Part 8

I bent and put my arms about him and he turned his face towards me. Twice he tried to speak, and an attempt at a smile, a ghost of the old jaunty smile, flitted across his grey face. He made one more supreme effort, and with my ear to the bloody lips I just caught the last whispered breath that took his soul with it.

13

We passed up harbour to our berth alongside the following afternoon, and every craft in harbour manned ship and gave us a cheer while the tugs and ferry craft hooted, and the folk ashore lined the beach and waved flags and handkerchiefs. I am not ashamed to own that I saw it all through a blur; and as the off-shore wind carried the thin sound of women's voices, I couldn't help thinking of the lads below the shattered upper deck, who had fallen asleep that England on the morrow might wake to a fuller realisation of her glory.

We dined together that night in the coffee room of the big hotel that had been converted into the Naval Headquarters of the Base. We had counted on having a tremendous jamboree--those of us who returned. But somehow the feeling that predominated was a sort of dazed astonishment that we were still alive. And our heads ached "fit to split" as housemaids say.

Mouldy was in bed, recovering from a slight gassing, but Thorogood sat next to me, squeezing my arm at intervals as if to reassure himself that he wasn't dreaming; and on the other a big subaltern of Marines who seemed to regard his recent experiences with less emotion that the last Army _v._ Navy rugger match, in which I saw him play. Glegg was there with a bandage over one eye, but Brakespear was in hospital with a piece of shrapnel somewhere in his anatomy.

Jervis had shorn his beard, and in the process seemed to have parted with something of his effervescent vivacity, and when I remembered him as I had last seen him, as we shoved off from the blazing Mole, stumbling amid the dead and bawling through his megaphone.... No, we weren't feeling gay.

It was after dinner that we got really talking. There must have been a dozen of us altogether, because Shorty had gone home to his wife, and Selby had gone Home too: a longer journey, but perhaps an even happier meeting at the end of it.... Anyhow, there were about a dozen of us that lit cigars and cigarettes and put our elbows on the table, and the scene, as I remember it, was just like some big family happily reunited, with the shadow of the Angel's wing still hovering over all.

Messengers were coming and going all the while with signals and telegrams, and presently the orderly murmured, "The Director of Offensives, sir, wants to talk to you on the telephone."

I went up to the room I used as an office when ashore, and as I picked up the receiver of the Admiralty line, heard the Director's voice faintly, speaking not to me but to someone in his room.

"Tell them I'll be at the War Office at 3 P.M. for that meeting ... that's all for to-night, Miss Mayne," I heard him say. Then clearer and louder, "Hallo, that you, Hornby?"

"Yes, sir," I said.

"Well, I'm damned glad to hear it." Then he said a lot of nice things about what we'd done and being proud of us, and finished off: "Well, I'd like to see you at 3.30 P.M. to-morrow if you can get to town by then."

"Aye, aye, sir," and as I answered a thought flashed through my brain: it was one of those brilliant inspirations that come once in a lifetime, and in the course of a sleepless night (none of us slept that night) I perfected it into a piece of strategy for which I claim, in all modesty, a place in this already unduly prolonged narrative.

Mouldy occupied a spare room at my diggings where most of us were billeted for the night, and when I turned out the following morning, I visited him. I found him drinking tea and reading the morning, paper.

"How d'you feel?" I asked.

He pointed to a tin of cigarettes with a wry face.

"Dead off baccy," he said lugubriously.

"Well," I replied, "that'll do you no harm. All right otherwise?"

He nodded. "All right last night. Lord knows why I should have been rammed into bed while all you pirates lapped up bubbly and made a night of it."

"Doctor's orders. Anyhow, he says you can go to town to-day."

Mouldy sat up. "Damn good of him, 'cos I was goin', anyhow. I'm going to have a hell of a jamboree." He blinked at me defiantly from under a lank lock of black hair.

