The Secret Service Submarine: A Story of the Present War

"We're just awash now, but we'll get above water."

Again the ring of a bell, an order through a speaking-tube. After that came a clang of machinery and an extraordinary bubbling, choking noise, like a giant drinking.

"Just blown out the water tanks, old soul. Feel her lift? Now her whale-back is above water and we'll go and say good-morning to the sun, which I perceive is very kindly beginning to show himself. But before that …"

He shouted another order and there came a deafening din from below. Bang! Bang! Bang! till the whole steel hull quivered.

"That is the surface engine starting. It'll be all right in a minute," and even as he spoke, the noise subsided into a regular throb. It was for all the world like a motor car starting on bottom speed and then slipping into top gear.

Scarlett came hurrying up into the conning-tower and he and my brother unlocked the sliding hatch. In a minute we had emerged into the keen air of the morning. How fresh and sweet it seemed to me it is impossible to say. The sun was rising. The bitter cold of the marshes had gone. The small waves were flecked with gold as we stood upon the wet steel plates and drank in the air as if it had been wine.

"An ideal day for a submarine action!" Bernard said, rubbing his hands. "There's just enough ripple on the surface to make us difficult to detect, and yet it is smooth enough to give me a clear view. This boat is beautifully trimmed, she doesn't roll a bit. I'll send those boys up in a minute or two, but meanwhile I've got to play a bit of bluff. A lot depends on it."

I nodded. It was not my place to ask questions.

"You see," he went on, "of course the German battleship expects us. I know exactly the spot in the North Sea where we are supposed to pick her up some time after lunch – provided, of course, that the Germans have carried out their plans successfully and our scouts really have been decoyed away. It is part of a huge scheme.

"Well, assuming that their own plans are successful, they will be on the look-out for us and they'll send us a wireless message when we're within close range. This will be some prearranged signal, a single letter repeated a certain number of times or something of that sort, so that any of our ships picking it up would not know what it meant. We've got a wireless mast on board which can be shoved up at will and there's a complete installation in a little room down below next to the cook's galley. Unfortunately there is not one of us who knows anything about wireless. Bosustow is a capable electrician and could control the machinery, but he can't understand the signals. Therefore, when we sight the Friesland– and I want to get as near her as possible so as to make no mistakes – we must signal with flags.

"I've got their signal book and in it is a special code made for this occasion. The flags are in the flag locker all right, but I don't understand a word of German and none of us here do, so I'm going to put the fear of God into our friend, Karl of the Portsmouth Royal. A lot depends on that.

"Just skip down, young John, and tell Scarlett to bring him up here."

"Aye, aye, sir!" I said – it came to me quite naturally, I didn't think about it – and I climbed down into the interior of the submarine.

Scarlett was standing by the starboard torpedo tube, while the Dickson brothers, with their backs turned to me, were chuckling delightedly. I heard a fragment of the conversation.

"… and so, sir, I ses to the gal, Molly her name was, they used to call her the belle of South-sea pier, 'Molly,' I ses, 'you're a little bit of all right, but …'"

I cut short that anecdote. My pedagogic instincts awoke and I forgot that the Dicksons were now brevet officers of the King.

A sharp order did it. The two lads turned away and began to be ostentatiously busy, while Scarlett, his face did not belie his name at that moment, pattered along the grating, caught hold of the ex-German waiter with unnecessary roughness, and kicked him towards the ladder of the conning-tower.

I went up first, and when Karl emerged he stood to attention with a very pale face, though I did not miss a quick glance round the horizon. My brother was looking down upon a shining magazine pistol in his hand.

Then he raised his head and his voice grated like a file.

"Look here, you Karl, or whatever you call yourself, you're a spy!"

There was a torrent of expostulation. "No, sir, not a spy; I never was that. I was a reservist in our Navy. I was called out and I had to go. I'm a prisoner of war, sir, that's what I am."

My brother shook his head. "You can't prove that," he said, "and the circumstances are most suspicious. I spared you last night, thinking you might be useful, and you certainly made some very good coffee this morning. But I've come to the conclusion …" – he lifted the pistol.

