Chapter XXI: The Zeppelin Raid

So ended that battle in the fog, and two hours later, back in positions, the convoy steamed at full speed again, with French seaplanes hovering about like golden-winged birds, leading the way to safety. In the afternoon the bulletin told them all they could expect to know on the _Warren_. Four submarines had attacked. Of these one had been captured in a sinking condition, and her officers and crew, fifty-two in all, taken prisoner, and a second had been driven off in a crippled condition. Fog had defeated the efforts of the destroyer to determine her ultimate fate. One transport had been struck by a torpedo just under the bow and had escaped with slight damage. The British destroyer ―――― had been struck aft with the loss of four lives but was being towed by one of our ships. Much, it seemed to Steve and Joe, had happened considering the fact that at no time had the _Warren_ so much as glimpsed an action save when she had pursued that elusive periscope! But they had brought their convoy safely out of danger, which, after all, was the thing that counted.

The fog turned to rain as they approached the French coast, and it was not until they had entered the wide estuary of the Girondé that they really saw their companions again. The troop-ships went on up to Bordeaux, cheering the destroyers as they passed, while the latter, all save the Limie, turned seaward once more. The British ship, with a gaping, half-patched hole in her black hull aft of her fourth stack, and her deck messed with twisted plates and stanchions, went off in tow of a noisy tug in the wake of the transports, cheered to the echo by the rest of the ships.

Joe was inclined to be disgruntled over that engagement. “Why, hang it, Steve, we went messing around there just as though we were trying our hardest to keep out of trouble! Every time we heard guns in one direction the Old Man headed in another! Talk about your punk luck!”

“For a fellow who was a double-dyed pacifist three months ago,” laughed Steve, “you’re frightfully keen on a scrap!”

“Never mind what I was three months ago,” returned Joe warmly. “I’ve learned since then. And I’ve seen things, too,” he added darkly. “Why, let me tell you something, Steve. I believe that if we made peace with Germany tomorrow I’d say ‘Nothing doing!’ and keep on fighting!”

“So would a lot of us, I guess,” answered the other grimly. “But don’t you worry, my boy. There won’t be any peace until we’ve got the Huns begging for mercy.”

“I know, but you’re always hearing about one country or another being ready for it, or talking about it. It makes me ill!”

“Me too! I wish they’d run rubber-neck wagons to the front trenches so a lot of these peace talkers could see what’s really going on. Even you and I don’t ever see the real awfulness of it, Joe.”

“No, fighting on sea is a sort of polite picnic compared to holding down a front-line trench, I guess. I mean we don’t see the suffering and all that sort of thing. We aren’t cold and dirty――――”

“Well, if anyone is much colder than a foretop lookout in a northeast gale――――”

“You know what I mean,” interrupted Joe impatiently. “Besides, we don’t get a chance to do anything, anyway, except about once a month. That’s the worst thing about the Navy, Steve. I thought we would be right in the thick of it all the time, didn’t you? And here we’ve been scouting around for two months, more or less, and not a blessed thing has happened to us!”

“No, nothing except that we’ve been in a corking nice scrap and have sunk one U-boat all by ourselves and――Great Scott, Joe, didn’t you get any thrills the night you went overboard?”

“Thrills? Yes, cold thrills. Oh, that was sort of exciting, in a way. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. But I want to be in a good stand-up fight with some of those Fritzes! I want to see the shots go home. I want――――”

“You want to be killed, that’s the matter with you!” scoffed Steve. “Besides, you can’t get a Fritz to agree to a stand-up fight. He wants to sneak up in the dark or in a fog and let fly a moldie and then beat it. Fritz is――is what you might call prudent.”

“Prudent! He’s more than that! He’s yellow!”

“Well, I suppose there’s his side to it. A submarine’s of use only so long as it’s afloat, Joe, and his idea is to play the game safe. But it _is_ riling, the way they pop up and strafe something and then pop down again before anyone can talk to them about it! I wish――――” He stopped, with a shake of his head.