"You've got to come with me to the Admiralty at three o'clock," I said as sternly as I could. Mouldy groaned.

"Have I got to keep sober till three--an' pubs closing at half-past two?"

"Yes," I said. "You won't have a drink till the evening--and then you can have as many as you want."

He acquiesced reluctantly, and we caught a train to town that landed us at the terminus shortly before three; thence we taxied to Whitehall.

"This place gives me the holy pip," said Mouldy, as we threaded our way through the stuffy-smelling corridors of the Admiralty. "Looks as if the Navy was run by women from what I can see of the place. Phew! Shockin' frowst!" We reached the Director's room.

"Never mind that," I said, and opened the door. I breathed a sigh of relief to find the room was empty, and glanced at my watch. It was ten minutes past three. Well, if Mouldy couldn't fix things in twenty minutes.... He walked to the open window and stood staring out on the Horse Guards Parade.

"Humph!" he observed moodily. "I reckon the bounding blue's good enough for me.... I wouldn't come and work here for a thousand a year. What the blazes does the Director want to see me for, anyway? He's all adrift too."

I was hunting about on the paper-strewn desk for the bell press I knew was there if I could find it. There were three: one marked "Secretary," another "Messenger," and a third "Stenographer." I took a long breath and pressed the third.

"Mouldy," I said, "don't get into mischief. Wait here till I come back. I shan't be a minute." Then I made tracks for the door.

In the semi-gloom of the passage outside a tall girl brushed past me and entered the room, pencil and notebook in hand. It was Miss Mayne, and I waited till the door closed before I looked at my watch. "I'll give them two minutes," I thought. "And if she doesn't come back----"

I gave them ten minutes, as a matter of fact, then I knocked at the door and went in.

"Mouldy," I said, "you needn't wait. It's all right. I mean, the Director doesn't want to see you after all."

They had not apparently heard my knock, because Miss Mayne's head was resting on Mouldy's shoulder, and he was stroking her hair with his damaged hand. She was crying softly, with her cheek against his coat.

Mouldy raised his head and glared at me over Miss Mayne's shoulder. She neither moved nor turned her head.

"Here," he said, "you _'op_ it!"

I went out into the corridor, closing the door softly behind me.

Then for the Erst time since we landed I felt tired--more tired than I had ever felt in my life before.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

_For purposes of fiction, only the broad outlines of a great achievement have been sketched into this story; and no attempt has been made to reproduce faithfully the strategy or events of St. George's Day, _1918_. Indeed, only such ships find their replicas here as the turning-circle of the tale allows, and if the Author has anywhere endeavoured to be true to facts, it is in the portrayal of those fearsome and bloody conditions under which the Navy added so fair a page to History._

II

BEHIND THE VEIL:

THE STORY OF THE Q BOATS

(1918)

1

FIRST BLOOD

There was a day, now happily past, when the submarine scourge was broadcast upon the seas; then the country turned for its salvation to the Navy, upon which, under the good providence of God, it had grown accustomed to rely in most of the crises of its history. Scientific and mechanical appliances, on a scale adequate to meet and checkmate the outrage of unrestricted submarine warfare, could not be produced by pressing a button. With workshops and laboratories yielding their output at highest pressure, the German submarine building yards were gaining in the race. Every day brought its sickening tale of sinking and burning and murder on the high seas, and in Whitehall offices men studied statistics and columns of figures with faces ever growing graver.

The irritable tension of those days is best forgotten now. Prices rose, ships sank, and the Navy said not a word. It was "doing its damnedest" in silence, according to its wont. And not even in forecastle or Wardroom did men so much as whisper what was afoot. To-day* the submarine remains merely as a stern corrective, curbing waste and extravagance, bracing the nation's nerve. The ingenuity of man is boundless, and science has not yet said her last word; human courage and devoted valour alone seem to have reached a point there is no transcending. It was these two factors which stemmed the flood at the moment of supreme crisis; on these the veil is at last lifted, and the tale now told in all simplicity and truth.

