SIA?HOUNDS 
 
 . ; , 
 
 ; 
 
SEA-HOUNDS 
 
BRITISH BATTLE-SHIPS ON PATROL 
 
SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 BY 
 
 LEWIS R. FREEMAN 
 
 Lieut. R.N.V.R. 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM 
 PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 1919 
 
PUBLISHED IN THE U.S.A 1919 
 By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC. 
 
(Co 
 
 Commodore Sir DOUGLAS BROWNRIGG, Bart. 
 C.B., R.N., Chief Censor, Admiralty 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 THE MEN WHO CHANGED SHIPS 
 
 "FIREBRAND" . 
 
 " BACK FROM THE JAWS " . 
 
 HUNTING 
 
 THE CONVOY GAME . 
 
 YANK BOAT VERSUS UVBoAT 
 
 ADRIATIC PATROL 
 
 PATROL .... 
 u f\ 
 
 V .... 
 
 THE WHACK AND THE SMACK 
 BOMBED .... 
 AGAINST ODDS . 
 BOUNDING UP FRITZ . 
 
 1 
 
 35 
 59 
 82 
 112 
 135 
 157 
 173 
 199 
 232 
 250 
 268 
 287 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 British Battleships on Patrol . Frontispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 
 German Shells Striking the Water at the 
 Battle of Jutland 
 
 A Broadside at Night at the Battle of Jut- 
 land 
 
 12 
 
 12 
 90 
 90 
 128 
 128 
 128 
 
 " Kamerading " with Uplifted Paws . 
 Helping the Cook to Peel Potatoes 
 Where the Great Liner Plowed Along . 
 We Had Collided with the " Brick Wall " 
 Now She Was Back at Base 
 
 A Limit to the Number of " Cans " a De- 
 stroyer Can Carry .... 152 
 
 A Depth Charge . . . . .188 
 Disabled Destroyer in Tow .... 188 
 
 The Lookout on a Destroyer, and Part of His 
 
 View 242 
 
 She Came Bowling Along Under Sail . . 284 
 
SEA HOUNDS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE MEN WHO CHANGED SHIPS 
 
 BETWEEN the lighter-load of burning beeves 
 that came bumping down along their line at 
 noon, a salvo of bombs slapped across 
 them at one o'clock from a raiding Bulgar air 
 squadron, a violent Levantine squall which all but 
 broke them loose from their moorings at sundown, 
 and a signal to raise steam for full speed with all 
 dispatch at midnight, it had been a rather exciting 
 twelve hours for the destroyers of the First Divi- 
 sion of the - th Flotilla, and now, when at dawn 
 the expected order to proceed to sea was received, 
 ii began to look as though there might be still fur- 
 ther excitement in pickle down beyond the hori- 
 zontal blur where the receding wall of the paling 
 purple night-mist was uncovering the Gulf's hard, 
 flat floor of polished indigo. 
 
 " It's probably the same old thing," said the cap- 
 tain of the Sparky repressing a yawn after he had 
 given the quartermaster his course to enter the 
 labyrinthine passage where puffing trawlers were 
 towing back the gates of the buoyed barrages, " a 
 
 1 
 
2 ' SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 U-boat or two making a bluff at attacking a convoy. 
 They've been sinking a good deal more than we can 
 afford to lose; last week they got an oiler and 
 another ship with the whole summer's supply of 
 mosquito-netting aboard but that was off the south 
 peninsula of Greece or up Malta way. Here they 
 haven't more than ( demonstrated ' about the mouth 
 of the Gulf for two or three months. They know 
 jolly well that if they once come inside, no matter 
 if they do sink a ship or two, that it's a hundred 
 to one between sea-planes, ' blimps/ P.B.s, and 
 destroyers against their ever getting out again. 
 There's just a chance that they may try it this 
 time, though, for they must know how terribly 
 short the whole Salonika force is of petrol, and 
 what a real mess things will be left in if they can 
 pot even one of the two or three oilers in this con- 
 voy. You'll see a merry chase with a kill at the 
 end of it if they do, I can promise you, for the con- 
 voy is beyond the neck of the bag even now, and if 
 a single Fritz has come in after them, the string 
 will be pulled and the rest of the game will be 
 played out here in the ' bull-ring.' ' 
 
 The captain had just started telling me how the 
 game was played, when the W.T.* room called him 
 on the voice-pipe to say that one of the ships of the 
 convoy had just been torpedoed and was about to 
 sink, and shortly afterwards^a radio was received 
 from the C.-in-C. ordering the flotilla to proceed to 
 
 * Wireless Telegraph. 
 
THE MEN WHO CHANGED SHIPS 3 
 
 hunt the submarine responsible for the trouble. 
 Then the officer commanding the division leader 
 flashed his orders by " visual " to the several units 
 of the flotilla, and presently these were spreading 
 fan-wise to sweep southward toward where, sixty to 
 a hundred miles away, numerous drifters would be 
 dropping mile after mile of light nets across the 
 straits leading out to the open Mediterranean. 
 Northeastward, where the rising sun was begin- 
 ning to prick into vivid whiteness the tents of the 
 great hospital areas, several sea-planes were cir- 
 cling upwards; and southeastward, above the dry 
 brown hills of the Cassandra peninsula, the silver 
 bag of an air-ship floated across the sky like a soar- 
 ing tumble bug. The hounds of the sea and air had 
 begun to stalk their quarry. 
 
 " It's a biggish sort of a place to hunt over," 
 said the captain, as the Spark stood away on a 
 course that formed the outside left rib of the 
 flotilla's " fan," and took her in to skirt the rocky 
 coast of Cassandra; "and there's so many in the 
 hunt that the chances are all in favour of some 
 other fellow getting the brush instead of you. 
 And unless we have the luck to do some of the 
 flushing ourselves, I won't promise you that the 
 whole show won't prove no end of a bore; and even 
 if we do scare him up well, there are a good many 
 more exciting things than dropping ' ash-cans ' on 
 a frightened Fritzie. It won't be a circumstance, 
 for instance, to that rough house we ran into at the 
 
4 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 * White Tower' last night when that boxful of 
 French ' blue-devils ' wouldn't stop singing ' Ma- 
 delon ' when the couchee-couchee dancer's turn 
 began, and her friend, the Russian colonel in the 
 next box, started to dissolve the Entente by 
 
 The captain broke off suddenly and set the alarm 
 bell going as a lynx-eyed lookout cut in with " Con- 
 nin' tower o' submreen three points on port bow," 
 and, with much banging of boots on steel decks and 
 ladders, the ship had gone to " Action Stations " 
 before a leisurely mounting recognition rocket re- 
 vealed the fact that the " enemy " was a friend, 
 doubtless a " co-huntress." 
 