I had had my brother's word for it that Karl was an excellent head-waiter. My own observations showed me that he was a coward, for he fell on his knees and tears began to stream from his eyes. My brother spat over the side in disgust and I kicked the fellow up to attention again.

"Well, I'll give you one more chance before shooting you out of hand. You must come down with me and translate the German in the Flag Signal Book. You must tell me all you know about the plans of your late commander. Then, if you make us a good breakfast – I thought I saw some tinned sausages and some marmalade in your rack – I may possibly not shoot you, though I shall tie you up when we go into action. At any rate, you will have the same chance as the rest of us."

The fellow's gratitude was painful to see. He was all smiles and obsequiousness at once, and so that little matter was concluded satisfactorily.

We had our breakfast, and an excellent one it was, all sharing alike. Afterwards I went up on deck with the Dicksons.

We saw the sails of two trawlers a mile away on the port bow, but save for them the sea was deserted. The boys were in high spirits. Not a thought of what was to come troubled them for a moment. "Just think, sir," said Dickson max., "what a bit of luck to be in for a rag like this!" But I won't recount any more of their joyous prattle. It was real enough. They had not a trace of fear, but underlying everything there was a deep seriousness that had made them men in a few short hours.

For two hours I worked hard with Bosustow at the engines. There was lots to do. The gauges of the petrol tanks needed attention. There were many details which would only interest an engineer were I to recount them.

At a quarter to twelve I went forward with my brother. We were still on the surface – heading fast for our destination – and saw the port and starboard torpedo tubes loaded. It was astonishing how the Dicksons had picked up something of their work, and Bernard was very pleased.

At twelve we lunched and a tot of rum was served out to the three sailors. Everything was now ship-shape. We were all dressed in uniforms of the dead crew. We tied up Karl and lashed him securely in his galley. Then, Adams being at the wheel in the lower portion of the conning-tower, my brother assembled us aft, by the clanging petrol engines.

"In ten minutes," he said, "I shall sound 'Prepare for action,' and from that time onwards you will be at your posts. I believe we are going to surprise the Germans and surprise the whole world. I believe we are going to save England from this raid. But we've got to remember that we may not pull it off. I am very pleased, more than pleased, with all you have done. I never want to command a better crew. It is the best scratch crew in naval history. We are only seven and we ought to be fifteen, but that does not matter. We have shown it does not matter, already. Now before we get to quarters I think we ought to remember what day this is. It happens to be Sunday."

I am ashamed to say we all looked up in surprise, but so it was.

"Well," my brother continued, "by good luck, I happen to have a prayer-book in my pocket and I am going to read a bit of the service and the ninety-first psalm."

Very straight and stiff, he pulled out a battered little book and began. This is not a scene I wish to linger on, but you will understand my reasons.

After the last sonorous Amen, Bernard said:

"Well, we've said our prayers and we've thought of our wives and – and of our girls. That is all I have got to say."

He nodded to Scarlett and a shrill whistle – the trumpet of the Navy – rang and rattled through the tube.

The two boys and Scarlett went forward to the torpedoes. Adams was called down from the steering wheel to assist Bosustow at the engines. My brother ordered me up into the conning-tower by his side.

"You'll be of more help to me here," he said. "I shall control the ship entirely myself, but I may want your assistance. Watch me carefully in case I have to go below at any moment."

At twelve-thirty precisely, the gasolene engines were stopped. Bernard filled the tanks, slightly deflected the horizontal rudders, and we dived into the smooth, green wall of an approaching swell and sank to ten feet. The light was switched off, the periscope rose, and we bent over the white table, white no longer.

At five minutes to one the picture of the empty sea was altered. Our range of vision was about two miles, and at that distance to the north-east we observed a cloud of smoke upon the horizon.

"There she is!" I said, and put my finger upon the rapidly growing smear.

Within twenty minutes, a large battleship raised her hull, making directly towards us. We altered our course a little, and as we swerved I could see she had four funnels which grew larger every moment. Of her accompanying flotilla and of the transports we could see nothing at all.

Then we rose to the surface.

Our short-handedness became apparent at once. Adams had to be called from the engines to stand at the wheel. Scarlett and my brother went on deck as I was useless at the manipulation of flags. It was a critical moment.