* Written in August, 1918.

The methods of the German submarine in its war against unarmed shipping gradually settled down to a routine which varied but little in the early phases of the conflict. It was the custom to attempt to torpedo at sight, on the principle of the least said the soonest mended. If the torpedo missed, as was not infrequently the case, the submarine broke surface a mile or so away from the ship and fired a shot across her bows. The merchantman had then two alternatives: to take to his heels and try to escape, or to heave to and abandon ship. In the latter case the submarine closed the derelict to within a few hundred yards and summoned the boats alongside. At the muzzle of a revolver the Captain was ordered into the submarine with his papers, and the crew of his boat directed to row a party of German sailors, bearing bombs, back to the ship. These worthies, having placed the bombs in the ship's vitals and looted the officers' quarters, returned to the submarine, propelled by the men they had robbed and whose ship they were engaged in sinking. In due course the bombs exploded and the ship disappeared. It was an economical method, since bombs cost less than torpedoes, and the formality of looting the ship helped to preserve its popularity.

For a while the Navy noted these methods and the little human failings of the enemy in silence. Then it drew a deep breath and made its plans accordingly. It argued that a man-of-war could be disguised as a tramp steamer and carry concealed armament. Such a vessel, by plying on the trade routes, must inevitably meet a submarine in time, and in her character of peaceful merchantman be ordered to abandon ship. The ship might be abandoned to all outward appearances, but still retain sufficient men concealed on board to fight the hidden guns when the moment came for her to cast disguise to the winds and hoist the White Ensign. Certain risks had to be taken for granted, of course; the almost inevitable torpedo sooner or later, the probability of a little indiscriminate shelling while the submarine approached, the possibility of being ultimately sunk before assistance could arrive. Yet the odds were on the submarine being sunk first, and the rest was on the knees of the gods.

An old collier of some 2,000 tons was selected from among the shipping at the disposal of the Admiralty and taken to a Dockyard port, where she unostentatiously underwent certain structural alterations. These included disappearing mountings for guns concealed beneath hatchway covers, and masked by deck-houses which collapsed like cards at a jerk of a lever. From the host of volunteers, among whom were retired Admirals, Captains, Commanders, and Lieutenants of the Royal Navy, a young Lieutenant-Commander was selected and appointed in command. His officers were volunteers from the Royal Naval Reserve, ex-merchant seamen, familiar enough with the rôle they were required to play, and in some cases with little mental scores of their own which required adjustment when the time came. The crew was mostly from the West Country, men of Devon with one or two traditions to uphold in the matter of brave adventure. It also included Welshmen and Irish with a pretty taste for a fight, and a few Scots, of the dour type, hard to frighten. They were picked from the Royal Navy, Fleet and Royal Reserves--merchant seamen and fishermen the last, many of whom had formed a nodding acquaintance with Death long before they received this invitation to a closer intimacy. Their ages ranged between 17 and 52.

They sailed from Queenstown under the Red Ensign; but before they left some of the crew trudged, as pilgrims to a shrine, and stood awhile among the mounds in that pathetic God's acre where the women and children of the _Lusitania_ rest. They were then but freshly turned, those mounds, in their eloquent diversity of lengths, and men had not begun to forget....

For five weary months they endured the winter gales of the Atlantic, wallowing to and fro along the trade routes, outwardly a scallywag tramp, but behind her untidy bulwarks observing, with certain necessary modifications, the discipline and customs of his Majesty's Navy. With paint-pot and sail-cloth they improved the ship's disguise from time to time, and wiled away the heart-breaking monotony of the days by inventing fresh devices to conceal their character.

The ship's steward's assistant, when not engaged upon his office as "dusty boy," was ordered to don female attire over his uniform and recline in a prominent position on the poop in a deck-chair. This allurement was calculated to prove an irresistible bait. The Navigator, whose action station was the abandonment of the ship in the rôle of distracted Master, fashioned the effigy of a stuffed parrot and fastened it inside a cage which he proposed to take away with him in the boat, thus heightening the pathos of the scene and whetting the blood-lust of the enemy....