 Although we were still far from where there was 
 yet any chance of encountering the U-boat which 
 had attacked the convoy, there were two or three 
 alarms in the course of the next hour. The first 
 was when we altered our course to avoid a torpedo 
 reported as running to strike our port bow, to dis- 
 cover an instant later that the doughty Spark was 
 turning away from a gambolling porpoise. The 
 second was when some kind of a long-necked sea- 
 bird rose from a dive about two hundred yards on 
 the starboard beam and created an effect so like a 
 finger-periscope with its following " feather " that 
 it drew a shell from the foremost gun which all but 
 blew it out of the water. It was my remarking the 
 smartness with which this gun was served that led 
 the captain, when a floating mine was reported a 
 few minutes later, to order that sinister menace to 
 
THE MEN WHO CHANGED SHIPS 5 
 
 
 be destroyed by shell-fire rather than, as usual, by 
 shots from a rifle. All the guns which would bear 
 were given an even start in the race to hit the 
 wickedly horned hemisphere as we brought it 
 abeam at a range of six or eight hundred yards; 
 but the lean, keen crew of the pet on the fore- 
 castle splashing the target with their first shot 
 and detonating it with their second won in a walk 
 and left the others nothing but a hundred-feet- 
 high geyser of smoke-streaked spray tumbling 
 above a heart of flame to pump their tardier shells 
 into. 
 
 The captain gazed down with a smile of affection- 
 ate pride to where the winners, having trained their 
 gun back amidships, were wiping its smoky nose, 
 sponging out its mouth, polishing its sleek barrel, 
 and patting its shiny breech, for all the world as 
 though they were grooms and stable-boys and 
 jockeys performing similar services for the Derby 
 winner just led back to his stall. 
 
 " There's not another such four-inch gun's crew 
 as that one in any ship in the Mediterranean," he 
 said, "which makes it all the greater pity that 
 they have never once had a chance to fire a shot at 
 anything of the enemy's any larger than that Bulgar 
 bombing plane they cocked up and took a pot at 
 after he had gone over yesterday. I mean that they 
 never had a chance as a crew. Individually, I be- 
 lieve there are tw r o or three of them that have been 
 through some of the hottest shows in the war. That 
 
6 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 slender chap there in the blue overall was in the 
 Killarney when she was shot to pieces and sunk 
 by German cruisers at Jutland, and I believe his 
 Number Two that one in a singlet, with his sleeves 
 rolled up and just a bit of a limp was in the; 
 Seagull when she was rammed, right in the middle 
 of an action with the Huns, by both the Bow and 
 the Wreath. A number of ratings from the Sea- 
 gull clambered over the forecastle of the Bow while 
 the two were locked together, evidently because 
 they thought their own ship was going down, 
 while two or three men from the Bow were thrown 
 by the force of the collision on to the Seagull. 
 When the two broke loose and drifted apart men 
 from each of them were left on the other, and by a 
 rather interesting coincidence, we have right here 
 in the Spark at this moment representatives of both 
 batches. They, with two or three other Jutland 
 ' veterans ' who chance also to be in the Spark, call 
 themselves the ' Black Marias.' Just why, I'm not 
 quite sure, but I believe it has something to do with 
 their all being finally picked up by one destroyer 
 and carried back to harbour like a lot of drunks 
 after a night's spree. And, to hear them talk of 
 it when they get together, that is the spirit in 
 which they affect to regard a phase of the Jut- 
 land battle which wiped out some scores of their 
 mates and two or three of the destroyers of their 
 flotilla. Talking with one of them alone, he will 
 occasionally condescend to speak of the serious side 
 
THE MEN WHO CHANGED SHIPS 
 
 of the show, but their joint reminiscences, in the 
 constant by-play of banter, are more suggestive of 
 tumultuous ' nights of gladness > on the beach at 
 Port Said or Rio than the most murderous spasm 
 of night fighting in the whose course of naval his- 
 tory. You've got a long and probably tiresome day 
 ahead of you. Perhaps it might ease the monotony 
 a bit if you had a yarn with two or three of them. 
 They'll be bored stiff standing by in this blazing 
 sun with small prospects of anything turning up, 
 and probably easier to draw out than at most times. 
 Gains, there by the foremost gun, would be a good 
 one for a starter. There is no doubt of his having 
 seen some minutes of the real thing in the Kil- 
 larney. Only don't try a frontal attack on him. 
 Just saunter along and start talking about any- 
 thing else on earth than Jutland and the Killarney, 
 and then lead him round by degrees." 
 
 We were just passing the riven wreck of a large 
 freighter as I sidled inconsequently along to the 
 forecastle, and the strange way in which the stern 
 appeared to be stirring to the barely perceptible 
 swell gave ample excuse for turning to the crew of 
 the foremost gun for a possible explanation. It 
 .was Leading Seaman Gains, as incisive of speech as 
 he was quick of movement, who replied, and I 
 recognized him at once as a youth of force and per- 
 sonality, one of the type to whom the broadened op- 
 portunities for quick promotion offered the Lower 
 
SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 Deck through the war has given a new outlook on 
 life. 
 
 " She was a tramp with a cargo of American 
 mules for the Serbs, sir," he said, " and she was 
 submarined two or three miles off shore. The 
 mouldie cracked her up amidships, but her back 
 didn't break till she grounded on that sand spit 
 there. At first her stern sank till her poop was 
 awash at high tide there's only a few feet rise 
 and fall here, as you probably know, sir but when 
 the bodies of the mules that had been drowned 
 'tween decks began to swell they blocked up all 
 the holes and finally generated so much gas that 
 the increased buoyancy lifted the keel of the stern 
 half clear of the bottom and left it free to move 
 with the seas. I have heard they intend to blow 
 out her bottom and sink her proper for fear that 
 end of her might float off in a storm and turn 
 derelict." 
 
 That story was, as I learned later, substantially 
 true, but it had just enough of the fantastic in it to 
 tempt the twinkling eyed " Number Two " to a bit 
 of embroidery on his own account. He was the one 
 with the muscular forearms and the slight limp. 
 The suggestion of " New World " accent in his 
 speech was traceable, he subsequently told me, to 
 the many years he had spent on the Esquimault 
 station in British Columbia. 
 