"I am determined to take no chances," Bernard said; "that is why I am risking signalling. We could probably get her without showing at all, but as she expects us and will lay to for us, we can make it absolutely certain."

He had the signal book, over which he had pencilled translations of the German, in his hand.

"That flag, Scarlett – 'wireless out of order,' it means."

That flag ran up a steel halliard bent to the top of the conning-tower.

"Ah, they see us!"

Scarcely three-quarters of a mile away, the great battleship was moving at a snail's pace. Her decks were crowded with men – in the clear sunlight I could see every detail. A piece of bunting ran up her mast in a ball and opened to the breeze.

"I'm damned if I know what it means, but it's obviously all right. Now then, Scarlett, the black flag with the white stripe. That means 'am successfully bringing despatches' – got it? – good!"

There was another signal from the battleship, to which we had now approached within half a mile. The smoke from her funnels had almost ceased. She was lying to and waiting.

Slowly we forged onwards. Then came a sharp order. We jumped back into the conning-tower and the sliding hatchway closed. Scarlett had gone like a flash to his torpedo tubes, and we dived. We sank in just a hundred and fifty seconds.

"Good!" said Bernard, as the periscope panted up and the battleship lay on the table before us.

The hum and tick of the electric motors began again. Bernard turned his wheel and the picture of the battleship opened out in full broadside.

"They don't know what to make of it," he remarked, to himself, rather than to me. "Now, I think – steady – steady …"

The ship grew larger every moment, higher and higher. It seemed as if she was rising out of the water.

"Now!" – he leant over a speaking tube.

He had hardly given his order when a bell rang smartly, close by my head. I heard staccato voices below in the bows of the submarine, and then the clang and swish of the discharge. We were only three hundred yards away. A white streak appeared shooting towards the monster, like a spear of foam. It was so quick that I could hardly have followed it with my finger upon the table.

CHAPTER XI

THE SUBMARINE FIGHTS FOR ENGLAND

Can you imagine a narrow belt of foam, rushing over the sea like a live thing with irresistible and sinister suggestion of something terrible below? That is what I saw as I stared down at the toy theatre, the little, coloured microcosm.

Then the inevitable happened. Der Friesland was struck full amidships. A wall of white water rose up out of the sea. Above it, in an instant, spread a huge black fan of smoke, dark as ebony against the sun. At that moment, my brother put the helm hard down and we flew off at an angle. Even as we did so, it seemed that the side of our ship received a terrific blow. We lurched in the conning-tower; we were flung against the starboard wall. There was a nerve-wracking pause, and then, with a jerk, the submarine righted herself, simultaneously as the faintest indication of a mighty explosion fell through the water and came through our armoured walls.

"Too close!" my brother gasped. "I ought to have allowed for these German torpedoes – look, John, look!"

The recoil from the explosion of Der Friesland had nearly sent us to the bottom, but we were righted again, and we saw upon the table, quivering and indistinct, a piteous mass of unrecognisability, wreathed in black fumes, from which flared out angry bursts of fire, like Vesuvius in eruption. All this horror was sinking – sinking into the table, it seemed. Blazing all over, broken in two, the wreck of the monster went lower and lower in the water.

She was done. Bernard gave a great sob, and then hoarse orders rang through the submarine.

Within two minutes we were upon the surface. The hatch was open. My brother and myself stood there, gasping in the sunlight at the ruin we had made. The sea was covered with debris and dotted with the heads of swimming sailors. There was one boat afloat, crammed with men, under whose weight it hesitated, trembled, and sank like a stone, as we looked on.

"Good God!" I cried, "can't we help them, Bernard?"

"No can do," he answered, in Navy slang. "It can't be done, old soul. That's that. I'm damned sorry though."

We were rolling in a grey sea, churned by the monster's dying struggles. It was a desolate waste, patched with horror. Far away, on the port bow, something small and blurred was showing. It was either smoke or the hull of a big ship.

"The first transport!" Bernard said. "We had better be …"

He did not finish his sentence. Something shrieked overhead like an invisible express train. There was a sound like a clap of thunder, and a fountain of spray rose a hundred yards away from us.