“So do I,” said Joe.

“What?”

“Why, that we’d join forces with the British and pay ’em a visit around the corner there, up north.”

Steve nodded. “Yes, I guess if you asked any sailor with either fleet what he wanted most he’d say just that. Well, it may come yet.”

“If it ever does,” said Joe longingly, “I hope I’ll be around. There’s just one thing that has me scared whenever I think of it, Steve. It’s that I might get mine before this thing’s ended, before we’ve beaten the Huns! That would be fierce!”

“Rot! You’ll live to bore folks for sixty years with the story of the time you were swept off a United States destroyer and captured a mine-layer single-handed. Why, ten years from now, Joe, folks’ll be running away whenever you turn the corner!”

Joe laughed. “That’ll be about all from you. Lend me your thimble, will you? I’ve lost mine somewhere. Say, did you ever think you’d be able to darn a pair of socks the way you can now?”

“No, and I never thought I’d be able to wear holes in ’em the way I can now, either,” replied Steve disgustedly.

Three days later, in Queenstown, they read all about that engagement with the German U-boats, or as much about it as the censors thought fit for the public to know, which wasn’t a great deal after all. But what the papers told them, told them something they hadn’t known at the time, which was that had the submarines had their way with the transports the Allied armies would have been poorer by some twelve thousand soldiers and a million dollars’ worth of ammunition. That, it seemed to them, was worth saving!

The _Warren_ had her bottom scraped and a new coat of paint put on, and for that purpose was hauled out high and dry. It meant five days ashore instead of three and Steve and Joe obtained liberty and managed by much manœuvring to get across to Portsmouth. There, however, disappointment awaited them, for the _Carthage_, with Han aboard, was at sea. Not that they could get anyone to actually say so, though. They based their presumption on the fact that she was not in port, and the evidence seemed rather strong. There was nothing to do in Portsmouth for them, and, since they had all their last month’s wages in pocket, they went up to London.

Neither had ever been there before and all the way up on the London and South-Western Railway they peered excitedly at stations whose names sounded familiar but which looked like no stations they had ever seen. Joe declared that Wimbledon was as well-known to him as New Rochelle, and Clapham Junction was like an old friend. But that didn’t keep them from being a little bit awed when they alighted at Waterloo Station. A train on a neighbouring track had just pulled in with a load of “blighties” and they stopped and watched the scene. Such wrecks of men as they saw emerge from those coaches! And yet scarcely a man failed to smile as he came painfully forth. Hundreds and hundreds of them there seemed to the boys, but, as Steve granted later, when you have tears in your eyes you’re likely to see double! Friends, relatives, nurses flocked about them and soon the platform was empty and the boys went their way, rather more sober than before. But there were so many “blighties” all over the city that they soon grew accustomed to the sight, and one can’t well stay sad for long on such an occasion as one’s first visit to London. It was mid-afternoon when they arrived and it was well on toward dark when they found themselves at Oxford Street and Edgware Road, quite lost and quite unconcerned but decidedly weary. They sought direction and presently found a restaurant and had their first meal since early morning. Afterwards they walked again through the soft, lingering daylight of a star-sprinkled August evening, and, when the lights were twinkling subduedly――for London was dark in those days――they stumbled on a theatre and bought seats and entered.

The play was rather too serious for two American Jackies on liberty, but they sat it through, finding more of interest in the audience than on the stage. Uniforms dotted the pit and boxes, but save for that there was naught to show that this was London in war time. Afterwards they sought the Embankment and watched the darkened craft moving like shadows through the star-lit gloom. They still had lodgings to find and so, just before midnight, went in search of a small hotel that had been recommended to them at the restaurant. It was across the river, near Waterloo Station, and they made their way to the nearest bridge. But before they reached it a sudden strident alarm awoke the murmurous silence. They stopped short and viewed each other in surprise and something approaching apprehension. The air seemed to be filled with the shrill whistling.