From time to time watchful patrols swooped down upon them, exchanged a few curt signals in the commercial code, and bade them pass on their imaginary occasions. Once a Cruiser, less easily satisfied than the remainder, bade the rusty-sided collier heave to, and sent an officer to board her; he climbed inboard at the head of armed men to find himself confronted, in the person of the "Master," with a term-mate of Britannia days and a grin he is not likely to forget. Then, early one spring morning, when the daylight was stealing out of grey skies across the Atlantic waste, the track of a torpedo bubbled across the bows and passed ahead of the ship. The moment for which they had waited five weary months had come.

In accordance with her rôle of tramp steamer in the early days of the War, the ship held steadily on her way, observing the stars in their courses, but not otherwise interested in the universe. Inboard, however, the alarm rang along the mess-decks and saloons, and men crawled into hen-coops and deck-houses to man the hidden guns. A few minutes later the submarine broke surface half a mile astern of the ship, and fired a shot across her bows. Whereupon the supposed collier stopped her engines, and lay rolling in the trough of the seas with steam pouring from her exhausts, while the crew, who had rehearsed this moment to a perfection never yet realised on the boards of legitimate drama, rushed to and fro with every semblance of panic. The Captain danced from one end of the bridge to the other, waving his arms and shouting; boats were turned out and in again amid a deliberate confusion that brought blushes to the cheeks of the ex-merchant seamen called upon to play the part.

In the meantime the submarine had approached at full speed to within about 700 yards, and, evidently not satisfied with the speed at which the ship was being abandoned, fired another shot, which pitched 50 yards short of the engine-room. There was apparently nothing further to be gained by prolonging the performance for this impatient audience, and the Lieutenant-Commander on the bridge, cap in hand, and breathless with his pantomimic exertions, blew a shrill blast on his whistle. Simultaneously the White Ensign fluttered to the masthead, deck-houses and screens clattered down, and three minutes later the submarine sank under a rain of shells and Maxim bullets. As she disappeared beneath the surface the avenger reached the spot, and dropped a depth-charge over her. A moment after the explosion the submarine appeared in a perpendicular position alongside the ship, denting the bilge-keel as she rolled drunkenly among the waves. The after gun put five more rounds into the shattered hull at point-blank range, and, as she sank for the last time, two more depth-charges were dropped to speed her passing.

The Lieutenant-Commander in command had personally been superintending the administering of the _coup de grâce_ from the stern, and, as he turned to make his way forward to the bridge, for a few brief moments the bonds of naval discipline relaxed. His men surged round him in a wildly cheering throng, struggling to be the first to wring him by the hand. They then mustered in the saloon, standing bare-headed while their Captain read the Prayers of Thanksgiving for Victory, and called for three cheers for his Majesty the King. They cheered as only men can cheer in the first exultant flush of victory. But as the vessel gathered way and resumed her grim quest, each man realised, deep down in his heart, that far sterner ordeals lay ahead.

2

ORDEAL BY FIRE

Because man is mortal, not infallible, and Fortune at her brightest a fickle jade, it was inevitable that sooner or later a day must come when a crippled German submarine would submerge beneath a hail of shells, miraculously succeed in patching up her damaged hull, and, under cover of darkness, crawl back to port. Word would then go out from Wilhelmshaven of a British man-of-war disguised as a lumbering tramp, with such and such a marking on her funnel, with stumpy masts and rusty deck-houses, who carried guns concealed in wheel-house and hen-coops, whose bulwarks collapsed, and whose bridge screens masked quick-firers and desperate men. German submarines would be warned that to approach such a vessel was to enter a death-trap, unless every precaution was first taken to ensure she had been abandoned.

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.