We wheeled round. Not quarter of a mile away, and heading straight for us, we saw two immense, white ostrich feathers, divided as by the blade of a knife. Each instant they grew larger.

One of the convoying destroyers had made a grand detour and was coming for us at the charge.

Then, I cannot say when or how, there was a sound like two great hands clapping together in the air above us. Instantaneously, the plates of the deck and conning-tower rang like gongs, followed by little splashing sounds, as if someone was throwing eggs.

I had no idea what it was. "What the devil …" I was beginning, when Bernard explained.

"Shrapnel," he said, and held out his left arm to me. It ended in what looked like a bundle of crimson rags.

"Damn the blighters!" he said, "they've blown off my left hand. Quick, John, or we shall lose the trick. Your handkerchief!"

I pulled it out mechanically.

"Knot it round my arm – yes – there – just above the wrist. Thank God you're strong! Now then, you've got to twist it. Got anything for a lever?"

The only thing I could find was a silver-mounted fountain pen, a Christmas present from Doris the year before. I whipped it into the knot of the handkerchief, turned it round and secured it. The whole thing did not take more than ten seconds. I had hardly finished, when Bernard skipped inside the conning-tower. I followed him. The hatchway slid into its place with a clang, and as we heard another terrific explosion above us, I wrenched the rudder lever over, Bernard signalled below to fill the tanks, and through the portholes I saw the welcome green creep up, the light disappear, and felt the gratings sinking beneath my feet. I shouted down for Dickson – the first name I could think of.

Dickson max. was up in a second.

"Get the bottle of rum," I said, "the Captain's hurt."

It came. I held it to my brother's lips. He took a little and gave one deep groan.

Dickson max. stood like a statue. He never asked a question. It was wonderful.

"Who fired that torpedo?" Bernard asked.

"I did, sir. Mr. Scarlett showed me how."

"You will be pleased to know, Mr. Dickson, that you have sunk the German battleship, Der Friesland, with probably a thousand souls on board. This will be remembered."

"You are hurt, sir?"

"Get down to the torpedo tubes. Load the empty one and stand by for orders."

Dickson vanished.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

"Right as rain. Now then, we've got to find those transports. I took their bearings before we sank. Meanwhile I think we'll get a little deeper, out of harm's way."

He told me what to do. I pulled the necessary lever and spoke orders to Bosustow at the engines. The needle on the manometer quivered and rose. We went down to thirty feet. Immediately, it seemed as if the world above, the noise of battle, everything, faded away. We were buzzing along in the depths of the sea, just as we had been, intact, unhurt, until I looked at Bernard's hand. He was rather pale, but as pleased in face as if he was just tumbling into the "Sawdust Club" at Portsmouth.

"I say," he said, "won't the daily papers spread themselves over this!"

Somehow or other, a beastly little fly must have got into the conning-tower. It settled on me. I put up my hand to brush it away. My hand came back – pink, and I stared stupidly at it.

"You silly blighter!" my brother said, "didn't you know you'd lost half your ear?"

I suppose we ran, deep under water, at the top speed of which the motors were capable for at least another ten minutes. Adams was called up to the wheel and Bernard went down. I stood where I was until the man below shouted up. "Captain calling for you, sir!"

I tumbled down into the centre of the submarine, looking first aft to where the huge Cornishman, Bosustow, was quietly moving about his engines.

"Forrard, sir," said Bosustow, and I hastened round the gangway towards the bows. Scarlett, the Dicksons, and Bernard were standing by the torpedo tubes. Bernard turned to me.

"That concussion has snookered our tubes a bit," he said. "You see we aren't quite accustomed to this new German mechanism. Scarlett says, and I quite agree, that it's a toss up if we can make correct aim under water. I think we shall have to go for that transport on the surface."

He looked at me with quick interrogation. I knew what he meant. Already we had done more than anyone in the world would have thought possible. It was no time for sentimentalism or heroic thoughts, and we knew that, whatever happened, we had earned imperishable fame. We were safe now. Should we run another risk? That was what my brother was asking me. Even his iron nerve doubted itself for an instant.

