Chapter V: The Intervening Wire

Captain Kettle tapped Dr. Mary Brown sharply on the shoulder, and that lady woke up with a start and shivered. She found the world disgustingly cold, and wet, and dark. But she was briskly alive to all possibilities.

She leant towards Captain Kettle's ear and hissed: "What is it?"

The little sailor shrank decorously away. "Here, Miss, take my glasses, and you can see for yourself."

She did so, and peered out diligently into the wet autumn night.

Presently: "I can't see anything," she grumbled, "and the rain's got down the collar of my oily, and has soaked through the elbows. I know there are waves, by the sound they make on the shingle, but I can't see them. Was there ever a blacker or colder night? And I wish you wouldn't call me Miss."

"No, Miss--I mean Doctor. But if you look long enough till you get used to the dark, you'll see a submarine's periscope. I can pick it up now with the naked eye. It looks like a drain-pipe stuck up on end and going dead slow, and there's a wake of lighter water behind it. By James, Miss, look! It's stopped now, and is growing longer. Mr. Submarine's coming to the surface."

A conning-tower rose out of the night sea, and presently men sprouted from the top of it. The decks of the submarine did not show, and the little waves splashed diligently against the foot of the superstructure.

"Come up to get his bearings," commented Captain Kettle. "I wonder what water he has there; must be pretty shoal. Another fifty fathoms on the old course and he'd have piled her up hard and fast on the floor of Wales. Now, Miss--Doctor, I mean--you'll see him go astern again till he's reached deep water."

The girl clutched Kettle's arm and shook it. "You still won't believe me, and I still stick to it. She's come in here for petrol, as she did the time I told you about before. There, look! She's not backing out to sea again as you said she would. She's moving nearer."

"By James, Miss, you're right! She's creeping north along the coast. Is this the exact spot where you saw her before?"

"I'm afraid I couldn't tell to half a mile or so, Captain. It was dark at the time."

Kettle groaned, but forbore to say: "How like a woman!" Instead he took back the glasses and kept them steadily fixed on the enemy below.

"She'll be out of sight if you don't take care. Let's run along after her."

"They'd spot us on the cliff-head here against the sky in less than two ticks. Lie down again, Miss, or I'll have to pull you. We may be on the edge of a big thing here, and you're going the way to spoil it. Lie down, Miss, I say. I'm in command here, and you've asked me to treat you as a man, and, by James, I'll do it if you don't sit tight, much as I should regret it."

"Oh, very well," said Dr. Brown meekly.

"I've got to own up, Miss, that the Dutchmen at sea since this war began aren't the fools they used to be. They've had sense booted into them during the last thirty years, and it's stuck, and now they're using it. There, you see, Miss, she hasn't gone far. That noise meant reversed propellers. They'd got her on to some cross-bearings on the shore, and now they're stopping her, I should judge, over some exact spot. You stay here, Miss. I must get some cross-bearings, too, on where she is now."

Dr. Mary Brown's voice showed a tendency to rise above the tone of her former cautious whisper. "I'll come too. I'm half frozen to death, crouching here. And besides, the--the beastly Germans may land--and--and I should hate to be left alone."

"Take my overcoat and wrap yourself in that," said Kettle patiently, "and stay here. You can't crawl about on this cliff-top without being seen. I can. You needn't be scared of the Dutchmen's landing, as they won't have a boat. And you needn't be afraid of my not finding my way back to you."

"Not now you've left your coat," said Dr. Brown spitefully. "I suppose you're sure to return for that?"

"Certainly, Miss," said the sailor with simple truth. "You see, it's my best one. If I'd only known we were in for this rough and tumble, I'd have brought the other. I hate spoiling clothes. Good-bye for the present, and don't move, so that I'll know where to find you again."

Captain Kettle moved from the lady's side, and with the craft of an old stalker was promptly swallowed up by the darkness.

Now with regret it must be recorded that Dr. Mary Brown was a disappointed young woman. Brown, the father, was an easy-going man, and well-off withal. He lived in Norfolk and bred prize cocker spaniels, and his hope was that Mary would stay at home till in due time she married one or other of some dozen eligible neighbours, and settle down near him. Mamma Brown, who was stout and placid, and famed throughout three counties for her begonias, coincided with these views exactly. But Mary, who once went to a lecture on Wasted Lives, stated she was not going to waste hers, and decided that her use lay in Medicine--via Girton.

She qualified in this intricate science, and was somewhat disillusioned in the process. Thereafter she tried in a desultory way for various appointments. Later, when these failed, she set up her plate in Wych Street on the strength of a grudging paternal allowance, and was still hoping for patients when the war broke out.

