The Secret Service Submarine: A Story of the Present War

Again the great, menacing boom, but this time we saw something.

From the deck of a submarine the range of vision is only two miles. The last destroyer was almost disappearing on the horizon, when she suddenly jumped out of the sea and fell to pieces like a pack of cards.

"That's old Snorty Bethune-Ranger!" my brother said, wagging his head gravely. "Best gunner commander in the fleet, and I know he's on board the Vengeance. Now don't you think we'll have the boys up and let 'em chortle a bit?"

"I'll go and call them."

I was just going in when I was gripped by the arm so hard that I winced.

"Look there!" said my brother.

I followed his pointing right arm and saw something far up in the sky, something like a crow, which grew larger every second.

"One of their hydroplanes, off the deck of the second transport. She's going to try and drop bombs on us."

"Will she do it?"

"Can a duck bark?" Bernard answered contemptuously. "Of course, she may be lucky, but it's never happened yet. The worst of it is that they can see us thirty feet below the surface. Still, old sport, she can't do much – hear her coming?"

I did. There was a noise like a motor-bicycle in the sky, and the crow grew to an eagle, developed into an aeroplane, such as I had seen so often in the illustrated papers.

"I suppose we'd better submerge, though I don't want to run from a beastly mechanical kite, after sinking Kaiser Bill's lovin' enthusiastic soldiers, all in the box, complete, one shilling! I say, John, would you like a little bit of sport?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I don't suppose this fellow is going to do us any harm, and any way, it's a toss up. Now you rather pride yourself as a wild-fowler, don't you?"

"If I hadn't been a wild-fowler," I said, "we shouldn't have been where we are now."

"Quite so. Now, there's a rack of excellent rifles down below, and dozens of clips; see if you can't pick this Johnny off."

He bellowed down through the hatch.

"Bring up a magazine rifle and some ammunition. Look sharp!"

I got the rifle in a few seconds. I think we were both perfectly reckless. I know I was. I laughed as I tucked the gun into my shoulder. There was a complicated arrangement of sights, but I never even snapped up the foresight. It did not seem worth while; the mark was so big.

The hydroplane fetched a sweep of quarter of a mile round us, and then came head on. I could see the pilot distinctly and, a little below him, the gentleman who was getting ready to drop his bombs.

It was quite delightful. They were not going at a higher speed than a flock of widgeon. To me, it was child's play.

I plugged the bomb expert with the second shot. Then, and I really rather pride myself on what I did next, I hit the long, sausage-like petrol tank and ripped it up. There was a huge roar, an overhead explosion, and as the whole beastly thing turned a somersault and fell, I am pretty certain, too, that I put the pilot out of his pain with my last shot.

We were surrounded by ships – they had come racing north out of Harwich just in time. The big Vengeance was still booming away, but two snaky-like destroyers were coming up hell for leather and a big seven thousand ton cruiser was not more than three hundred yards from us.

Puff! puff! A white pinnace, with a shining brass funnel, swirled round and came up on our quarter. My brother and myself, together with the two Dickson boys, were standing by the conning-tower.

The pinnace was full of men. It was steered by a youngish-looking, clean-shaved officer, wearing the badges of a lieutenant.

Adams, Scarlett, and Bosustow were over the side in a minute, a coil of rope ran out, boat-hooks appeared from nowhere. There was a subdued hum of chatter, as the men from the cruiser greeted the three heroes of the submarine.

Then I heard a sharp and rather squeaky voice.

"Hallo, Whelk!" it said.

Bernard leant over the rail; he was nearly done, but he found voice to answer that hail.

"That you, Reptile?" he muttered, "you are more like a stuffed frog than ever!"

Such are the greetings and amenities of the Navy. But the last thing I remember hearing that afternoon came from the lieutenant in charge of the pinnace.

"I say, excuse me for mentioning it, but 'well done,' you fellows!"

