE

To travel hopefully, said Robert Louis Stevenson, is better than to arrive; and therein he summed up the whole attitude of the Anglo-Saxon race towards human endeavour. It is our custom to honour the achievement less than the spirit, in the wistful hope, perhaps, that thus may we, too, be judged in our turn at the last. This is a record of failure, if the venture is to be judged by its material result. Yet the lesson it will carry to succeeding generations is concerned with neither success nor failure, but with those shining heights of the Spirit (attainable by every mother's son) where no fear is.

The King's ship to which this story relates was a steamer of some 3,000 tons, to outward appearances an armed merchantman with a light gun mounted on her poop. To make plain what happened on board it is necessary, however, that the uninitiated should be admitted into certain secrets of her construction. A wooden structure on the poop, common to merchantmen of her type, concealed a gun of effective calibre behind collapsible covers. Beneath this gun position, and occupying much of the space below the poop, were the magazine and shell rooms. Four depth-charges were fitted at her stern; any one of these dropped over the position of a submerged submarine was calculated on detonating to do all that was necessary. In addition, a smaller gun was mounted on the forecastle on a disappearing mounting, while hen-coops and deck fittings concealed similar armament at other points of vantage. To complete her offensive capabilities, she carried a masked torpedo tube on either beam.

This, then, was the true character of the ship which a German submarine sighted on the horizon at eleven o'clock one morning. She noted the small gun displayed defensively aft, and started in pursuit, firing as she went. The submarine was sighted directly she rose to the surface, whereupon the Captain of the man-of-war ordered the after gun to be manned and the remainder of the crew to take shell cover, tactics which differed in no respect from those customary to merchantmen under the circumstances. On the other hand, speed was imperceptibly decreased, and the crew of the light gun at the stern directed to shoot short in order to encourage the adversary to draw closer. It says much for the discipline on board that men thus prominently exposed to the fire of the pursuing enemy could deliberately continue to reply to it in the consciousness that their shots were not required to hit. German submarine commanders at this phase of the war were growing notoriously "nervy"; hysterical appeals for help were therefore sent out by wireless, in the hope that the enemy would intercept them and gain confidence.

The heavy sea gradually rendered it impossible for the submarine to maintain the pursuit and man her gun. She therefore abandoned the bombardment and came on at full speed, until after a chase of about an hour she turned broadside on and again opened fire. Shots were then falling close, and at 12.40 the steamer stopped, as great clouds of steam emerging from the engine-room showed she was disabled, and the "panic party" proceeded to abandon ship. To lend colour to the general atmosphere of demoralisation and confusion, one of the boats was purposely dropped by a single fall, and remained hanging from the davit in a vertical position. In the meantime the enemy had closed nearer and continued methodically shelling the ship. A shell struck the poop, exploding one of the depth-charges and blowing the officer in charge of the after concealed gun out of his control position; on recovering consciousness, however, he crawled inside the gun hatch, where his crew of seven men were hidden. The seaman superintending the depth-charges was badly wounded by this explosion and lay motionless. Seeing his condition, the hidden crew of the after gun attempted to drag him within their place of concealment, but the injured man stubbornly refused to be moved. "I was put here in charge of these things," he replied, indicating the remaining depth-charges, "and here I stop." And stop he did until subsequent events proved stronger than even his indomitable spirit. Two more shells burst inside the poop in quick succession, and a few moments later dense clouds of smoke and flames disclosed the disquieting fact that the after part of the ship was heavily on fire.

From his customary place at the end of the bridge, peering through slits in his armoured coign of observation, the Captain watched the submarine turn and come slowly past the ship 400 yards away. The next moment, as he was about to open fire on an easy target, the wind caught the smoke from the conflagration aft and blew it like a curtain across his vision. The Captain was confronted with two alternatives. One was to open fire there and then on a partially obscured target, or wait until the submarine should round the stern and come past the weather side, where the smoke did not interfere with the accuracy of the shooting. At the same time he was conscious that the fire raging aft must very soon engulf the magazine. It could only be a matter of moments before the magazine blew up, and with it the masked gun and its crew.