Instantly she conceived the notion of Doctor Mary Brown's Private Hospital for British Soldiers in France, and telegraphed for ample supplies. But Brown the father didn't approve of women doctors "messing about even women" in peace time, and he thoroughly disapproved of their "adding another horror for the soldiers maimed in war. If the girl had turned vet. (like some of them turn gardeners), and could doctor cockers, she might be some use," said Brown the father. "As it is, she's getting a bit of a dam' nuisance."

"'Zactly, m'dear," said Mrs. Brown. "Just hold me this skein of wool, will yaw?"

So when a certain baroness (who shall otherwise be nameless in this chronicle), finding that the game of making herself a nuisance politically was put a stop to for the time being, thought she would look nice in a Red Cross kit, Dr. Brown was able to oblige her by coming into the expedition as surgeon.

The League-o'-Women's Hospital, after outstaying its welcome in the London picture papers, moved across to France, where it was known to the vulgar as the All-Skirt Warriors, and was avoided by those in authority. It wore the choicest thing in top-boots and a bushranger hat, and as long as it was peaceful and did nothing it was allowed to stay. When it began to flirt with the wounded subaltern in quantity, it was sent off home one-time, with a flea in its ear. And Dr. Brown, refusing shelter under the friendly ancestral roof, and feeling mightily ashamed of herself for the company she had fallen into, fled to the wilds of Wales to hide her scalding blushes. It was during one moonlit night of penitence that she saw a submarine sneak in and suck up supplies from some unseen store beneath the seas.

In the first throb of interest she was minded to go with her news direct to the Admiralty. But with breakfast and reflection she changed her mind. She remembered the brutal treatment lately meted out to her by the Admiralty's sister institution, the War Office, and was minded to take the credit of whatever praise befell personally, and to sail for the moment under the somewhat forgotten banner of the suffragettes. As a point of fact, she cared not one straw for the creed of the suffragettes, but in war--which this was going to be--one needs a flag. Even pirates fly a skull and marrowbones, argent on sable.

As she professed no knowledge of seacraft, an executive was a necessity, and at once a name leapt to her memory. Years ago she had met Sir Owen Kettle for an hour on shipboard, and had never forgotten him. Here was her man, if only she could get him. She delved his address in Wharfedale from Who's Who, and took train for Grassington within the hour.

I pass over a somewhat thorny interview with Lady Kettle, who "though a business lady herself" regarded "female doctors as indelicate," and get on to the point where Captain Kettle, somewhat by stealth, joined her at a six-house village on the Welsh seaboard. Lady Kettle disliked her husband having truck or dealing with any women whatever outside his own household, and made no bones about saying so, and the little mariner came armed to the fray with strict admonitions on these lines, as well as his own natural bashfulness.

The tale, when it had been told him at first had been sufficiently sensational, but it had grown thinner under discreet cross-examination. The lady was doubtful about locality, and she did not know if the submarine was British or German. No, she didn't think it could have been a fishing-boat she had seen that night; she was morally certain it must have been a submarine, though she could not describe it in any way, and she could give no details of how the vessel was getting the petrol inboard, or where it was coming from. Only she was convinced that was what the boat was there for. "You must trust a woman's intuition," said Dr. Mary Brown. But Captain Kettle didn't. He was always a man without imagination.

"If they've a lot of petrol tins anchored at the bottom of this bay," said Captain Kettle, "it's likely they'll have some sort of a buoy made fast to the end of the mooring."

"Then we could see it from the shore."

"Not necessarily, if the buoy is merely a bit of wood just awash. But we could hunt for it, Miss, in a boat, if you think it worth while."

"Call me Doctor, please. Of course it's worth while. I'll hoist my suffragette flag on that submarine before many days are over, when you catch it for me, Captain. And in the meanwhile I have a boat, a motor-boat, round at the fishing harbour. We can bring her here and leave her in that cove of rocks at the foot of the cliff there, when we're not using her."

This they did, and during three days quartered the sea without success, and Captain Kettle grew even more sceptical. But he stuck manfully to the night watching, which Dr. Brown soon found wearying. And then, to his surprise, came fulfilment, as has been recorded above.

Dr. Mary Brown has admitted that she had half a mind to follow Captain Kettle when he left her to stalk the submarine, but was deterred by the shrewd notion that he would shake her if she came up to him. She was sure he would shake her politely, but was confident he would do it efficiently. So being a young woman with a full sense of her own dignity, she decided to do as she was told for the time being.