 " They do say, sir/' he said solemnly, rubbing 
 hard at an imaginary patch of inferior refulgency 
 
THE MEN WHO CHANGED SHIPS 9 
 
 on the shining breech of his gun, " that she's that 
 light and jumpy with mule-gas, after the sun's been 
 beating on her poop all day, that she lifts right up 
 in the air and tugs at her moorings like a kite 
 balloon. And there's one buzz winging round that 
 they're going to run a pipe-line to her end and use 
 the gas for inflating " 
 
 Gains, evidently feeling that there were limits to 
 Which the credulity of a landsman should be im- 
 posed upon, cut in coldly and crushingly with: 
 " She's not the only old wreck ? round here that they 
 could draw on for ' mule-gas ' if there's ever need 
 of it, my boy ; and as for her rising under her own 
 power well, if she ever goes as far as you did 
 under yours the night you jumped from the Seagull 
 to the Bow I'll " 
 
 The gusty guffaw that drowned the rest of Gains' 
 broadside left us all on good terms, and, by a 
 happy chance, with the " Jutland ice " already 
 broken. Number Two, joining heartily in the 
 laugh, said that, "nifty" as was his jump from 
 the Seagull to the Bow, it wasn't a " starter " to 
 the " double back-action-summerset " with which 
 Jock Campbell was chucked from the Boiv to the 
 Seagull. " We played a sort of ' Pussy- Wants-a- 
 Corner ' exchange, Jock and me,'' he said, " for 
 Jock was Number Four or ' Trainer ' of the crew of 
 one of the fo'c'sle guns of the Bow, and I was the 
 same in the Seagull. We didn't quite land in each 
 other's place when the wallop came, but it wasn't 
 
10 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 far from it; and we each finished the scrap in the 
 other guy's ship. You might pike aft and try to 
 get a yarn out of Jock when ' Pack up ! ' sounds. 
 He's a close-mouthed tyke, though, and if you can 
 get him to tell how he played the human proj, you'll 
 be doing more'n anyone else has been able to pull 
 off down to now. He's half clam and half sphinx, 
 I think Jock is, and that makes a ' dour lad ' when 
 crossed with a ' Glasgie ' strain. Which makes it 
 all the sadder to have him qualify for membership 
 in the ' Black Marias/ and me, because I finished 
 in the Bow, froze out." 
 
 I told him that I would gladly have a try at 
 Jock later, provided only that he would first tell me 
 what happened in his own case, adding that it 
 wasn't every British sailor who could claim the dis- 
 tinction of fighting the Hun from two different 
 ships within the hour. 
 
 " It would have been a darned sight better for me 
 if I'd confined my fighting to one ship/' he replied 
 with a wry smile, " and it was mighty little fighting 
 I got out of it anyhow. But sure, I'll tell you what 
 I saw of the fracas, and then you can take a chance 
 at Jock. It was along toward midnight, and the 
 Seagull was steaming in < line ahead ' with her half 
 of the flotilla. The Killarney and Firebrand was 
 leading us, with the Wreath and one or two others 
 astern. I was at i action station ' with the crew of 
 the foremost gun, and keeping my eye peeled all 
 round, for some of the ships astern had just been 
 
THE MEN WHO CHANGED SHIPS 11 
 
 popping away at some Hun destroyers they had 
 reported. All of a sudden I saw the officers on the 
 bridge peering out to starboard, and there, coming 
 up astern of us and steering a converging course, I 
 saw the first, and right after, the second and third, 
 of a line of some big lumping ships some kind of 
 cruisers. All of the flotilla must have thought they 
 was our own ships, for no one challenged or fired 
 all the time they came drawing up past us, making 
 four or five knots more than the seventeen we were 
 doing. 
 
 " When the leader was about abreast the Kil- 
 larney and inside of half a mile range, she flashed 
 on some red and green lights, switched on her 
 searchlights and opened fire. Ship for ship, the 
 Huns were just about even with our line now, and 
 the Firebrand and Seagull must have launched 
 mouldies at the second and third cruisers at near 
 the same moment. Hitting at that range ships 
 running on parallel courses was a cinch, and both 
 slugs slipped home. It was some sight, those two 
 spouts of fire and smoke shooting up together, and 
 by the light of 'em I could see that the Firebrand's 
 bag was a four-funneller, and ours a three. The 
 first one keeled right over and began to sink at 
 once, but the one our mouldie hit went staggering 
 on, though down by the stern and with a heavy 
 list to port. 
 
 " We would sure have put the kibosh on this one 
 with the next torpedo if we hadn't had to turn 
 
12 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 sharp to port to avoid the Killarney just then, and 
 so missed our last chance to do something in ' the 
 Great War.' I lost sight of the Firebrand and took 
 it for granted she had been blown up. It was not 
 till a week afterwards that we learned she had 
 turned the other way, engaged one Hun cruiser 
 with gunfire, rammed another, just missed being 
 rammed by a third, and finally crawled into port 
 under her own steam. 
 
 " The Seagull came under the searchlights of the 
 leading Hun cruiser for a few seconds as she came 
 up abreast of the burning Killarney, and then the 
 smoke and steam cut off the beam and I was blind 
 as a bat for a minute. The Killarney had been left 
 astern when I looked for her again, and seemed all 
 in, with fires all over her and only one gun yapping 
 away on her quarter-deck. I didn't know it at the 
 time, but it was my old college friend, Gains, here, 
 who was passing the projes, for that pert little 
 piece. You'd never think it to look at him, would 
 you?" Gains, feigning to discover something 
 which needed adjustment in the training mechan- 
 ism, clucked his head behind the breech of his gun 
 at this juncture, and did not bob up again until a 
 resumption of the yarn deflected the centre of 
 interest back to Number Two. 
 
 " Turning to port took us over into the line of the 
 other Division, and the first thing I knew the Sea- 
 gull had poked in and taken station astern of the 
 Boiv, which was leading it. Just then some Hun 
 
GERMAN SHELLS STRIKING THE WATER AT THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND 
 
 
 A BROADSIDE AT NIGHT AT THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND 
 
THE MEN WHO CHANGED SHIPS 13 
 
 ship, I think it was the same one that strafed the 
 Killarney, opened on the Bow from starboard, the 
 bursting shell splashing all over her from the fun- 
 nels right for'ard. Bow turned sharp to port to 
 try to shake off the searchlights, and Seagull 
 altered at same time to keep from turning in her 
 wake and running into the shells she was side- 
 stepping. All of a sudden I saw another destroyer 
 steering right across our bows, and to keep from 
 ramming her the captain altered back to star- 
 jjoard. That cleared her stern by an eyelash, but 
 the next second I saw that it was now only a ques- 
 tion of whether Seagull would ram Bow, or Bow 
 would ram Seagull. How a dished and done-for 
 quartermaster, falling across his wheel as he died, 
 decided it in favour of Bow I did not learn till later. 
 