Nothing but utter confidence in the devotion of that gun's crew, the conviction that even in the direst extremity they would remain concealed and motionless, enabled the Captain to choose the second of these alternatives. Yet he chose it, determined at all costs to make sure of his quarry, and waited; and while he waited the deck on which this gun's crew were crouched grew slowly red-hot, so that they were compelled to cling to the mounting of the gun and to hold the cartridges in their arms. Their ordeal ended as the submarine was rounding the stern. The magazine and two more depth-charges blew up with a deafening roar, hurling gun, gun's crew, fragments of wreckage, and unexploded shells high in the air. One member of the crew fell into the water, where he was picked up by the "panic party"; the remainder, including the depth-charge keeper, landed in the well-deck, with the gun.

The concussion of the explosion had, however, started the electrically controlled fire-gongs at the remaining gun positions. Thereupon the White Ensign fluttered automatically up to the masthead, and one gun--the only one that would bear--opened an unavailing fire on the enemy, who had begun to dive immediately the explosion had taken place. The ruse had failed, and every man on board realised on the instant that what must follow was to be the supreme test. The wounded were removed out of sight with all speed, hoses were turned on to the burning part of the ship, and wireless signals sent out warning all men-of-war to divert traffic for a radius of 30 miles, that nothing should interrupt the last phase of this savage duel a entrance.

To borrow a phrase from sporting parlance, they ensured that the ring was kept, but in so doing they deprived themselves of any hope of succour from the savagery of the enemy, should the ship sink and leave them at the submarine's mercy. In this comfortable reflection, therefore, they settled down and awaited the inevitable torpedo.

It must be remembered that the ship was now openly a man-of-war, flying the White Ensign, with guns unmasked. At 1.20 P.M., two hours and twenty minutes after first sighting the submarine, a torpedo struck the ship abreast the engine-room, hurling blazing wreckage and water in all directions. With far-seeing thoroughness of organisation this moment had been anticipated sooner or later for months past. Accordingly, at the order of "Abandon ship," the men previously detailed launched the remaining boat and a raft, and paddled clear of the doomed vessel. The Captain and crews of two guns and both torpedo tubes, the Navigator, Assistant Paymaster, and Quartermaster remained on board. For the ensuing eighty minutes, while the fire in the poop continued to blaze furiously, and the ammunition in the vicinity detonated like a succession of gigantic Chinese crackers, the periscope circled suspiciously round the ship and boats. At 2.30 the submarine rose to the surface in a position on which none of the guns on board would bear, and began once more shelling the ship and boats with vindictive fury.

For twenty minutes the remnant on board endured this ordeal, lying face downwards and motionless on the splintered planking. It is recorded that during the hottest of the fire one of the foremost gun's crew requested, in a hoarse whisper, to be allowed to take his boots off. The officer in his vicinity inquired the reason for this strange request, to which the man replied that he didn't think he had much longer to live, and, on the whole, thought he'd prefer not to die with his boots on. He subsequently explained that he came of a respectable family.

By means of the voice-pipe connecting him with the guns' control, the Captain cheered and encouraged his men through that long agony. Small wonder they loved an officer who exhorted them in such a pass to "keep merry and bright"; who quoted Bairnsfather to the boyish officer in the control when shells were bursting all about his head ("If you know of a better 'ole, go to it!"); who, when the wounded Navigator, blinded with blood at the opposite end of the bridge, called that he was done, replied: "You're all right! Hang on, 'cos we've got him cold!" and found time to steady the guns' crews with, "Remember the V.C. The King has given the ship, lads."