But it was tedious work waiting. The Germans, as she could see through the glasses now that she had got accustomed to them, were full of activity. The submarine was still awash, and wavelets splashed in mimic surf at the foot of her conning-tower. There was little to attract the eye in that dark night unless one was looking for it specially. The Germans might be replenishing their petrol store, but Dr. Brown could not swear to it. In fact, if plain evidence was needed, she could swear to little, and she realized this and felt inclined (in a purely feminine way, of course) to swear at much.

And in the meanwhile Captain Kettle had disappeared into the blackness of the night, and might, for all she knew, have thrown up the whole affair in disgust and returned to his farmhouse headquarters and bed.

Then, like a trick in a theatre, clouds slid away from the moon, and a green-grey submarine and her people were shown dished up brilliantly on a glittering metallic sea. But as the scene was lit, a man crawled out from the broken water on her submerged after-deck, whipped a revolver from some pocket in his sodden clothes, and sent three shots in brisk succession. Two men on the conning-tower fell over into the sea. The third staggered, and in his turn produced a weapon. But his fire was returned in style, and his knees collapsed under him.

The man on the submerged deck limped to the base of the conning-tower, climbed it, and emptied the remaining two shots from his revolver down the open hatch. Enough light came up this hatch to illumine Captain Kettle's face, and Dr. Brown shivered when for the first time she saw it in fighting trim. At the same time, she was thrilled with the exultation the female always feels for the fighting male, and, inconsistently enough, felt a sudden distaste for that plump and matronly person, Lady Kettle. If only that unnecessary woman were out of the way, she, Mary Brown--"Pish!" said Dr. Brown, and frowned angrily.

Shots came from below, and the invader's own pistol was empty. He stripped two from the fallen Germans, and blazed away with these. He was deliciously resourceful. Then he clapped down the lid of the hatch, sticking an iron bar in it so that it should not shut completely, and then with a length of wire rope lashed it firmly in place. With this much to the good, he proceeded in leisurely fashion to wring the surplus water from his clothes and to knead his collar into reputable shape.

The submarine was tethered by nothing stouter than an armoured rubber hose to something unseen in the black waters off her starboard quarter. She had no anchor down, nor so much as a line to the oil source, whatever it was. She was kept in position by her engines only, and was ready for an instant start at the smallest scare. The oil, by the way, was a heavy, tar-like stuff, and by no means the petrol which Dr. Mary Brown had diagnosed; and how it was stored at the bottom of the sea Captain Kettle did not know, and, for the moment, did not care.

His main business, for the time being, was to capture that German submarine intact. He felt at the moment he would like to have on his tombstone: "Inventor of the Wharfedale Particular Methodists. Also first to capture a German submarine."

Now, the Germans below-decks on their part by no means went to sleep. Dive they could not, by reason of an unshut hatch, but motor away for the open sea they could and did. The armoured hose pulled thin and burst with the first of the strain, and Captain Kettle, to his disgust and annoyance, was sprayed from head to foot with stinking fuel oil. But he saw then how the oil was stored beneath the waters of that Welsh bay.

Thereafter, he was swirled rapidly away towards the open sea. He tried at first to control things somewhat with the conning-tower steering-wheel, and did, indeed, contrive to make the submarine take an alarming sheer towards the rocks. But they straightened her out smartly enough with the propellers, and then took matters out of his hands by disconnecting the upper deck wheel and steering her themselves from below. So the sailor blinded them by taking the coat of one of the fallen Germans and wrapping it round the head of the periscope and stopping it there with a piece of spunyarn, and then whilst casting around him for further resources of annoyance, came across a cigar-case and a box of lights on the floor of the conning-tower.

"Belonged to that first officer I shot," he mused. "Well, I hope he knew more about choosing tobacco than he did about looking after his ship. By James, I've got her like a sprit-sail-yarded shark. She can do nothing but bustle along on the top of the water like a blinded fool. Only trouble is, she'll blunder into somebody's sight if only she goes on long enough in this flurry, and I shall have to take help, as likely as not from some Navy man, instead of doing the job myself. By James, I should hate that. I must think a way out of this, and in the meanwhile I'll give them wet feet to keep them busy."

There was a roll of canvas, for sea-going bulwarks, lashed down at one corner of the conning-tower's top, and from this Kettle contrived a very simple and efficient water scoop, leading from the bitts on the submerged foredeck, and delivering its contents through the gap which the iron bar caused in the fit of the conning-tower hatch. The interior of the submarine received from it a foaming cataract of sea-water. As a tribute to the scoop's efficiency the speed of the submarine was promptly eased, till her pace was too slow to force the water up from the water level below.