CHAPTER XII

THE LAST CHAPTER – IN TWO PARTS

Part I. – Doris and Marjorie have a Late Visitor

Note. – I have certainly written this chapter – with a pen, that is. Neither my brother's wife nor my own actually set down a word of the following. I am not responsible, and I will say no more. You will understand why when you have read this last chapter. If I were the usual sort of poopstick that often lurks behind such a story, I should say: "This is put in at the request of my friends." It is not. It is done simply to tell you the end of our little affairs, and rather more with my heart in my mouth than my tongue in my cheek. —

J. C.

It was Sunday night in Lieutenant Murphy's house at Cockthorpe. The wires had worked. By dawn there was an army of police from Norwich in a fleet of motor cars. They invested Morstone House School. Old Mr. Pugmire, startlingly sober for once, was placed in charge of the boarders, who were all sent home during the course of the next day. Another, and more dangerous reprobate, Mrs. Gaunt with the broken leg, was interrogated by a stern-faced inspector in the presence of a doctor. The hag had been in von Vedal's confidence for years. The police learned much.

By ten o'clock, others than the County Police had arrived. There were clean-shaved, quiet-mannered officials from the Admiralty. There was a lean, elderly gentleman in khaki, with the red band round his cap and on his shoulders which pronounced him of the War Office Staff.

Admiral Kiderlen-Waechter and the man, Schweitzer, were in Norwich Castle by eleven. The whole countryside and coastline buzzed like swarming bees. A detachment of Territorials patrolled the village. Nobody knew anything at all of what had really happened, but everyone was very excited. All the local people agreed that there had not been a Sunday like this for many years!

Doris and Marjorie Joyce were at Cockthorpe, in the Lieutenant's house. They were being looked after by Mrs. Murphy, a jolly old Irishwoman with all the tact and humour of her nation – a woman who knew when to foil hysteria with a jest, to hearten a girl with a sharp word, and, when the final interrogation was over, to invite the warm relieving flood of tears with the instinctive motherhood of one who nightly prayed to Mary to pray for those in distress.

The girls were troubled very little. The Lieutenant of the Coastguards had seen almost everything. There would not be an inquest for two or three days. They had made their statement to a courteous person from London. They were to be left in peace.

After lunch the old lady came to them – came to the little sitting-room which opened out of the bedroom she had given them.

"Now, my dear children," she said, "ye'll just take off your stays and pull down your hair, and I'll tuck ye in under the eiderdown, and ye'll sleep!"

She had two tumblers in her plump hands, upon which sparkled many rings – the Irish carbuncles, which are so much larger and more brilliant than mere rubies, the Ballysheen emeralds, "which you can only find at Ballysheen, me dear, and glad the jewellers of Regent Street would be if they could get a supply of 'em! Faith! and the doctor has given me this for you. Bromide to calm the nerves – not that I ever had any nerves, meself, when I was your age! But I never had a crool stepfather lying dead in an adjacent village, nor was mixed up with spies, though in the Sin-fein riots of '84 – Marjorie, me darlint, take your shoes off. Now then, I'll tuck ye both up and pull down the blinds to keep out the sunlight, though it's shutters I would be putting up when I was a gurl!"

It was like a fairy story, and Mrs. Murphy was the good Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid: "The children sank into a deep, dreamless sleep."

Poor dears, how they must have wanted it after all they had been through! I can see them lying there…

(Excision by censor and pencil note in the margin of the manuscript: "John Carey, you liar, don't obtrude yourself and your sickly sentiments.")

It was about six when Doris and Marjorie awoke. They came out of the bedroom into the sitting-room adjoining. A bright fire burnt upon the hearth with that clear redness which indicates a dry and frosty night. On a little table there was an equipage of tea, and a copper kettle sang gently.

These two girls were essentially healthy and plucky. The semi-imprisoned life they had led at Morstone House School had broken nothing of their spirit. The death – the righteous execution – of the man who had hurried their mother into her grave affected them not at all. They were too brave and fine to affect an emotion that they did not, could not, feel. All that had happened in the large, L-shaped house was hideous and horrible, yet not to be overmuch remembered or deplored.

They had another subject of discussion, these two beautiful sisters.