At 2.50 P.M. the submarine abruptly ceased shelling and submerged. Then, with only a periscope showing, he steamed once more past the ship. As he came abeam under-water, the British Captain played one of his few remaining trump cards, and discharged a torpedo; it missed by inches, and passed unnoticed. Going very slowly, the enemy then crossed the bow and came down the starboard side. One last desperate chance remained, and the second torpedo was fired. In an agony of suspense they watched the trail of bubbles flicker towards the periscope, held their breath for the explosion, and saw the tell-tale wake pass a foot astern of the periscope. They had shot their bolt, and the game was up. A wireless signal was immediately sent out for urgent assistance, as the wary enemy had sighted the last torpedo and promptly dived. The ship was sinking fast, and to wait for another torpedo or further shelling would have meant the useless sacrifice of life. A United States destroyer, an armed yacht, and two British destroyers that had been hovering below the horizon, rushed up at full speed and took charge of the wounded. The ship sank thirty-four hours later, with her colours flying, after strenuous endeavours had been made to save her.

Despite the almost incredible gruelling the crew had undergone, all survived the action. The officer in charge of the after-gun received the Victoria Cross, and one of the gun's crew was selected by ballot for a similar honour. The remainder, including the hand told off for the depth-charges, who has since succumbed to his wounds, were awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal.

Much of the tale remains untold, but it is best brought to an all too brief conclusion in the words of the official report written by the officer, who, as his head and shoulders appeared above the bridge screen at the conclusion of the action, brought forth the following ecstatic shout from one of the "panic party": "Blimey! there's the Skipper still alive! Gawd, wouldn't them perishin' 'Uns give ninepence an inch for 'im!" This officer's report concludes as follows:

It is hardly necessary for me again to refer to the behaviour of my crew--the tactics I carried out were only possible through the utmost confidence I had in my ship and my crew. I would especially bring to your notice the extreme bravery of Lieutenant Bonner, R.N.R., the officer in charge, and the 4-in. gun's crew. Lieutenant Bonner, having been blown out of his control by the first explosion, crawled into the gun hatch with the crew. They there remained at their posts with a fire raging in the poop below and the deck getting red hot. One man tore up his shirt to give pieces to the gun's crew to stop the fumes getting into their throats, others lifted the boxes of cordite off the deck to keep them from exploding, and all the time they knew they must be blown up, as the secondary supply and magazine were immediately below. They told me afterwards that communication with the bridge was cut off, and although they would be blown up, they also knew they would spoil the show if they moved, so they remained until actually blown up with their gun.

Then, when, as wounded men, they were ordered to remain quiet in various places during the second action, they had to lie there unattended and bleeding, with explosions continually going on aboard and splinters from the enemy's shell-fire penetrating their quarters. Lieutenant Bonner, himself wounded, did what he could for two who were with him in the wardroom. When I visited them after the action they thought little of their wounds, but only expressed their disgust that the enemy had not been sunk. Surely such bravery is hard to equal. The strain for the men who remained on board after the ship had been torpedoed, poop set on fire, cordite and shells exploding, and then the enemy shell-fire can easily be imagined. I much regret that two officers and seven men were wounded, and am very grateful to U.S.S. _Noma_ for taking charge of the two most dangerous cases. I--we--deeply regret the loss of one of H.M. ships, and still more the escape of the enemy. We did our best, not only to destroy the enemy and save the ship, but also to show ourselves worthy of the Victoria Cross the King recently bestowed on the ship.

I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant,

(Signed) GORDON CAMPBELL,
Captain, R.N.

III

"NOT IN THE PRESENCE OF THE ENEMY"

(1918)

1

THE GLEANER

The motor-launch chugged to the limit of her beat and wheeled with her bows to a rusty sunset. The wind had been freshening steadily since noon and the steep grey seas were edged with spray, streaked like the flanks of an over-spurred horse. The motor-launch, from a monotonous corkscrew roll, changed to a jerky see-saw that enveloped her in a bitterly cold cascade at every downward plunge.

The R.N.V.R. Lieutenant in command leaned with one broad shoulder against the side of the wheel-shelter, his legs braced far apart and his oilskin flapping wetly against his leather sea-boots. As each successive welter of spray drove past his head he raised a pair of glasses and searched the horizon to the westward where the sombre November sunset was fast fading.