Captain Kettle shook his head doubtfully. "By James," he commented, "these beastly Dutchmen are getting on. They know enough now to get in out of the wet. They aren't the easy proposition they used to be. If I'd time I could write some poetry on that." He chewed hard on his cigar, and stared out thoughtfully through the night.

In the meanwhile Dr. Mary Brown's short supply of patience had completely evaporated. Moreover, her feet and her back were both unpleasantly cold. So she made up her mind to ignore Captain Kettle's explicit instructions, and got up with a haughty air, and with elevated nose marched resolutely down to the cove behind the rocks where her motorboat bobbed to its moorings. Captain Kettle and her--_her_--submarine had disappeared seaward into space without explanation, and she was going to see into the reason why without further delay. She might have a sneaking admiration for Captain Kettle--she might--well, that did not matter. The thing for the moment was to prove to this small man with the red torpedo beard that she was all of a woman, and not to be trifled with or neglected. And for the time being it may be freely owned that she had forgotten all about the suffragette flag, and was sailing under the banner of her own injured dignity. Whip up her submarine--here--from under her very nose, and walk off with it? She'd let him see.

She cranked up her engine, and for a wonder it started readily, and then tucking herself down to the wheel and advancing spark and throttle to the full, she swished hardily out into the darkness.

By luck the little zephyr of wind had dropped, and the sea was glassily smooth. The boat was fast, and Dr. Brown felt the exhilaration of her speed. What was going to be done when she reached the Germans she did not know, but she was firmly determined Captain Kettle should not do it without her. Of her life up to then she felt she had made a mess, but she saw visions of a brilliant future. Those visions embraced Captain Sir Owen Kettle. His position in the limelight should be little inferior to her own. But he would have to alter some of his ways. He must be taught that lady doctors were the equals of any male practitioners, and the superiors of most. And, above all things, he must give up his detestable habit of praising patent medicines.

Captain Kettle, in a German officer's dry cap and overcoat, received her without enthusiasm. "Miss," said he, "I wish to James you were safely at home and in bed. This iron box is packed with Germans, and they're swine. There ought to be a law passed that no lady should go within a hundred fathoms of any German. But now you are here I'll not deny that your boat may have its use."

"Call me Doctor, please, not Miss. What is it you want? Our flag?"

Captain Kettle restrained his remarks. "Here," he said, "come alongside, please, and I'll make you fast. You can step aboard here and tell the Germans through this slit in the hatch that you want a vote, and I'll get busy on something that matters. Starboard your helm please, Miss."

Doctor Brown stamped, but did as she was told. Presently the motor-boat, with stopped engines, rode to a tow-line alongside the conning-tower, with the sea-water slicing up between them. Captain Kettle stepped across to the smaller craft, and busied himself inside her engine hatch. He emerged presently with a pair of wires.

"Now, Miss," said he in a whisper, "our Dutchman can't see through his periscope, and he's steering by compass. He's got a sort of pole-compass in the roof of his conning-tower, and he's getting his bearings now by looking up at it from underneath. These wires come from your sparking coil, and I'm going to take a turn with them round his binnacle. They'll make the compass cant either to the Eastward or the West--we shall have to find out by experiment which wire has to go on to which terminal, and I shall have to bring the bight towards the compass very gradually. We must go softly. These Dutchmen are not to be sneezed at nowadays; they're getting to know quite a thing or two of the white man's savvy; and if they guess we're tampering with their compass, they'll as likely as not do the bang opposite to what I want. So quietly does it."

"Ye--es," said the lady.

"Of course, Miss, as you say you're a doctor, you'll understand all about it, and will be quite competent to manage the trembler end."

Dr. Brown squeezed the little mariner's arm ecstatically. She had not the vaguest notion of what Captain Kettle was talking about, but she felt that now at last they understood one another, and said so in a few well-chosen words. The sailor very nervously pulled his arm away, and climbed back to the submarine as fast as his wooden leg would let him, and thereafter found his orders attended to, frequently with correctness, and always with enthusiasm.

The process of deflecting the German's compass by an induced current was a delicate one, and officially Captain Kettle was no electrician. But a man who has earned his living as a master mariner in the British mercantile marine through any reasonable number of years is always competent to turn his hand to anything, from abdominal surgery to tea-planting. The real niceness of the operation lay in the fact that the little sailor had to carry in his head an invisible course over an invisible sea, and jockey the German's compass so that she should steer to it neither more nor less.

