CHAPTER III
SUNK IN ACTION
A BLINDING flash and a deafening roar, followed by a sickening lurchof the little patrol boat as the lightly built hull reeled to therecoil, announced that the action had commenced. Almost immediatelythe breech-block of the six-pounder was jerked back and the stillsmoking metal cylinder clattered noisily on the deck. The air reekedof burnt cordite as the excited gun's crew, who had never before beenin action, loaded and fired like men possessed.
With the first shot Kenneth's sense of nervousness fell from him likea cast garment. Up to the present the foe had not replied to theM.L.'s fire, but it was not to be supposed that she would decline thecombat. Glowing steel messages of death would presently be hurtlingthrough the air with the avowed object of wiping out the little M.L.and her crew. Kenneth fully realised this, but beyond a curiousfeeling of elation the Sub was as cool as if bringing No. 1071alongside her parent ship.
Her antagonist's reply was not long delayed. With a lurid red flashthat completely eclipsed the wan moonlight, her after quick-firer letrip. A shrill whine as the projectile passed overhead caused everyman on the M.L.'s deck to duck his head.
"If she can't do better than that it's time she packed up!" shoutedWakefield. "Keep it up, men! Let her have it properly in the neck!"
A provoking wreath of vapour drifting down hid the misty outlines ofher opponent from the M.L.'s crew. Only the constant flashes of theformer's guns gave the six-pounder's gun-layer an inkling of herdirection. Whether five hundred or a thousand yards separated thecombatants remained a matter for speculation, and whether the foe was"legging it" or closing upon Wakefield's command was equally aspeculative proposition.
"That's a near one," thought Meredith, as a shell literally scrapedthe searchlight mounted on the roof of the wheel-house.
Hitherto the opposing craft had been firing with too much elevation.Apparently realising her mistake, her gunner was lowering the sights.
Kenneth's thought was also shared by his skipper. Wakefield decidedfirst to increase the distance in order to baffle the enemygun-layers, and then make a dash for his opponent and thus bring thedepth-charges into action.
Grasping the telegraph levers, he intended to signal full ahead onthe starboard and full astern on the port engine in order to spin theM.L. on her heel in the shortest possible time. But at the criticalmoment the mechanism failed badly: both levers became interlocked.
Savagely Wakefield wrenched at the refractory indicator. Manoeuvringunder engines alone was out of the question. The use of the helm wasthe sole solution of the difficulty.
"Cease fire!" shouted the skipper, judging that the absence offlashes from the puny six-pounder would mystify the hostile craft,and give the M.L. a better chance to close and use her depth-charges."Stand by aft, Meredith, and give an eye to things. If those fellowsget jumpy and fool about with the firing key, we're in the soup."
Promptly the Sub obeyed, yet as he did so he almost involuntarilycrouched under the lee side of the "tin" dinghy that was hanginginboard from the davits. Then he laughed at what he had done. Theidea of imagining that the thin galvanised steel plates of the dinghywould stop a 4.7-inch shell struck him as the height of absurdity.
Yet even as he sidled past the dinghy a concussion shook the M.L.from stem to stern. It was a far different concussion from thatcaused by her own quick-firer. This time her opponent had got onehome.
M.L. 1071 stopped dead, like a man who receives a knock-out blowbetween the eyes. Pungent smoke enveloped her, as she rolled sullenlyon the long swell. Then the pall of smoke was rent by a furious blastof red flame. An unlucky shot had struck her amidships, playing havocin the engine-room and igniting one of the petrol-tanks.
Nor was that the worst of the business. A fire could be subdued withlittle difficulty by means of patent extinguishers; but theprojectile, luckily without exploding, had passed completely throughboth sides of the wooden hull of the M.L., tearing jagged holes thatwere admitting volumes of the North Sea into her engine-room.
Valiantly the artificers, directly they recovered from thedisconcerting effects of the projectile, strove to quench the flamesuntil, knee-deep in water on which floated patches of blazing petrol,they were compelled to evacuate their untenable posts. Scorched andalmost suffocated by the fumes from the chemicals, they gained thedeck and collapsed.
"Fall in aft!" roared Wakefield. "Swing out the boat! Look livelythere, men!"
The crew needed no second bidding. Every man on board, save the twounconscious engine-room ratings, who were unceremoniously dragged aftby their messmates, knew that M.L. 1071 was doomed. It was a questionwhether she would blow up or founder, for the flames were momentarilyincreasing in violence and threatening to explode the magazine, whilealready the waves were lapping over her foredeck.
Quickly, yet without a vestige of panic, the men swung out the dinghyand lowered her from the davits. The two casualties were then liftedin, and the rest of the crew followed--Meredith and Wakefield beingthe last to leave.