Somewhere below that horizon the homeward-bound convoy was approaching, and his orders were to patrol a given length of the swept channel up the coast on the look-out for floating mines that might have drifted by chance currents from distant mine-fields. Twice since dawn the sweepers had passed over that water and reported the fair-way clear; but with a dozen shiploads of wheat to pass up it in the morning, no one was taking any chances. "Patrol till dark; floating mines to be sunk by gun or rifle fire," said his orders. The R.N.V.R. Lieutenant had been reckoned a good shot with a rifle in the days when he was an Admiralty clerk, and spent his Saturday afternoons on a rifle range at Wormwood Scrubs; he glanced from the bucking deck of his command to the rifle hanging in slings over the Coxswain's head, and smiled rather doubtfully to himself. As if in challenge to that smile, the Signalman on the other side of the Coxswain suddenly extended his telescope and arm in a straight line to seaward.

"Mine awash, sir," he shouted. "Two points on the port bow." The Coxswain raised his eye from the binnacle and moved the wheel through half a turn.

The Lieutenant stared through his glasses. "Umph," he said. The crew of the muffled six-pounder in the bows emerged from the fore hatchway and began to cast off the clips securing the lid of the ammunition box.

In silence they stared at the dull green globular object that bobbed past them in the trough of a sea, the soft lead horns projecting ominously as the waves washed over the rounded surface.

"One of ours," said the Lieutenant, with a swift expert glance. He stepped inboard a pace and studied a chart. "Hell! It's come a long way--must ha' been Tuesday's gale."

The launch held on her course till she had reached the limit of the safety zone of a bursting mine; stopped, and brought the gun to the ready. The gun-layer adjusted his sight, and the tiny gun platform rolled in sickening lurches.

"She may steady for a moment," said the Lieutenant, without conviction. "Choose your time." The gunlayer chose it.

"Bang! A puff of smoke dissolved about the muzzle and the shell sent up a column of foam a yard beyond the preposterous target.

"Try again," said the Lieutenant, and unslung the rifle. "Fire on the downward roll."

The gunlayer fired on the downward and then on the upward roll, and each time the shell went sobbing away into the Channel haze, and the dark, smooth object still bobbed in the fast-fading light amid the waves. The Lieutenant kicked aside his seventeenth empty brass cylinder and snapped the rifle bolt angrily. "There's the smoke of the convoy," he shouted to his second in command, who was firing from aft and swearing in a monotonous undertone that sounded like a litany. "It's right in their track." For the ensuing half-hour they kept up the fruitless fusillade until dusk blotted out the target.

The R.N.V.R. Lieutenant rang down for half-speed. "Secure the gun," he said, curtly, and to the Coxswain: "Close the blighter; we've got to make a rope's end fast and tow it inshore out of the fairway." The Coxswain gave his Commanding Officer a searching, incredulous glance, as if he doubted his sanity, and spun the wheel round, but the Lieutenant was lurching aft on his way to the cabin hatch. He paused en route and thrust a head and shoulders into the engine-room. "Bring a can of lubricating oil aft an' a handful of waste," he shouted to the unseen occupant, and dived into his cabin.

Under direction of the First Lieutenant, a grass line was uncoiled and one end made fast to a cleat; there was no time to be lost, for the dusk was falling fast and the convoy with its attendant escorts was a bare five miles away. The motor-launch circled round the floating mine, visible only by reason of the intermittent whiteness of the broken water about it. The Sub-Lieutenant stared at it half-fascinated, the coils of the line in his hands. For a moment he felt an angry resentment against the minesweepers; this, assuredly, was their business. Then he remembered that they had garnered their grim harvest and returned to port. The motor-launch was only a gleaner.

"Now then!" He turned to see his Captain at his elbow, stark naked as the moment he was born, glistening with oil like a wrestler of old. "Give us the rope's end. Drop down to leeward when I shout--an' stand by with a hot grog."