As luck would have it, the moon had slid back again behind coy clouds; the bold headlands of Wales had dissolved out into starless dark; and the ordinary man, stuck out there in that lonely sea with only a compass known to be lying, would have felt as hopeless as a blind puppy on a prairie. Captain Kettle, however, held on to his work with a brazen confidence. He probably had some glimmer of his bearings not to be guessed at by the lay mind, and if he had not, he showed no tremor; and, anyway, Dr. Brown, who "found the compass detestable even when it was working" (as she confesses in her Memoirs) had the fullest confidence in his skill and knowledge. She wanted to board the submarine; she even demanded this as a right, and the shy sailor, with the dread of companionable fingers on his shoulder, was hard put to it to keep her at a safe distance in the motor-boat.

Just as the chill of dawn was gripping them, they came in sight of the trawler.

To be precise they nearly ran her down, but by dint of some manipulation of wires that verged on the miraculous, Captain Kettle gave a jolt to the compass (and incidentally to the nerves of the German quartermaster below) and the submarine swerved like an eel and escaped the blow.

Now in the ordinary course of events, that should have been the beginning and end of the episode. German submarines are notoriously unhealthy for British fishing craft, and this one was as unmistakably German as the trawler (by her marks) was indisputably a Grimsbyman. The steam trawler _Ulfrida Crump_ she was by name, and the fishy smell of her caused Captain Kettle emphatically to spit. Her habits, however, were peculiar. She sidled down alongside and began to talk--in German.

Captain Kettle had, as his record shows, the gift of tongues, but it had always been a matter of pride with him never to speak German. His habit was to force Germans with whom he came in contact to speak one of the civilized languages--English for choice. But in this process of strenuous tuition he had picked up a good understanding knowledge of the tongue, and it was of use to him now.

"Miss," he whispered huskily down to Dr. Brown, "lie down in the bottom of that motor-boat, please, and don't shift till I tell you. They think by my cap and coat I'm a blessed Dutchman. There's going to be some fancy shooting in about ten ticks. The _Ulfrida Crump's_ got into bad hands."

"I've--I've got a revolver of my own here."

"Then for the Lord's sake drop it over into the ditch. I'd be as nervous as a canary with a new bath if you started any fancy shooting down there."

The stream of voluble German from the steam trawler's pilot house changed in tone from civility to menace.

"If you don't stop that language, you cross-eyed son of a Dutch thief," shouted the little sailor grimly, "I'll come across to that packet and kick your backbone through your hat."

The German gaped. Then, "_Gott strafe_----" he began, and lugged at something in his pocket.

"You must be a lot quicker on the draw than that, my lad," said Kettle as he shot him, "to have a chance of growing up in this wicked world. The rest of you aboard there, listen. The next man who tries to pull a gun, or to get on to that topside deck, drops too. And by James, let me tell you, you Dutchmen are a jolly sight easier to shoot than Upper Wharfedale rabbits, though less interesting when dead."

A man, with both hands thrust high above his head, stammered a reply: "But, Most Gracious, you do not understand. We are your relief ship. Our own was sunk. We took this, and transferred our supplies. And here we are as good Germans as yourself, though sailing in this condemned trawler."

"What did you do with the English crew? Can they tell tales?"

"Oh, that is all right, Gracious Herr. We set them swimming. You would have laughed to see them in their high boots. We laughed, I tell you. They did not swim for long. All is safe. This is war, and it does not do to leave these things to chance."

"I see. She carried about ten of a crew. I suppose?"

"Thirteen, Gracious Herr."

"It's an unlucky number. Unlucky for them, poor devils, and just as unlucky for you."

"_Herr Gott!_ What----"

"Half a minute. How many of the blighters alongside you understand English?"

"English? What, you are English? Has our U-boat been captured? Say, are you English?"

"As a matter of birth, I am Welsh, though it is an item that is often overlooked by those who know me. But for working purposes you can call me English, and not be far out. There, I told you not to try and shoot, and now you've got it in the department where you stow the sausage, a very dangerous place according to the doctors."

Captain Kettle slipped from his perch, and stood on the plating below, knee-deep in swirling sea-water. A hailstorm of bullets whistled across the top of the conning-tower, and continued to whistle. The Germans had good aim, but little moderation. At intervals Captain Kettle peeped from the shelter of the conning-tower, and took rapid shots. He seldom missed. He had always been deadly with a revolver, and of late years on the Wharfedale farm, practice with a shot gun at rabbits which dodged in and out of the limestone rocks of Craven, had if anything smartened his eye.

A smothered voice came from the motor-boat below. "Are you killed, Captain?"