"Doris, it was desperate from the first."

"Yes, it was, Marjorie."

"Then, do you think – ?"

"That they will come out all right, you mean?"

"Yes, do you?"

"My red-haired sister," Doris answered, "if you go on like this I'll be bound to bite!"

"Of course, Commander Carey knows all about submarines, and he's one of the bravest officers…"

"Yes, I rather like Bernard myself."

"You rather like him, Doris!"

"Well, you haven't known him as long as I've known John. What price Johnny, my sweet young sister, and what about the bold, brave Dickson max. and Dickson major?"

They kept it up for a minute or two very well, and then their arms went round each other, and one sister held the other close.

The bell from the adjacent church tolled for evensong. It was a lovely night, cold and clear with a great, round, green moon. Mrs. Murphy mercifully left them alone. They heard the front door close, and saw her rolling up the path towards the church, a long, dark façade with lit windows.

As if in a dream, the girls heard the droning murmur of the Psalms. Their thoughts were far away with a little band of heroes. There was a long pause – it must have been the sermon – and then came a deep, swelling sound. The congregation were singing the last hymn, and it was "for those in peril on the sea."

They clasped hands and went to the window, opening it wide to the moonlight. The simple, familiar music flooded into the room.

Bang! Bang! Bang! The door burst open. It was midnight, and Mrs. Murphy, in an appalling night-cap and a magenta dressing-gown, was standing by the girls' beds.

"Get ye up! Get ye up! – no, don't bother about your hair, it's well enough as it is. The Saints be praised – hush, ye'll not say a word, for I'm a good Protestant here, for Murphy's sake, and an old gazaboo the clergyman is, to be shure! – but there's a gintleman come down in a big automobile to see you. Wirra, phwat news!"

While she was shouting and gesticulating, the old lady had pulled Doris and Marjorie out of their beds, and was wrapping them up in their dressing-gowns with shaking fingers.

"News?" Doris gasped – "news of John?"

"News that'll shake England, aye, and Doblin too, to its foundations."

"Bernard?" Marjorie said unsteadily.

"Ye'll kindly come along with me," said Mrs. Murphy, and a strange procession went down the stairs into the hall.

The three servants of the house were bundled into one corner, and the less said about their attire the better. Lieutenant Murphy, in his uniform, was trying to light candles, and his wrinkled face was brighter than the flaring, smoking lamp which hung from the ceiling. In the centre of the hall was a tall, clean-shaved, youngish-looking man. He held a cocked hat in one hand and wore a uniform of dead black-blue.

Directly the old lady rolled down the stairs, followed by the frightened girls, this new-comer made a step forward. His manners were perfect, and he bowed as if he were at Court.

"Miss Joyce? – Miss Marjorie Joyce?"

"Faith, and they're the same, the very gurrls!" said Mrs. Murphy.

"I am sent by the First Lord, ladies, to give you some news, which I understand will be most welcome. Lieutenant-Commander Bernard Carey, Mr. John Carey, the two young gentlemen named Dickson, and Commander Carey's three sailors, Scarlett, Adams and Bosustow, have covered themselves with glory."

Doris was splendid.

"Ah!" she said, "we were waiting for this, my sister and myself. Are they, are they – ?" She could not go on.

"Madam, they are all safe and sound. Commander Carey is slightly wounded – that is all. They have engaged in action with the great German battleship, Der Friesland, and sunk her. They have sunk a transport. They have evaded a flotilla of German destroyers. In short, they have saved England. Our flotilla came up just in time. The Admiralty have had wireless messages during the whole of the afternoon."

Hitherto, the officer – he looked thirty-five, was really fifty, and the son of a duke – had spoken formally.

"Then?" Marjorie sighed.

"Then, it just amounts to this. No more glorious deed had ever been done in the whole history of our Navy, from the days of Sir Francis Drake down to this moment. I was privileged to be at the Palace a few hours ago when the news was brought. Each member of the crew of the submarine is to receive the Victoria Cross. It is not only by order of the First Lord of the Admiralty, but also by express command of His Majesty that I have motored down here to-night to bring you the news. My instructions are to ask you if you will accompany me to-morrow to Harwich, for we expect and hope that, during the earlier part of the afternoon…"

"They will come back!" Marjorie shouted.