The speaker knotted the rope loosely over one muscular shoulder and measured the distance to the mine with a dispassionate eye. "If I bungle it and foul one of the horns," he said, "it'll blow the boat to smithereens. You'd better stand by with life-belts for yourselves."

"What about you?" asked the Sub. His Captain gave a little grim laugh. "If that egg breaks, there won't be much of me to put a belt round," and without further ado he slid over the stern into the water.

The crew of the launch watched the receding head and shoulders as their Commanding Officer was carried to leeward on the crest of a wave, and the Sub-Lieutenant, paying out loose coils of rope into the dark water, murmured: "That's a man for you! They had a glimpse of white gleaming body, as the swimmer circled cautiously round the floating mine and the waves lifted or dropped him into their hollows. Then for a moment he vanished and the watching group aft held their breath.

"If he grabs for the ring bolt and catches hold of a horn----" said the Coxswain, and left the sentence unfinished. The seconds passed. Then out of the darkness came a thin hail. The Coxswain jumped to the wheel; the second in command flung the slack line over the stern, and the launch dropped down to leeward.

The numb, exhausted figure hauled over the side a minute later, to be wrapped in blankets and massaged back to speech, resumed his clothes and clumped forward to the wheel-house as the launch turned inshore with the mine in tow.

He stared into the darkness astern as the line tautened. "God knows if there are any more farther up the coast... But our beat's clear. Full speed, Coxswain!"

2

THE MILLIONTH CHANCE

Three hundred feet above mother earth sat an able seaman of the Royal Navy, reflecting on the strangeness of his profession. For the first eighteen months of the War he had been a loading number of one of a Battleship's six-inch guns; as such he spent most of his waking hours punching a dummy projectile into the breech of a "loader," or, when not at meals or asleep, following critically the fortunes of cinema artistes as portrayed on the Grand Fleet films. There came a day after that when the vagaries of fortune transplanted him to a Dover Monitor, where he grew accustomed to the roar of fifteen-inch shells from the Belgian coast batteries passing overhead, or pitching short of his floating home in a thunderous upheaval of white water. Finally he returned to his depot suffering from gun-deafness, to find himself in due course one of a working party attached to a high-power Naval Wireless Station, and still a little hard of hearing.

No one had consulted him as to his personal inclinations in the matter of these changes; indeed, he never asked himself if it was merely blind chance that ruled his comings and goings, or Fate, far-seeing, omniscient, working to an appointed end. Destiny, as he knew it, always appeared in the guise of a ship's corporal with a Muster List and a stump of pencil. He paid his debts, tucked his "papers" into the lining of his cap, shouldered his bag and hammock, and passed without concern to such future as awaited him.

Whatever the effect of heavy gunfire on his hearing, his nervous system remained unimpaired; so much so that, as he sat swaying in a "boatswain's stool," three-quarters of the way up one of the four hundred and thirty feet wireless masts, slapping creosote on to the wooden lattice work with a brush, he hummed a little tune to himself:

"Laugh while you may,
There's still to-day--
You may be dead ter-morrer!"

He crooned contentedly, and desisted from his labours to survey, like Moses of old, the landscape o'er.

Below him, seen through a thin veil of shifting mist, stretched smooth grey downs and a network of roads. Directly beneath, tiny figures moved among the buildings of the wireless station; on the slope of a far hillside rows of conical tents showed white in a passing gleam of sunshine. Something moving along one of the roads held his interest for a moment and the song came to an end; a field-gun battery going out to exercise; horses the size of mice. He wondered what it must be like to be an airman and pepper an enemy battery with a machine-gun. Wouldn't they scatter! Horses all mixed up with the traces, plunging. Pap! pap! pap! would go the machine-gun with the goggled face behind it, laughing triumphant... Fine, it 'ud be.