“What the dickens is it?” demanded Steve anxiously.

“I don’t know, unless――――” Joe stopped and turned his face toward the sky.

“By Jove!” cried Steve. “That’s it! It’s an air-raid, Joe! It’s Zeppelins! Beat it!”

“Wait! Let’s have a look. I don’t see anything, do you?”

“See anything! No, and I don’t want to! And, what’s more, I don’t want to _feel_ anything! Come on and get under cover somewhere. They’ll arrest us if we don’t!”

“Well, but I want to see, hang it,” grumbled Joe, as he followed the other up a side street. The warning tocsin was still wailing, making Steve think of Banshees, as they came in sight of the dark bulk of Charing Cross Station. There the streets were filling with a silent and apparently unalarmed throng, all gazing skyward. Now into the blare of the whistles came other sounds, the distant popping of anti-aircraft guns, they guessed. A policeman, very matter-of-fact, was pressing the crowd toward the sidewalks.

“Under cover, if you please, ladies and gentlemen, under cover now! Don’t ’ave me askin’ yer over an’ over!”

Suddenly a murmur went up and the boys, following the direction of the staring eyes of the throng, saw, far in the heavens, eastward, a ghostly, silver shape. Long streams of searchlights played upon it, converging from wide distances. It seemed to hang motionless there, thousands of feet above the darkened city, until the fact that they were gradually turning their heads convincing them that the Zeppelin was in reality travelling at a rapid pace. It was miles away from where they stood, but even had it been overhead it is doubtful if the sense of danger would have prevailed over the fascination they experienced. The thing seemed unreal to them, a clever mechanical effect such as one sees at a theatre. The element of danger never made itself felt for a moment. Wonder and admiration and a queer thrilling excitement was what they experienced as, in common with thousands of others all over the great city, they stood and watched spellbound.

Stars that were bursting shells from the guns broke around the silver ghost, but she appeared oblivious to them. With what seemed the speed of a floating thistledown the big balloon drew diagonally across the city from northeast to southwest. “She might be over Hornsey now,” said a voice at Steve’s elbow, but a second speaker contradicted him. “Not ’arf so near, gov’ner, and more toward Hendon-way.”

“Isn’t it wonderful!” murmured Steve. “Do you suppose there are others?”

“Bound to be, I guess. Hello, look there! Great Scott, Steve!”

A great glare of yellow light enveloped the Zeppelin so that it seemed to stand out against the blue-black heavens like a monstrous elongated lamp. Then, amidst a murmurous sigh of awe from the watchers, a sheet of rosy light shot high from the balloon and dyed the whole city with its unearthly radiance, so that shadows played where there had been only darkness before. The throng stood hushed as the strange light rippled like flame high in the sky and, suddenly, the Zeppelin collapsed in the centre and began to float gently to the earth. And as she descended there appeared, above her, a smaller vision, an airplane gliding eastward and downward through the glowing heavens. Flames could be seen plainly about the Zeppelin as she settled faster and faster, and a cloud of black smoke billowed and trailed. Then, as she passed from the sight of the watchers, a lurid flare told of exploding gas-tanks, went out as suddenly and left the city in blackness again save for the beams of light that crossed and recrossed, searching the sky. Silence held for a long moment, and then there arose from the throats of the watchers a cheer that grew and grew as it was taken up on all sides and spread across the vast immensity of London, a cheer of exultation that lasted for minutes and minutes. Even after it had ceased there at Charing Cross, the murmurous sound could still be heard, a dim roar of triumph. A group of Australian Tommies broke through the throng, shattering the air with long-drawn “coo-ees,” while about a lamp-post nearby four British Jackies danced, with joined hands, and sang themselves hoarse.

Steve and Joe turned back and found their way across a long-arching bridge through the star-lit darkness. The city was silent again save for an occasional belated cheer. They were too affected to talk much, and so reached the little hotel almost in silence.