"As right as the mail, thank you, Miss. I've only one trouble."

"What is it? C--can I do anything?"

"If you could provide me with a rhyme to 'Submarine' I'd be happier. I've just been making up the dinkiest little verse you ever listened to, and it's stuck in the last line."

At this point a muffled risp-rasping noise obtruded itself on Captain Kettle's attention, and he looked up and noted that some one had pushed a hacksaw through the gap in the conning-tower hatch and was vigorously cutting at the wire rope that held it down. The sailor seized the end of the tool and pulled. The owner at the other end pulled too, and he was, if not the stronger, at least as strong a man. But Kettle with a flick broke the brittle blade, and then with a sharp wrench snapped the cast-iron spreader, and--"Uneasy lot these Dutchmen are," he commented. "If I don't look out they'll be giving trouble yet, and I suppose there must be thirty of them still stinking away together inside this tin box. I did design taking them ashore for the Government to pamper, but I'm sure the country would be better if I made good Germans of them here in the wet. As for those blighters on the _Ulfrida Crump_, they've followed their beastly nature and laughed in the wrong place once too often, and they're going to hell fire as soon as it can be managed. Yes, Miss?"

"If you're really in earnest, would 'Britain's Queen' do for your rhyme?"

"Perfectly, Miss, and thank you greatly. We've a King in charge at the moment, but I can work in his lady wife all right. Let me think now.... 'Huns obscene' ... Ah, got that swine with the blue nightcap fairly in the liver wing. That makes five I've bagged on the _Ulfrida Crump_, Miss. Not bad, for an early morning's shoot. There, I thought so. The blighters are sheering off out of pistol range."

"Oh, what are they going to do now?"

"Try and worry out how to communicate with their fellow-sausages in the tin coffin here, Miss, and then try to join forces and eliminate us. I tell you that bit of verse is coming into shape grandly, Miss."

"Please don't frivol, and for goodness' sake call me Doctor. Can't you see that everything's deadly serious? I do believe you're actually enjoying yourself."

The little sailor heaved an immense sigh. "Miss, it's abominable, but I've been in places I've liked. worse. You see, between you and me, up on the farm in Wharfedale there are moments (for a man that's spent a busy life) when it is a bit quiet; though, of course, there is always the chapel on Sunday to look forward to, and my sermon to get up. Lady Kettle," he added rather bitterly, "has had the advantage of occupying our pulpit these last two Sundays, and, if she's increased the congregation of the Wharfedale Particular Methodists, I'll eat my wooden leg. She's a clever woman, a vastly clever woman, Miss, but she's not got the knack of preaching to suit the stomachs of our chapel members, and that's a fact. I wish you could see our chapel, Miss, on a nice, rainy Sunday in autumn----"

"Look, Captain, look! The Germans are trying to press up that lid--thing."

"Then we'll give them some asphyxiating gases," said the little mariner genially, and thrust a revolver muzzle in through the crack in the hatch and fired three rapid shots. "There, those will ricochet grandly inside that tin box, and they can share the proceeds amongst them. Did it ever occur to you, Miss, that it's a terribly sad thing to be born a German? Since I've given up handling them at sea, and taken to the Ministry, I've often sent up a prayer that no more of them should undergo the unpleasantness of being born. Fancy a world clean of Germans! There's a chance for poetry! My Great James!"

"Whatever is it, Captain?"

"Just something I thought of, Miss, though it is a hundred-to-one chance."

The little sailor climbed nimbly back to the top of the conning-tower, and made rapid inspection. At one corner was a small iron box, locked. With a neat blow of his sound foot he kicked open the lid. Inside were six switches--switches to the six torpedo tubes--each with its appropriate brass label.

"It's a hundred pounds to a case of gin they cut the connections when they left the top side here, and, anyway, I'm no torpedo-layer. Let me see now ... that _Ulfrida Crump_ is doing about eight point five ... I'll give her two degrees."

With which decision he made cautious readjustments of his compass-deflecting wire, and set about training the submarine to the angle he sought. Then he threw over the switch to the bow tube.

The incredible happened. The Germans--the methodical, plodding, scientific Germans--had left the connections of the deck control intact. A 20-inch torpedo jumped out of the bow tube with a splutter, and sped away, leaving a vivid wake of soda-water.

The Germans on the _Ulfrida Crump_ saw her, and howled. They tried to change course and stop engines, but had no time to do either effectively. The steel fish hit them on the quarter with a shattering explosion. It carried T.N.T. enough to have blown up a battleship, and so made small bones of a trumpery steam trawler. And apparently the trawler carried a hefty wad of munitions for her friend the submarine. These went off piecemeal as the bits of her sank.