He bent his head back and stared up into the low-lying clouds that seemed to hover just overhead. Was it because he had been thinking of aeroplanes, or did he really hear the hum of an engine coming down out of the mist? The slender lattice-work above him rose towering for another hundred feet, taking the eye criss-cross along its diminishing perspective until it made you giddy. The sailor knotted his brows and cursed his deafness as he strained to listen. Surely it was an aeroplane. He could feel the vibration of its engine rather than hear it. Or was it the wind droning in the taut wire stays that spread earthward on every side.

Then, swift as a falling stone, flashing dark through the mist, he saw the machine, apparently coming straight for him.

"Look out!" he shouted, and as he spoke the whirring thing crashed fairly into the mast fifty feet above him with a splintering concussion that shook the framework like a whip. The bluejacket ducked his head as a shower of fragments descended, and sat waiting for the thing to fall. Nothing happened. The last piece of shattered propeller dropped clattering down the lattice for a little distance, rebounded and vanished into space. Only the humming of the wind broke a silence that had somehow become dreadful; dreading he knew not what, the man looked up.

There was the plane, with her nose jammed securely between the bars of the crossed lattice, embedded as far as the wings. The fuselage stuck out into the air at right angles to the mast like a dragonfly that had flown blindly against a sticky window... The sight was extraordinary.

The A.B. craned his head downwards. The small figures on the earth were running to and fro like ants. But where was the pilot? He peered up at the motionless wreck and shouted. No reply came. Odd! He'd better go and see about the pilot, who evidently hadn't seen the mast in the fog, and, by the millionth chance, hit it.

Taking with him the rope that secured the boatswain's-stool he commenced to climb. P'raps the bloke was stunned--dead, more likely. Anyhow, he couldn't leave him there in his seat with the likelihood of the machine breaking off from its nose and falling to the earth any moment. Just as well he'd been there at the moment when it happened; that was chance, too, in a way... Rum turn, altogether.

Foot by foot, from cross-bar to girder and girder to cross-bar he climbed, and finally reached the point of impact. The lattice was smashed to matchwood here, and the mast swayed dizzily above the damaged place. Another pull and a heave enabled the rescuer to look down on the unconscious figure who had been the puppet of so incredible a whim of fate. He lay face upwards across one of the wings where he had been flung by the force of the collision. His arms were outstretched, and both legs, from his knees down, hung over the edge of the wing into three hundred and fifty feet of space. The machine had but to sag a couple of feet, or the unconscious figure stir ever so little....

The able seaman took a deep breath. Far below him--perhaps half an hour's climb--men with ropes were toiling upwards to the rescue. Overhead the damaged mast shivered and creaked in the wind; a yard away on the curved surface of the wing lay the pilot, spread-eagled and motionless. "_That_ ain't no place for you!" said the bluejacket. He knotted the rope round his body, made the other end fast to the mast, and gingerly tested the frail platform. Would it stand the weight of both?

Inch by inch he crawled out along the wing, stretched forth a hand, and grabbed the pilot's gauntleted wrist. Then unfastening the rope from his own body he tied it round the insensible figure, and slowly, breathlessly, with many a pause and muttered oath at the tumultuous thumping of his heart--which seemed as if it must bring down the mast--he drew the body off the wing and regained the mast. Sitting in the V-shaped angle of the cross-girders he lashed the boy's shoulders securely to the nearest upright, and with the limp legs across his lap, produced and with difficulty lit the stump of a clay pipe. His hand shook and the perspiration trickled cold behind his ears; but presently his lips parted, and in a not too certain voice he began again his interrupted song:

"Laugh while you may,
There's still to-day--
You may be dead ter-morrer!"

3

CHINKS

"The Hohangho," read the First Lieutenant, turning the pages of a three-day-old paper, "has shifted its course. It is estimated that upwards of three-quarters of a million souls perished in the inundation of villages." He puffed at his pipe and eyed the inmates of the Destroyer's Wardroom with solemnity. "They give it a four-line paragraph.... Three-quarters of a million----"

"Shortage of paper," said the Lieutenant in Command. "'Sides, they were only Chinks. What's a million Chinese more or less? Don't suppose anybody worried about it. When I was on the China Station----"

"But," interrupted the First Lieutenant, "when you come to think of it, that's about half the total British casualties so far in the War. Wiped out--phut! In one act! Men, women, and children!