"The only thing I can see to do," I answered, "is to let 'em have it in the open – out of the trenches, bayonet attack, what?"

"My own opinion entirely, sir," said Scarlett. "Damn it, begging your pardon, sir, we've not 'alf give 'em it yet!"

For a moment my brother's glance rested on the two eager boys. Was he justified in flinging them to death after they had done so much, behaved so splendidly?

They knew it. By some intuition, the young devils saw it at once.

"Oh, let's have another smack at them, sir!" they said in chorus.

Without another word, Bernard limped along the gratings and I helped him up into the conning-tower again. We rose to the surface.

The stars in their courses fought for Sisera! When we went out on deck, the first transport was scarcely a mile away from us on the starboard quarter. We had judged it to a tick.

But she was no longer heading west. She had turned tail. She was a Hamburg-Amerika liner converted to a transport, and thick black smoke poured out of her four funnels as she raced back towards Heligoland and safety.

"She's got nearly three thousand troops on board, I'll bet you a manhattan," Bernard said. "We must get her, we simply must!"

Turning to the west, we saw at least five destroyers rushing for us like express trains. Whether they had seen us come up or not I cannot tell, but they knew well enough what our manœuvre would be, and they were not a mile and a half away.

"Get down. Tell Bosustow to cram it all on. Increase the spark. We've got to do twenty knots if we scrap the whole thing."

I was there in a moment, I told Bosustow what the skipper had said. The big man was quietly chewing tobacco, and he spat down on the accumulators as he made a motion to salute. He moved like a slug over his roaring engines, but even as he did so, the angry hum, the muffled explosions, rose into a steel symphony like Tchaikovsky's "1812"! I felt the ship leap forward like a whippet out of leash. When I stumbled up on deck again, the wind was whistling all round the conning-tower. It blew my cap off into the sea.

We gained, we gained enormously, but so did the pursuing destroyers.

We soon knew that. There were sounds behind us like a little street-boy whistling to a friend. They were firing their bow machine guns, taking no careful aim, at the fearful pace they were going, but all around us fountains of foam rose in the sea as we plunged onwards.

"You know, John," said my brother, "it's a difficult thing for any gunners at all to fire their bow chasers at a little bobbing thing like a submarine. Of course, they may get us with a lucky shot, but I don't think they will."

They didn't.

The great liner saw us coming and slanted off obliquely to the north. It wasn't any use at all. We had the heels of her, though we knew that at any moment our engines might give out, owing to the fearful strain we were putting on them.

It was Scarlett who fired the torpedo – "must let the old blighter have his chance!" my brother said – and it went straight and true to the Princessin Amalia, as we afterwards learned she was.

I think that was the worst of all. We torpedoed her from six hundred yards. There was no explosion, as there was in the case of the battleship. We could see everything far more distinctly. She simply broke in two and sank in three minutes, defenceless, impotent.

"Poor chaps!" I said, as we watched.

"Fortune of war!" Bernard answered – "Yes, poor chaps! At the same time, remember that they're the same sort of fellows who have been crucifying flappers in Belgium and taking out the whole male population of harmless villages and shooting them before breakfast. They would have been doing that all over Norfolk in thirty hours, if" – he paused – "if you hadn't been rejected by the R.N.F.C. and also been the right hand of the late lamented Doctor Upjelly. We must get down quickly, or else …"

He had turned and was holding his binoculars to his eyes.

"Good heavens!" he said, "what's that?"

I turned, and I saw that the five destroyers were sweeping away in a great curve to the north. They were pursuing us no longer.

"What is it?" I cried.

The answer didn't come from my brother, though I heard it plainly enough. It was like thunder many miles away – a huge, dull boom such as I had never heard before.

"Why, they're running!"

"I should rather think so, old soul!"

"Are they afraid of us? What is that noise?"

"That, my dear young friend, unless I am very much mistaken, is one of the twelve-inch guns of His Majesty's ship, Vengeance. Cruiser-battleship, young John. I happen to know she's been lying off Harwich for the last week, waiting orders. Our friend, Lieutenant Murphy, has sent my wires to good purpose, and 'now we shan't be long!'"