 "The Hun shells were tearing up the water 
 astern of the Boiv for half a minute as she began to 
 close us; then they stopped, and the smash came 
 at the end of five or ten seconds of dead quiet. It 
 was pitchy dark, with the flicker of fires on the 
 deck of the Bow making trembly red splotches in 
 the smoke and steam. A sight I saw by the light 
 of one of those fires just before the wallop is my 
 main memory of all the hell I saw in the next 
 quarter hour. It has lasted just as if it was burned 
 into my brain with a hot iron, and it figures in one 
 way or other in every nightmare I've had since." 
 
 The humorous twinkle in the corner of the man's 
 eye, which had persisted during all of his recital up 
 
SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 to this point, suddenly died out, and he was staring 
 into nothingness straight ahead of him, where the 
 picture his memory conjured up seemed to hang in 
 projection. 
 
 " It was just before we struck/' he went on, 
 speaking slowly, and in an awed voice strangely in 
 contrast to the rather bantering tone he had 
 affected before ; " and the bows of the Bow were 
 only ten or fifteen yards off, driving down on us in 
 the middle of the double wave of greeny-grey foam 
 they were throwing on both sides. By the light of 
 a fire burning in the wreck of her bridge I saw a lot 
 of bodies lying round on her foVsF, and right then 
 one of them picked itself up and stood on its feet. 
 It was a whole man from the chest up, and from a 
 bit below the waist down, but for all that I could 
 see nothing between. Of course, there must have 
 been an unbroken backbone to make a frame that 
 would stand up at all, but all the shot-away part 
 was in shadow, so I saw nothing from the chest to 
 the hips. It was just as if the head and shoulders 
 were floating in the air. I remember 'specially 
 that it held its cap crushed tight in one of its hands. 
 The face had a kind of a calm look on it at first. 
 Then it turned down and seemed to look at what 
 was gone, and I could see the mouth open as if to 
 holler. Then the crash came, and I didn't see it 
 again till they were stitching it up in canvas with 
 a fire-bar before dropping it overside the next day. 
 I learned then that an 8-inch shell had done the 
 
THE MEN WHO CHANGED SHIPS 15 
 
 trick rather a big order for one man to try to 
 stop." 
 
 He took a deep breath, blinked once or twice as 
 though to shut out the gruesome vision, and when 
 he resumed the corners of a sheepish grin were 
 cutting into and erasing the lines of horror that 
 had come to his face in describing it. 
 
 " There's no use of my claiming that I was 
 thrown over to the Bow by the shock," he con- 
 tinued, the twinkle flickering up in his eye again, 
 " like Jock was pitched over to the Seagull. That 
 did happen to three or four ratings from the Sea- 
 gull, though, one signalman and a chap standing 
 look-out being chucked all the way from the fore 
 bridge. But in the case of most of the twenty- 
 three of us who found ourselves adorning the Bow's 
 foVsl' when the ships broke away, it was the result 
 of a ' flap ' started by some ijits yelling that we 
 were cut in two and going down. What was more 
 natural, then, with the Bow looming up there big 
 and solid she was a good sight larger than the 
 Gull that the ' rats ' should leave the sinking ship 
 for one that looked like she might go on floating for 
 a while. I'm not trying to make an excuse for what 
 happened, but only explaining it. The Lord knows 
 we paid a big enough price for it, anyhow. 
 
 " The Bow hit us like a thousand o' bricks just 
 before the bridge, and cut more than half-way 
 through to the port side. The shock seemed to 
 knock the deck right out from under my feet, and I 
 
16 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 was slammed hard against the starboard wire rail, 
 which must have kept me from being ditched then 
 and there. A lot of the wreckage from the Bow's 
 shot-up bridge showered down on the Seagull's 
 fo'c'sP, but my friend, Jock Campbell, floated down 
 on the side toward the bridge, so I had no chance 
 to welcome him. From where I was when I pulled 
 up to my feet, it looked as if the Bow only lacked 
 a few feet from cutting all the way through us, and 
 as soon as I saw her screws beating up the sea as 
 she tried to go astern, I had the feeling that the 
 whole fo'c'sl' of the Gull must break off and sink 
 as soon as the ' plug ' was pulled out. I was still 
 sitting tight, though, when that howl started that 
 we were already breaking off and going down, and 
 well, I joined the rush, and it was just as easy 
 as stepping from a launch to the side of a quay. 
 I'm not trying to make out a case for anybody, but 
 the little bunch of us who climbed >to the Bow from 
 that half-cut-off foVsl' sure had more excuse than 
 them that swarmed over from aft and leaving the 
 main solid lump of the ship. But we none of us 
 had no business clambering off till we were 
 ordered. In doing that we were only asking for 
 trouble, and we sure got it. 
 
 " The fo'c'sr of the Bow was all buckled up in 
 waves from the collision, and there was a slipperi- 
 ness underfoot that I twigged didn't come from sea 
 water just as soon as I stumbled over the bodies 
 lying round the wreck of the port foremost gun 
 
THE MEN WHO CHANGED SHIPS 17 
 
 where I climbed over. We couldn't get aft very 
 well on account of the smashed bridge, and so the 
 bunch of us just huddled up there like a lot of 
 sheep, waiting for some one to tell us what to do. 
 The captain had already left the bridge and was 
 conning her from aft or possibly the engine-room 
 at this time. From the way she was shaking and 
 swinging, I knew they were trying to worry her 
 nose out, putting the engines astern, now one and 
 now the other. The clanking and the grinding was 
 something fierce, but pretty soon she began to 
 back clear. 
 
 " It was just a minute or two before the Bow tore 
 free from her that the poor old Gull got the wallop 
 that was finally responsible for doing her in. This 
 was from a destroyer that came charging up out of 
 the night and wasn't able to turn in time to clear 
 the Gull's stern, with the result that she went 
 right through it. Her sharp stem slashed through 
 the quarterdeck like it was cutting bully beef, slic- 
 ing five or ten feet of it clean off, so that it fell 
 clear and sank. The jar of it ran through the whole 
 length of the Seagull, and I felt the quick kick of it 
 even in the Bow. In fact, I think the shock of this 
 second collision was the thing that finally broke 
 them clear of the first, for it was just after that I 
 saw the wreck of the Seagull's bridge begin to slide 
 away along the Bow's starboard bow, as what was 
 left of it wriggled clear. 
 
 " It wasn't much of a look I had at this last 
 
18 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 destroyer, but I had a hunch even then that she was 
 the Wreath, who had been our next astern. It 
 wasn't till a long time afterward that I learned for 
 certain that this was a fact. The Wreath had fol- 
 lowed us out of line when we turned to clear the 
 stopped and burning Killarney, and then, when we 
 messed up with the Bow, not having time to go 
 round, she had to take a short cut through the tail 
 feathers of the poor old Seagull. Then she tore 
 right on hell-for-leather hunting for Huns, for it's 
 each ship for herself and the devil take the hind- 
 most in the destroyer game more than in any 
 other. 
 