Captain Kettle lit another of the German captain's cigars, and felt that he was once more in the swim of things.

"All right, Miss," he called down to the motorboat, "you may sit up and look round now. There's nothing objectionable afloat. I'm sorry for the fish, that's all. Men that laugh like those men did aren't wholesome. Phew! haven't these fancy new explosives a bad smell to them? Well, there's one comfort, our fine tin yacht here is taking us quickly out into sweet air again. Haven't they whooped up the speed since we buzzed off that cracker?"

"What's their idea? Where do they think they are going?"

"If this compass was acting as Nature and Lord Kelvin intended, she'd be heading for the Wolf Rock, and then round the corner and down Channel for happy Dutchland. Oh, they've picked up navigation all right, these Dutchmen, and no error about that. You don't catch these new swine making an error of thirty minutes in their observations a matter of habit like the old crowd did. But--ahem!--they sleep unconscious of the wire, that goes about their tower higher."

Captain Kettle coughed and blushed, and looked rather coyly for Dr. Mary Brown's comment. That young woman, however, had not the vaguest idea of what he was talking about--be it remembered she "always found compasses detestable." She was horribly shocked at what had occurred. "And you've killed them all!" she lamented.

"I'm sorry there were so few, Miss. If you feel any qualms, try and remember those fishermen who got laughed at because they couldn't swim in top-boots. A lot of those would be married men with wives to support at home, and likely enough a parcel of youngsters. You know what fishermen are in that way, Miss. It doesn't do to let Dutchmen laugh at Britishers. It gives them ideas above their station."

"But you're not going to kill the poor fellows in the submarine? You'll take them prisoners?"

The sailor pulled doubtfully at his red torpedo beard. "A dozen years back I'd have said yes, Miss. But these modern Dutchmen have learnt to shoot, and don't mind doing it. Besides, we haven't such a thing as a pair of irons about your ship."

"You'll have to take their parole."

"I'm afraid that's a French word, Miss, that they don't understand, and it would be a bit too much of a strain to teach them at this time of day."

"Well," said Dr. Brown doggedly, "you will own, Captain, that I thought out the whole of this scheme. What I want, and what you must help me to do, is to see that submarine sail into port under the suffragette flag, and her crew taken ashore under a suffragette guard. This means a great deal to me, Captain."

"Yes, Miss," said Kettle politely, "I see you're set on it."

"And don't you agree with me that what I've mapped out is the proper course? Say honestly, now."

Captain Kettle, in his humble way, set Great Britain first, but he was not a man to put such a ridiculous idea into bald words. Instead, he got rather redder than nature had already made him, and said a little haltingly that they "must see," and, as an afterthought, added that he was sure they would both of them do their little best. And Dr. Brown pitied his hesitating speech, but felt sure he meant what he said. The worst of these merchant service captains was that they had such a pitiful lack of expression, thought Dr. Mary Brown.

The submarine was drawing a foot more water than Kettle had reckoned on, and so grounded before he expected. She was doing her fourteen knots at the time, and the jolt was severe. Captain Kettle was within an ace of being shot overboard, and, as it was, dinged himself rather shrewdly on the conning-tower rail. The motor-boat stubbed violently on her painter, and Dr. Brown received a most indecorous tumble, which the sailor was too polite to notice till she had readjusted herself angrily on to her feet. The vessels lay on a narrow beach of sand at the foot of cliffs.

"Now, Miss," said Kettle, throwing away the sodden stump of his last cigar, "here's the place where you can be really useful. Can you fix up an electric fuse for a bomb?"

"What for?"

"Well, you see, Miss, I've found quite a store of nice little handy bombs in one of this conning-tower's lockers--the sort they blow up surrendered steamers with. It's a regular Swiss Family Robinson's ship this, for handy stores."

"But it was arranged we were to set the crew free, on parole. I ordered you to do that not ten minutes ago. You can't have forgotten."

"Quite so, Miss. But I'm just wanting to get ready a little stand-by in case of accidents. It's just possible these Dutchmen may give their parole easily enough, and then forget all about it when they see there are only two of us."

"Oh, if you doubt them beforehand----"

"Nothing unpleasant meant, Miss, believe me. But I am a family man, and expected home again, and one can't afford to take unnecessary risks. The question is, can you fix up an electric exploder on to one of these bombs? It's out of my line, but I suppose with your college learning it will come as easy to you as boiling a saucepan of tea."