"Precisely," said Lord William, "and, of course, you must be there to meet them!"

"Gurrls, I'll chaperone ye! Now, get back to bed, and sleep – if ye can. Shure, and I'm ashamed of ye appearin' in such dishybayle!" concluded the merry old lady, with a wink.

She stood at the foot of the stairs and hooshed her young charges away.

Then she turned to her guest.

"Ye'll forgive an old woman appearin' like this," she said simply. "Pathrick, take Lord William into the dining-room, and we'll make him some supper in a moment. We're all friends in the Navy."

Her voice changed and became very grave.

"Blessings on you," she said, "that have brought the good news to this house and to those dear gurrls this night!"

Part II. – Return of the Seven Heroes

It was a tall man with black hair, dark eyes and a pinched face. His black, clerical clothes were rather rusty in the bright morning sunlight, though they were his best.

"The young beggars!" he said, "the young beggars!" and there was a catch in his voice. "A commission for both of them and a special allowance, did you say, Lord William?"

"The Admiralty could do no less, Mr. Dickson. We want a thousand lads like yours, if we could only get them. Not that any officer of their age in the Navy wouldn't have done the same, but their names will be for ever glorious in the history of the service. It is a feat that England will never willingly forget. You know that they, as well as the rest, are to have the Victoria Cross?"

Mr. Dickson stared, as if he saw something at a great distance.

"No," he said, "I didn't know that – er – excuse me for a moment."

The clergyman turned away to the window of the Admiral's office, which overlooked Harwich Harbour, and his shoulders were shaking. "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word: for mine eyes have seen —"

"Shure, and they can't be long now, the Admiral says," came from Mrs. Murphy, sitting in the Admiral's chair, at the Admiral's table, with all sorts of confidential documents spread in front of her.

"Pathrick is to have the rank of Captain for the part he's tuk in it, though that was pure luck and him being on the spot. And, bedad, we'll have that motor cyar – and I never did see why a mere Docthor's wife like Mrs. Pestle, and him little better than a vetherinary surgeon, should keep a cyar when an officer in His Majesty's Navy couldn't!"

The Admiral in command at Harwich, a grizzled sailor who had been called up from his peaceful Devon home to leave his pheasants and fat cattle, came into the room, rubbing his hands.

"Well, they'll have the reception of their lives, young ladies," he said beaming; and, with a clank of his sword as he sat down, "Mrs. Murphy, if you attempt to read any of the papers on that table, I shall regretfully be compelled to have you shot, which will mar the festivity of the occasion! My dears, a special train full of journalists has just come down from town. There are thousands of people flocking to the quays in the spaces provided, and what the papers are saying about our friends will astonish you."

He produced a copy of the Daily Wire and opened it, while they all crowded round to look. Modern journalism had secured a triumph. Short as the time had been, there were columns and columns of description of the events at Morstone of which hardly anybody had been allowed to know anything – and the Battle in the North Sea, about which nobody knew but the Admiralty.

There were portraits of the two Dickson boys, each apparently about twelve years of age and in broad Eton collars. There was a truculent, prize-fighting individual, with distinct side-whiskers, labelled, "Mr. John Carey, M.A., the heroic schoolmaster who slew the Master-spy, 'Doctor Upjelly,' with his own hands." A smudge on the top of a uniform represented Lieutenant-Commander Bernard Carey – also "heroic," with sundry other adjectives; and if those excellent Plymouth ladies, Mrs. Bosustow, Mrs. Scarlett and Mrs. Adams, had seen the people represented in the newspaper as their lords and masters walk into Paradise Row, Devonport, they certainly would not have known them.

Doris gasped. "To call that John!" she said; "what a wicked libel! Couldn't the editor be arrested?"