 " I saw the water boiling into the hole in the side 
 of the Seagull as the Bow backed away, and ex- 
 pected every minute to see the for'rard end of her 
 break off and sink. But beyond settling down a lot 
 by the head, she still held together and still 
 floated. Bulkheads fore and aft were holding, it 
 looked like, and there was still enough i ship ' left 
 to carry on with. I could hardly believe my eyes 
 when I saw the blurred wreck of her begin to gather 
 stern way. But it was a fact. Though her rudder, 
 of course, was smashed or carried away, and though 
 she couldn't go ahead without breaking in two, she 
 was still able to move through the water, and per- 
 haps even to steer a rough sort of course with her 
 screws. As it turned out, it wouldn't have made 
 no difference whether we was in her or no; but 
 just the same it was blooming awful, standing 
 
THE MEN WHO CHANGED SHIPS 19 
 
 there and knowing that you'd left her while she 
 still had a kick in her. The ragged line where some 
 of the wrecked stern of her showed against the 
 phosphorescent glow of the churn of her screws 
 that was my good-bye peep at all that was left of 
 the good old Seagull. Gains here, or Jock Camp- 
 bell, can tell you what her finish was. I don't like 
 to talk about it. 
 
 " Some of us tried to get aft as soon as we were 
 clear of the Seagull, but couldn't make the grade 
 over the wreck of the bridge. As all the officers 
 and men who had been there had either been killed 
 or wounded, or had gone to the after steering posi- 
 tion they were now conning her from, we were as 
 much cut off from them as though we were on 
 another craft altogether. All the crews of her 
 fo'c'sl' guns or such of them as were still alive 
 were in the same fix. So we just bunched up there 
 in the dark and waited. Some of the wounded were 
 in beastly shape, but there wasn't much to be done 
 for them, even in the way of first aid. Some ship- 
 mates of other times drifted together in the dark- 
 ness, and I remember 'specially it was while I 
 was trying to tie up some guy's scalp with the 
 sleeve of my shirt hearing one of them telling 
 another of a wool mat he had just made, all with 
 ravellings from ' Harry Freeman.'* Funny how 
 it's the little things like that a man remembers. 
 
 *The bluejackets' name for knitted woollen gifts from friends 
 on the beach. 
 
20 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 The gunner whose head I bound up was telling me 
 just how the Bow happened to be strafed, but it 
 went in one ear and out of the other. 
 
 " But the queerest thing was me hearing some 
 guy lying all messed up on the deck muttering 
 something about skookum kluches, and some more 
 Chinook wa-wa that I knew he couldn't have picked 
 up anywhere else but from serving in a ' T.B.D. 7 
 working up and down the old Inland Passage from 
 Vancouver Island. I felt my way to where he was 
 huddled up in the wreck of a smashed gun, told him 
 that I was another tilicum from the 'Squiraalt 
 Base, and asked him what ship he had been there 
 in. I knew there was a good chance that we'd been 
 mates in the old Virago, and there even seemed a 
 familiar sound to his voice. But I wasn't fated 
 ever to find out. He just kept on muttering, slip- 
 ping up on some words as if something was wrong 
 with his mouth, and I didn't dare light a match, of 
 course. When I tried to ease him up a bit by lift- 
 ing so he'd lie straight well, all of him didn't 
 seem to come along when I started dragging by his 
 shoulders. I never did find what was wrong 
 with him, for right then new troubles of my own 
 set in. 
 
 " I was still down on my knees trying to locate 
 what was missing with this poor guy, when out of 
 the corner of my eye, for it was near behind me I 
 spotted the flash of a ship challenging. Bow chal- 
 lenged back from somewhere aft and then what 
 
THE MEN WHO CHANGED SHIPS 21 
 
 I piped at once for a Hun destroyer switched on 
 searchlights and opened fire. She was about two 
 cables off on our port quarter, heading right for us 
 and blazing away with one or two guns, probably 
 all that would bear on that course. A second de- 
 stroyer, right astern her, didn't seem to be firing. I 
 heard the bang and saw the flash of two or three 
 shells bursting somewhere amidships, and then the 
 Bow's port after gun began to reply. The crews 
 of all the others were knocked out, and so were 
 the searchlights. 
 
 " Between the twenty-three from the Seagull and 
 what were left of the Bow's foVsl' guns' crews, 
 there must have been thirty-five to forty men 
 bunched together there forward of the wreck of the 
 bridge. When the firing started, the whole ka- 
 boodle of us did what you're always under orders to 
 do when you have nothing to stand up for laid 
 down. Or, rather, we just tumbled into a heap like 
 a pile of dead rabbits. 
 
 " I went sprawling over the poor devil I was try- 
 ing to help, and there were two or three on top of 
 me. Into that squirming hump of human flesh one 
 of the Hun's projes landed kerplump. It didn't 
 hit me at all, that one, but I can feel yet the kind 
 of heave the whole bunch gave as it ploughed 
 through. Then it was like warm water was being 
 thrown on the pile in buckets, but it wasn't till I 
 had scrambled out and found it sticky that I 
 twigged it was blood. 
 
22 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 " Bad as it was, it might have been a lot worse. 
 There hadn't been enough resistance to explode the 
 proj, and so it killed only four or five and wounded, 
 maybe, twice that, where it would have scoured 
 every man jack of us into the sea and Kingdom 
 Come if it had gone off. The next one found some- 
 thing in the wreck of the bridge hard enough to 
 crack it off though, and it was a ragged scrap of 
 its casing that drove in to the point of my hip and 
 put a kink in my rolling gait that I've never quite 
 shaken out yet. It wasn't much of a hurt to what 
 it gave some, though, 'specially a lad that caught 
 the main kick of it and got ditched to starboard, 
 some of him going under the wire rail, and some 
 over. 
 
 " The Huns couldn't have known how down and 
 out the Bow really was, for there was nothing in 
 the world but that one port gun to prevent their 
 closing and polishing her off. The chances are they 
 recognised her class, knew she was more than a 
 match for the pair of them if she was right, and 
 were glad to get off with no more'n an exchange of 
 shots in passing. That was the end of the fighting 
 for the Bow, and about time, too. Her bows were 
 stove in, all the fore part of her was full of water, 
 her bridge was smashed and useless, her W.T. and 
 searchlights were finished, all but one gun was out 
 of action, and when they came to count noses 
 next day forty-two of her crew were dead. Far 
 from looking for more trouble, it was now only a 
 
THE MEN WHO CHANGED SHIPS 23 
 
 question of making harbour, and even that as it 
 turned out was touch-and-go for two days. 
 