"You don't think of 'em quite like that," replied the Captain of the Destroyer, stirring his cup of coffee. He braced his back against a stanchion to steady himself to the roll of the ship. "There are four hundred millions of the blighters, remember. They all look alike; they've no religion, no ambition, no aim in life except to scratch together enough for the next meal----"

A Signalman came tumbling down the ladder, water streaming from his oilskins.

"Please, sir, Officer of the Watch says there's a glare ahead looks like a ship a-fire. Shall he increase speed?"

The Captain, who had descended for a cup of coffee, and still wore his sea-boots and duffle coat, snatched up his cap and was on the bridge with his glasses to his eyes in fewer seconds than it takes to write these lines.

The Destroyer was slashing her way past a head sea and the sound of the wind and waves made speech difficult. The Gunner was on watch, peering ahead into the darkness through binoculars.

"Oil ship, sir, by the looks of it," he shouted.

The Captain studied the far-off glare in silence for a moment, and gave an order to the telegraph-man.

"Yes," he said presently. "Oil ship. Must have been torpedoed. She's leaving a trail of blazing oil on the water astern of her." For half an hour they watched the conflagration grow brighter as the Destroyer rapidly overhauled the burning derelict. Finally the Gunner ranged alongside his Commanding Officer. "She's making way through the water, sir--yawing too. Best give her a wide berth."

The Lieutenant nodded. "Keep to windward. There can't be anybody below. I expect the heat of the fire is keeping the steam pressure up.... My ghost! What a blaze!"

The ship was now plainly discernible, blazing furiously from forecastle to poop. The wind whipped pennons of flame hundreds of feet to leeward, and from started rivets and gaping seams streams of liquid fire poured blazing into the sea. The ship was blundering along at a good seven knots, swerving blindly from side to side like a wounded bull, and leaving on the troubled surface of the water a fiery, serpentine trail of burning oil. The hissing crackle of the flames and roar of the wind, the constant eruption of vast columns of sparks that belched hundreds of feet into the air and floated to leeward, made the doomed ship a terrifying and almost demoniac spectacle.

"Can't be a soul alive on board," said the First Lieutenant. "Just as well--ugly customer to tackle."

They ranged abeam, giving the blazing derelict a wide berth, and even at that distance felt their cheeks scorch. Men lined the Destroyer's lee rail, watching in shocked silence. To the seaman the fairest of all sights is a ship upon the sea; a ship wrecked upon a lee shore or even plunging beneath the surface with racing propellers is a sad, though not unnatural sight, prompting the heart of every sailor to the rescue, whatever the risk. But a ship on fire, even though abandoned, is repellent, horrible beyond the power of description.

The Gunner suddenly emitted an oath and extended an arm and pointing forefinger:

"Look, sir! Fore-peak! There's some men there!"

The Captain stared through his binoculars.

"Yes," he said calmly; "you're right. They'll be grilled alive if her head falls away from the wind. Starboard ten, Quartermaster."

Obedient to her helm, the Destroyer closed that blinding hell-glare, and presently to the naked eye a score of human figures were visible, huddled into the eyes of the ship. The Lieutenant on the Destroyer's bridge picked up a megaphone and bawled through it.

"Why don't they jump, the damned fools?" he demanded angrily. "They must have seen us. They know we'll pick them up." The Destroyer came closer, plunging and rolling in the seaway. The figures on the bridge shielded their faces from the scorching heat as every eye watched the hungry flames licking their way forward along the oiler's forecastle. Her foremast fell with a crash, sending up a great column of fire into the outraged sky. By its glare the faces of the huddled figures were plainly visible: beardless, with high cheek-bones, distorted with terror like the masks of trapped animals.

"God!" ejaculated the First Lieutenant. "Chinks! They're all Chinese! No wonder they wouldn't jump! Can't swim!"