"An editor is one of the people whom nothing can arrest," said the Admiral. "'In rebus desperatis remedia desperata,' which means 'What the public wants, the public must have, however short the time in which to fake it up.'"

There was a knock at the door, and a young officer entered, saluting.

"Destroyers sighted, Sir," he said, not without an appreciative glance at the two pretty girls close by. He handed a piece of paper to the Admiral, adding: "Just come in by wireless from the Arethusa, Sir."

The old gentleman with the pointed beard and clanking sword read it. He chuckled.

"Well," he said, "the public is going to have some fun for its money, for Commander Carey is coming into harbour on board his own boat. Now, then, suppose we all go out to the signalling station at the end of the Mole and get the first sight of them?"

Half a dozen clouds of black smoke upon the horizon, growing larger and larger every minute; a great murmur of the crowd; officers in dress uniform with binoculars at their eyes; a group of journalists in hard felt hats, making notes!..

Now the destroyers can be seen in a half-circle, with three great ships in the background.

"The Transports!" the Admiral said – "from seven to eight thousand Germans in them – what a haul! Look, Mrs. Murphy, that is the Cruiser Arethusa by the side of them. I expect they had a handful in disarming all those chaps, and they must be pretty short-handed on board the whole flotilla, for they'll have had to send a lot of men aboard those two liners. Fine boats, the new light cruisers, Captain Murphy?"

The old lieutenant of Coastguards flushed with pleasure.

"Never had a chance to go to sea in one of them, Sir," he said – "long after my time, I am sorry to say."

"Look!" Marjorie whispered to Doris, "they're opening out. Isn't it wonderful? How near they're getting! It's just like a figure in the Lancers."

Doris did not answer for a moment. Then she said: – "What's that, right in the middle?"

The Admiral overheard her.

"You've quick eyes, young lady," he answered; "that, unless I am very much mistaken, is a certain Submarine, lately in possession of the Kaiser, and which people are talking about a good deal just now!"

It was so. The destroyers slowed down, and made a great lane upon the sea. In the centre of this lane was something infinitely small, a black speck, like a cork floating on the water.

It grew and grew.

Then, from somewhere not far away, there was the heavy boom of a gun. Immediately, the air was rent with a noise like hundreds of bellowing bulls as all the ships at anchor opened their steam-sirens until the very stone quays trembled.

The cheers of thousands of voices, the wild tossing of hats into the air, the fluttering of hand-kerchiefs like sudden snow; and then, the Submarine, its whale-back ploughing through the Harbour waters, a white wake of foam behind it, came into full view. From the periscope fluttered two little flags, black and white. In half a minute the cheering, delirious crowd saw what they were.

"The skull and cross-bones, by Jove – two of 'em!" said a young lieutenant on the Admiral's Staff to his friend, a newly promoted Commander.

"So it is! How on earth did they get those on board a German submarine?"

"Someone of resource on board has spent a happy hour or two on the cruise home."

The young gentleman was right, but he did not know that Dickson max.'s shirt and the back of Dickson major's coat were the materials used by Mr. Scarlett, who was very handy with his needle.

"Here they come!"

"Here they come!" "Here they come" "Hurrah!" "Hurrah!"

Bang! went a whole salvo of guns. Upon the deck of the Submarine was a little group of four figures, and, if the truth must be told, four dirtier and more shame-faced human beings have rarely made a public appearance.

"Those must be the boys," the lieutenant shouted in his friend's ear.

The other nodded. He was staring at the Submarine.

"By Jove!" he cried, "there's the 'Whelk,' the good old Whelk! Look at him! We were at Osborne together, and he always swore he liked the beastly things – so the name stuck to him. That other chap must be his brother, I suppose – the schoolmaster Johnny."

"Good old Whe-e-lk!" he shouted, his hands to his mouth.

The lieutenant had never been shipmates with Bernard Carey. Also, his eyes were elsewhere. He twitched his friend's arm.

"I say," he said, in an awed voice, "look at the faces of those two girls!"

The Commander did so.

"Lucky old Whelk!"

THE END

1

See Frontispiece.