 " It was about one in the morning when that 
 brush with the destroyers came off, and after that 
 there was nothing to do but hang on till daylight 
 and they could clear a way to reach us from abaft 
 the wreckage of the bridge. It was pretty awful, 
 ticking off the minutes there in the darkness. A 
 good many of the worst knocked about were talking 
 a bit wild, but I never heard the guy with the 
 Chinook wa-wa again. He must have died and been 
 pitched over while I was being bandaged up. I did 
 hear the * wool-mat-maker ' yapping again, though, 
 saying how ' target cloth * was better to work on 
 than canvas, and describing how to pull the stuff 
 through in a loose loop, and then cut them so that 
 they bunched up in * soft, puffy balls.' Seems like 
 I was cussing him when I dropped off to sleep. 
 
 " I must have bled a good deal, for I slept like a 
 log for four or five hours, and woke up only when 
 some one turned me over and began to finger my 
 hip. It was broad daylight, but hazy, and the sun 
 just showing through. Some of the wounded had 
 already been carried aft, and they were mostly dead 
 ones that were lying around. These were being 
 sewed up in canvas to get ready to bury. I 
 thought there was something familiar in the face 
 of one guy I saw them laying out and sort of col- 
 lecting together, but it wasn't till later that it 
 suddenly- came to me that he was the one I had seen 
 
24 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 by firelight when he stood up and looked at himself 
 where he'd been shot in two. 
 
 " The two guys who bundled me up in a < Neil 
 Robertson ' stretcher and packed me aft, picking 
 their way over and through the wreckage, were 
 both all bound up with rags, and so was about 
 every one else I saw. They took me below into the 
 wardroom, and then, because that was full up, on 
 to some officer's cabin, where they found a place 
 for me on the deck. After a while, a little dark guy 
 he was also a good deal bandaged, and so 
 splashed with blood that I didn't notice at the 
 time he was a sick bay steward came in, washed 
 my wound out with some dope that smarted like 
 the devil, and tied it up. He worked like a streak 
 of greased lightning, and then went on to some one 
 else. That chap was Pridmore, and, let me tell you, 
 he was the real ( top-liner ' of all the heroes of the 
 Bow. The surgeon had been killed at the first 
 salvo the night before, leaving no one but him to 
 carry on through all the hell that followed. And 
 some way God knows how he did it; yes, even 
 though he was wounded three or four times him- 
 self, and though he had to go without sleep for 
 more'n two days to find time to dress and tend the 
 thirty or forty crocks he had on his hands. He was 
 sure the star turn, that Pridmore, and I was glad 
 to read the other day that they had given him the 
 D.S.M. Not that he'd have all he deserved if they 
 hung medals all over him; but well, a guy likes 
 
THE MEN WHO CHANGED SHIPS 25 
 
 to have something to show that what he's done 
 hasn't been lost in the shuffle entirely.' 7 
 
 I made an entry of " Pridmore, sick bay steward, 
 Bow" in my notebook for future reference, and as 
 I was returning it to my pocket a sudden list to 
 starboard, accompanied by a throbbing grind of 
 the helm, heralded a sharp alteration of course. 
 Round she went through ten or twelve points, 
 finally to steady and stand away on a course that 
 seemed to lead toward the dip in the skyline be- 
 tween the jagged range of mountains back of 
 Monastir and the point where a lowering bank of 
 cirro-cumuli hid the ancient abode of the gods on 
 the snow-capped summit of Olympus. On Number 
 Two assuring me that his yarn was spun, that there 
 was nothing more to it save an attempt he had 
 made, in spite of his wound, to get into a fight 
 that started when some of the wounded were hissed 
 by a gang of dockyard " mateys " I clambered 
 back to the bridge to learn the significance of the 
 new move. I still wanted to hear Gains' story of 
 the Killarney, but I had already sized him up 
 sufficiently to know that he was not the type of man 
 who would unbosom himself before his mates. 
 With him, I knew, I should have to watch my 
 chances, and endeavour to have a yarn alone. 
 Number Two's parting injunction was to " try and 
 have a go at Jock Campbell, < the human proj.' 
 Jock's the guy at the after gun that looks like he 
 was rigged out for deep-sea diving,'' he said. 
 
26 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 " Most likely he'll only growl at you at first, but if 
 he won't warm up any other way, try him with a 
 yarn about a skirt. He's < verra fond o' a braw 
 lass,' is Jock Campbell." 
 
 Our alteration of course, the captain told me, 
 was the consequence of an order received by wire- 
 less directing him to cross over and hunt down a 
 strip along the western shore of the gulf which was 
 not being covered by the present formation of the 
 division, " I've had a signal stating that they're 
 on the track of one U-boat, and there may be some- 
 thing to make them think another has slipped 
 further along and is lying in ambush for the con- 
 voy about off Volo. They're evidently keeping the 
 rest of the division heading in to meet the convoy 
 itself." 
 
 The Spark stood on to the north-west until the 
 Vardar marshes showed as an olive-green rim 
 around the bend of the gulf, before turning south- 
 ward again to skirt the steep shingle-strewn beach 
 along the alluvial " fans " spreading down to the 
 sea from the base of Olympus. The wild-looking 
 Thessalian shepherds were just driving their mot- 
 ley flocks down to the open foreshore to freshen up 
 in the rising midday sea breeze, and it w r as when I 
 assured Jock Campbell (where I found him leaning 
 on the breech of the after gun and staring land- 
 wards with his bushy brows puckered in the incred- 
 ulous scowl of a man who can't credit the evidence 
 
THE MEN WHO CHANGED SHIPS 27 
 
 of his own eyes) that it was an actual fact that the 
 fuzzy black sheep were wading in and drinking if 
 sparingly of the salt water, that a basis of con- 
 versation was finally established. Up to that 
 moment he had given no sign that any of my care- 
 lessly thrown out tentatives had penetrated to his 
 ears through the " telepad " rig-out which estab- 
 lished his connection with the gunnery control. 
 But when, bringing my lips close to his nearest 
 " ear-muff," I shouted that I had come up along 
 that coast from Lharissa but a few weeks previ- 
 ously by motor and pack-train, and that, in lieu 
 of any fresh water for many miles in either direc- 
 tion, I had actually seen the sheep and goats 
 drinking in flocks from the sea, the look of hostile 
 suspicion in his eyes was replaced by one of friendly 
 interest. 
 