"She's going down with flying colours at all events," exclaimed theskipper. "Give way, lads!"
The men pulled with a will. There is a powerful incentive to do sowhen in the vicinity of a couple of depth-charges that might at anymoment be detonated with disastrous results.
"What's Fritz doing?" inquired one of the rowers, when at length theorder was given to "Lay on your oars."
No one knew. The enemy had ceased fire, but when he did so none ofthe late M.L.'s crew could say. In the excitement of abandoning ship,the fact that they were under shell-fire hardly concerned them.
"Pushing off at the rate of knots, he is," hazarded another. "Unlesswe've given him gyp. P'raps he's been knocked out, same as us."
"Shouldn't be surprised," remarked Clarkson, the gun-layer. "I'llswear I got half a dozen home in his hide before the fog came onagain. Otherwise he'd be sniffing around and giving us a dose ofmachine-gun fire. That's Fritz's little joke when a fellow can't hitback. If----"
A terrific roar caused the man to break off suddenly. Somewherewithin the radius of a mile, although the now increasing fog gave noindication of direction, an explosion of no slight magnitude hadoccurred. For nearly a minute came the sound of falling debris, andthen deep silence.
"Is that Fritz or us?" inquired one of the men, as the rowers resumedtheir task.
"How far is it to Auldhaig?" asked another. "Lucky for us we aren'tin the ditch. 'Twould be a longish swim."
Wakefield let the men talk. It helped to keep up their spirits,although they were not apt to be down-hearted. For his part, he waskept busily employed in steering the boat by means of a small compassthat was little better than a toy. By a fortunate chance, he hadfound it with a miscellaneous assortment of small articles in theinside pocket of his monkey-jacket. A fortnight previously he hadbeen induced by an attractive damsel at a bazaar in aid of theAuldhaig Seamen and Fishermen's Society to buy what then occurred tohim to be an utterly useless article, but now he found himselftrusting implicitly to the doubtless highly erratic magnetisedneedle. It was a sorry substitute for the boat-compass that ought tohave been in the boat, but wasn't; but even in the baffling fogWakefield knew that he was provided with a means of direction. Withreasonable luck, the boat ought to hit the Scottish coast somewhere,if the survivors were not picked up by one of the other patrol-boatsknown to be cruising in the vicinity.
At frequent intervals Wakefield bade the men rest on their oars,taking advantage of the silence to listen for sounds indicating thepresence of other craft; but beyond the lap of the water against themetal sides of the boat the stillness was unbroken.
It was an eerie experience, climbing the slope of the long rollersand sliding down into the trough beyond, the while encompassed by afog now so dense that at twenty yards sea and air blended intonothingness. Fortunately there was little or no wind, and the boatrode the swell without shipping as much as a pailful of water, butboth Wakefield and Meredith knew full well that those sullen rollersportende
d a storm at no distant date. The while the pale rays of themoon penetrated with little difficulty the relatively thin stratum offog overhead, the ghostly light adding to the weirdness of the scene.
"Prop.!" exclaimed Kenneth laconically.
A tense silence fell upon the boat's crew. Through the mists came theunmistakable thud of a vessel's propellers, but whether from north,south, east or west the baffling atmospheric conditions gave no clue.
Then the subdued sound ceased abruptly.
"Give a hail, lads!" exclaimed Wakefield; but before the bowman couldstand and give vent to a bellowing "Ahoy!" the skipper countermandedthe order.
"We'll put a stopper on the hailing business," he remarked, withoutgiving any further explanation. "Ah, there it is again!"
"Nearer this time," announced Meredith. "Voices, too."
"Too jolly guttural for my liking," added Wakefield. "It's a Fritzsurface cruising. We'll lie doggo."
"Wish they'd push along out of it," said the stroke in a low tone."We want to get another move on."
These sentiments were shared by the rest of the boat's crew. Everyman knew what detection meant. A machine-gun turned upon the boat, orperhaps a bomb thrown with the whole-hearted generosity that Fritzwas wont to display towards a boat-load of helpless seamen.
"Silence!" hissed Wakefield, holding up his hand to impress upon themen the necessity for absolute noiselessness.
A minute passed in breathless suspense. Although the unseen craft hadagain switched off the ignition, the plash of water against her bowswas distinctly audible.
"Stand by to give way, men," whispered the skipper. "If she spots uswe may be able to give her the slip in the fog."
Even as he spoke a sudden gust of wind swept over the boat. As if bymagic the hitherto enfolding pall of mist was torn relentlesslyaside, revealing in the full light of the moon the outlines of aU-boat at less than fifty yards from the survivors of M.L. 1071.
The Mystery Ship: A Story of the 'Q' Ships During the Great War Page 3