"I know nothing whatever about the subject," said Dr. Mary Brown shortly.

"Well, Miss," said the sailor with a sigh, "I suppose I must worry it out myself. I only hope I don't blow off any fingers in the process. These detonators are nasty things for an ordinary man to play about with."

Thereafter for the next hour he was busied over mysterious devices to this end, only breaking off once to shed his German cap and overcoat, and again to attend to some other enthusiast who had found another hack-saw, and was once more attempting to cut through the wire that secured the conning-tower hatch.

When his labours were complete, Captain Kettle got over the submarine's side and found the outboard ends of the broadside torpedo tubes. The boat had grounded on a falling tide, and he was able to work, standing on the sand, with the water just above his middle. He took it for granted that a live torpedo was ready inside each port, and slung bombs so that an explosion would set these off. He was a man who always liked full effects for his firework displays. Then he completed his wiring, took tests, and went ashore with the balance of the wires to where the motor-boat lay high and dry beside a tidy lump of rock on the beach.

"Now, Miss," said he, "as soon as you have got half a mile away I will get things moving."

Dr. Mary Brown put her chin in the air. "I shall stay here," she announced, "and take the surrender myself."

There was a silence. She turned slowly, and saw beside her a truculent-looking man, who was very different from the little sailor who had blushed so readily and done her bidding with such politeness.

"Get out of this, one-time," he ordered.

Dr. Brown did as she was told.

The sailor waded back to the submarine, climbed on board, climbed to the conning-tower top, and inquired for the officer in command.

"I am Captain Kettle. Who are you?"

A name and rank were given.

"I want your unconditional surrender."

"I give it. I have no alternative."

"You are to come up one by one, unarmed, go ashore, and attempt no retaliation. Do you promise that?"

"Again I have no alternative. I promise."

"In the name of yourself and crew?"

"In the name of all of us. I swear it on my honour."

"Good. Keep that promise in memory. I am casting off the down-haul on this hatch. In two minutes' time you may come out, unarmed, remember, one by one, and go off as instructed. Got all that?"

"Perfectly."

Captain Kettle waded ashore, walked to the motor-boat, uncoupled one of the terminals, switched on the trembler, and stood by with the loose terminal in his hand. "Come along," he hailed. "Come along, the first man."

A bearded officer shot up through the hatch, glared around him, and called below. Then he hailed the landscape generally. "Who do I surrender to?"

Captain Kettle bowed politely.

"You! You are not even Navy? You are alone?"

"Quite."

"Then I take back what I said."

"I felt sure you would," said Captain Kettle. "But I'll blow you and your whole outfit to the place you came from if you don't do exactly as I ordered."

"Pig-face!" yelled the German, and bawled down the hatch. A gush of armed men answered him, and then Captain Kettle connected the loose terminal.

* * * * *

When the sailor came to his senses Dr. Mary Brown had his head on her arm, and was looking down at him with more tenderness than he considered wholesome for a married man.

"I thought the end of the world had come," she told him. "I never dreamt such an explosion could be possible. There is no vestige of anything left. And the cliff has fallen down on the top of where it was."

"I told you, Miss," said Kettle rather faintly, "I was a poor hand at arranging these sort of things."

"You are wounded, too. Let me examine you."

Captain Kettle pulled himself together, and stood up. "Oh, that's all right, thank you, Miss. I've only got a bit of a dint in the forearm."

"Well, I'll cut away your coat, and we'll see how bad it is."

The sailor stepped back, and took off the garment himself, and then felt in a pocket and produced a small old-fashioned pewter flask. "I'm glad that's not hurt, anyway, Miss. It is full of Horner's Perfect Cure, the best thing in the world for cuts and stomachic troubles."

"But, my dear Captain, you must not use a patent medicine at a time like this. You are really wounded, and, though you keep on forgetting it, I am really a doctor. I will dress it for you."

"I am sure you are what you say," said Captain Kettle soothingly. "But you see, Miss, this wound is rather a personal matter, and I wish it properly attended to. I am going to dress it with Horner, and I am going to drink half the rest of the flask. Then all will be well. I will give you what is left, and if you use it with judgment, believe me, you will lay the foundation of a really valuable medical practice. With Horner's Perfect Cure, Miss, you can tackle everything that comes into the biggest hospital in London or South Shields. It's the last word in medicine, and, mark you, I know. I've tried everything that's advertised.

"I believe, by the way, Miss, I never told you where that submarine was getting her fuel oil from. They had it stored in a couple of old marine boilers from some wreck which were lying just under the surface of the bay. I could see them quite clearly."