 "Weel, weel, y'u dinna say so?" he ejaculated, 
 easing away the edge of the helmet over one ear; 
 " the puir wee beasties ! " Then he volunteered 
 that he had once kept from freezing to death in a 
 snowstorm on Ben Nevis by curling up among his 
 sheep, and I told how I had once sheared sheep 
 (not mentioning it was for only half a day, and 
 that my " clip " was composed of about equal parts 
 mutton and wool) on a back blocks station in 
 Queensland. Then he described how he had seen a 
 big merino ram butt a Ford car off the road up 
 Thurso way, and I with more finesse than 
 veracity capped that with a yarn of how I had 
 
28 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 seen a flock of Macedonian sheep blown up by a 
 Bulgarian air-bomb, and how one of them had 
 landed unhurt upon a passing motor lorry load of 
 forage and gone right on grazing! I reckoned 
 that might be calculated to remind Jock of some- 
 thing of the same character which had befallen him 
 on a certain memorable occasion, and I was not 
 disappointed. 
 
 " Twas verra like wha' cam ma way on the nicht 
 the Bow rammed the Seagull at the fecht aff Jut- 
 land," he commented instantly, with no trace of 
 suspicion in his voice. " Wad ye care to hear 
 
 aboot it? Ye wud? Weel, then ." As brief, 
 
 as direct and to the point was the plain unvar- 
 nished tale Jock Campbell told me the while a 
 noon-day storm awoke reverberant echoes of the 
 Jovian thunders in the snow-caverns of Olympus 
 and the Spark hunted down through the jade green 
 waters of the Thessalian coast for a U-boat that 
 was supposed to be lurking in their lucent depths 
 " somewhere off Volo." 
 
 "Ah was at ma action station at the port fore- 
 most gun," he began, wiping his perspiring brow 
 with a wad of greasy waste, which left an undulant 
 trail of oil from the recoil cylinder in its wake, 
 "when we gaed bang into a line o' big Hun 
 cru'sers, and we lat blaze at them and them at us. 
 The range was short, and wP their serchlichts 
 lichten us up oor position wasna that Ah wad ca' 
 verra pleasant. Up gaed a Hun cru'ser in a spoort 
 
THE MEN WHO CHANGED SHIPS 29 
 
 o' flame and reek, hit, Ah thocht, by a mouldie 
 launched by oor next astern. Ah was fair jumpin' 
 wF joy at the sicht, when a hale salvo o' screechin' 
 projes cam bang inta the fo'c'sF. Ah minded the 
 licht o' them mair than the soun', which was na 
 great. 
 
 " The Huns had switched aff their serchlichts 
 when they opened fire, so that noo the projes was 
 bursting in inky mirk. I doubtna oor midships and 
 after guns was firing, but na the foremost, for Ah 
 dinna mind being blinded by their licht afore the 
 Hun projes gan bursting. My ain gun wudna bear 
 on the Huns, so Ah was just standing by for the 
 time, ready to train if we turned. 
 
 " Twa salvos cam maybe frae twa different 
 cru'sers ane after the ither, wF aboot half a 
 meenit atween. Ye ken that the licht o' a sh^ll- 
 burst is ower afore ye can even think, and a' the 
 furst ane showed me was just the gun crews, 
 standing and bracin' themseFs like when a big sea 
 braks inboard. It was ower like a flash o' lichtnin, 
 and the licht had gone oot afore Ah saw anybody 
 blown up or knocked oot. But Ah felt a michty 
 blast o' air and an awfu' shaikin o' the deck, and 
 then the bang o' lumps o' projes dingin' 'gainst the 
 bridge and smackin' through bodies. 
 
 " The flash o' the burst o' the second salvo tellt 
 me what havoc the first had wrocht, but by noo ma 
 een was licht-blind and Ah cudna see weel. The 
 sta'bo'd gun was twisht oot o' shape, and a' the 
 
30 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 crew but ane were strechit on the deck. To a' 
 appearance that lad had been laid oot wi' the ithers, 
 but noo he was puin himsel' to his feet and crawlin' 
 up the wreck o' the gun when a proj frae the second 
 salvo burst richt alow him. By the flash Ah saw 
 him flyin' inta the air, and by the licht o' anither 
 flash a bittie efter then his corp, wi' twa or three 
 ithers, gang ower the side. A lump o' that last 
 proj carried awa' the Number Wan o' ma ain gun, 
 and, onlike some o' the ithers, not a bit o' him was 
 left ahint. Ah meseP was knockit flat, but wasna 
 much the worse for a' that. 
 
 " That was the hininost Ah saw o* the Huns for 
 that nicht, and the last I mind o' the Bow was the 
 dead and deein' wha covert the fo'c'sP, wP the licht 
 o' the fires burnin' aft flickerin* ower them. Then 
 cam' a cry frae the bridge that a 'stroyer was closin' 
 us to port, and then Ah mind hearin' the captain 
 shoutin' an order ower and ower, like he wasna 
 bein' answered frae the ither end o' the voice-pipe. 
 ' Hard-a-port ! ' he roared, but weel micht he shout 
 for ay, for the quartermaster, wi' a' on the signal 
 bridge, was dead by noo, and the helm was left 
 jammed hard-a-sta'bo'd. 
 
 " Then Ah felt her shudder as the engines went 
 full speed astern, and Ah got to ma feet in time to 
 see she was headin' straicht for the foVsP o' a 
 T.B.D. that was steerin' cross her bows. And 
 richt after that she must ha' struck wi' a michty 
 crash. The next thing Ah mindit weel, Ah didna 
 
THE MEN WHO CHANGED SHIPS 31 
 
 mind much save that I was lyin' on ma back in a 
 sort o' narrow way atween twa high wa's, wF a 
 turrible pain in ma back and mony sea-boots 
 trampin' ower ma face. The bashin' o' the boots 
 didna hurt me, for Ah was kind o' dazed; but Ah 
 seem to mind turnin' ma face to the wa', just like 
 ye do whan the flees are botherin' ye in the 
 mornin'. 
 
 " What brocht me roun', I'm thinkin', was the 
 shock that Ah got whan that wa ? ? gan to shak' up 
 and doon, and then slid richt awa', leavin* me 
 hingin' ower the brink o' a black hole, wF water 
 souchin' aboot the bottom o't. 'Twas like wakin' 
 oot o' a bad dream and findin' that the warst o' it 
 was true. 
 
 " Ah was too groggy to ken richt awa' that the 
 Boio had rammed anither ship and that Ah had 
 been pitched oot o' her into the wan she'd hit. 
 Quite natteral, Ah thocht masel' still in the Boiv, 
 seein' that Ah cud be nae mair use on the fo'c'sl', 
 which was a' smashed and rippit up and drappin' 
 to bits, Ah thocht that Ah ought to run aft to see 
 if Ah could gie a haun. 
 
 " But when Ah tried to get up, Ah fund the bane 
 o' ma spine was so sair that Ah cudna stand 
 straicht, and a' Ah cud do was to craw' and stagger 
 alang. Every mon Ah knockit agin, and every bit 
 of wreck Ah felt ower, sent me sprawlin'. Whan I 
 fund that there was no so mony funnels as Ah 
 minded afore, and whan Ah cudna find the W.T. 
 
32 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 boose, Ah thocht that they had been shot awa'. 
 Findin' a crew at stations by a midships gun, Ah 
 speired if they was short o' hauns. They said they 
 werna, so Ah gaed alang aft, lookin* for a chance 
 to be useful. 
 
 " Ah was thinkin' to maseP, ' she's awfu' little 
 shot up ' ( for ye ken Ah had expectit her to be a' to 
 bits frae the way Ah'd heard the projes burstin' 
 ahint the bridge), whan a syren gae a michty 
 shriek a' most at ma lug, and Ah turned to see 
 anither T.B.D., spootin' fire frae her funnels and 
 throwin' a double bow wave higher'n her fo'c'sl', 
 headin' richt inta us. Ah cud see that her helm 
 was hard-a-port by the way her wake was boilin', 
 but it was nae guid. She turned enough to keep 
 frae rammin' us midships, but she cudna miss oor 
 stern. 
 
 " Ah had just been tellt by ane o' the after gun's 
 crew to get oot o' the wa' (they not bein' short o' 
 hauns), whan this new craft hove inta sicht. At 
 first it lookit like she wad cut thro' for'ard o' me, 
 leavin' me ahint to drown in the wreck o' the 
 stern. Then Ah thocht she was comin' richt at me, 
 and Ah started crawlin' back to whaur Ah had 
 come frae. But she keepit turnin' and turnin', so 
 that she hit at last richt abaft the after gun. Ah 
 fell a' in a heap at the shock, and, tho' Ah was a 
 guid ten feet frae whaur her stem cut in, the bulge 
 o' her crunched into the quarterdeck till she 
 passed sae close that suthin' stickin' oot frae her 
 
THE MEN WHO CHANGED SHIPS 33 
 
 side it miclit liae been the lip o' a mouldie-tube, 
 Ah'm thinkin' gae ma puir back a sair dig, and 
 there Ah was amang the mess left o' the gun and 
 its crew. Ah was near to bein' dragged owerboard 
 after that T.B.D., and when she was gone Ah fund 
 maseF for the second time in ane night hangin' 
 ower the raggit edge o' a black hole listenin' to the 
 swish o' ragin' waters. 
 
 " And then, gin that and ma half-broken back 
 werna enough for ony mon, Ah hear some ane 
 shoutit that they thocht that last ramniin' had done 
 in the auld Seagull, and that the time wad soon 
 come to 'bandon ship. 
 
 " "' Seagull! ' says Ah ; ' dinna ye ken this ship is 
 the Bow? ' Ah kind o' went groggy after that, and 
 Ah have a sort o' dim remembrance that some ane 
 flashit an 'lectric torch in ma face and said that Ah 
 must have been pitchit ower whan the Bow rammed 
 the Seagull, and that Ah prob'ly hadna shaken doon 
 to ma new surroundings. Ah tried hard to speir 
 what kind o' a shakin' doon they meant gin this 
 hadna been ane. But Ah didna seem to have the 
 power to niak' ma words come straicht, and they 
 said, ' He's gane a bit off his chuck,' and ca'd some 
 ane to carry me below. 
 
 " The pains runnin' up and doon ma spine when 
 Ah was lowered doon the ladder were ower much 
 for me, and Ah passed off for a bit. Whan Ah cam 
 roun' Ah was bein' shoved along the ward-room 
 table whaur Ah had been lyin' to rnak' room for 
 
34 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 a lad wi' bandages roun' his head and a' drippin' 
 wi' salt water. His ship had gone doon twa hours 
 syne, and maist o' the time he had been in the 
 water or roostin' on a Carley Float That lad's 
 name was Gains, noo the gun-layer o' the fo'most 
 gun o' the Spark him Ah saw ye talkin' wi' just 
 noo. He was strong and cheery himseF, but fower 
 o 1 his mates were chilled to the bane, and Ah wacht 
 'em shiver to death richt afore ma een. 
 
 " It was aboot daylicht when we pickit up a' 
 that was left o' the crew o' the Killarney, and aboot 
 an hour efter we fell in wi' the Sportsman, wha 
 passed us a hawser and tried to tow, stern-first, 
 what was left o' the Seagull. Ah didna see what 
 was wrang, but they tellt me that the wreck o' 
 the stern and the helm bein' jammed hard 
 a-sta'bo'd made sae much drag that the cable partit. 
 Then there was naithing else to do sin' the Seagull 
 cudna steam but to sink her wi' gun-fire. The 
 captain askit permission for this by W.T., and 
 when it came they ditched the books and signals, 
 transferred abody to the Sportsman, and then gae 
 her a roun' or twa at the water-line wi' the Sports- 
 man's guns. Doon she gaed, and that," he con- 
 cluded with a grin, " is the true yarn o' the sinkin' 
 o' the Seagull. If only o' ma mates try to mak' ye 
 b'lieve that she foundert 'count o' bein' hit and 
 holed by a ' human proj ' kent as Jock Campbell, 
 I'm hopin' ye'll no listen to 'em.' 7 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 " FIREBRAND " 
 
 IT was a little incident which occurred one night 
 when the Grand Fleet was returning to Base 
 from one of its periodical sweeps through the 
 North Sea that set Able-seaman Melton talking 
 of the things he had seen and felt and heard the 
 time he was standing anti-submarine watch In the 
 Firebrand, when her flotilla of destroyers mixed 
 itself up with a squadron of German cruisers in the 
 course of the " dog-fight " which concluded the bat- 
 tle of Jutland. 
 
 I had found him, muffled to the eyes and dancing 
 a jangling jig on a sleet-slippery steel plate to keep 
 warm, when I picked my precarious way along the 
 coco-matted deck and climbed up to the after 
 searchlight platform of the Flotilla Leader I 
 chanced to be in at the time. A fairly decent day 
 was turning into a dirty night, and the steadily 
 thickening mistiness which accompanied a sodden 
 rain in process of transformation into soft snow 
 had reduced the visibility to a point where the 
 Commander-in-Chief deemed it safer for the Fleet 
 4 "* *""* back to open sea and take no further chances 
 
36 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 among the treacherous currents and rocky islands 
 that beset the approaches to the Northern Base. 
 
 The Flagship, which had received the order by 
 wireless, flashed " Destroyers prepare to take sta- 
 tion for screening when Fleet alters to easterly 
 course at nine o'clock," and shortly before that 
 hour the Flotilla Leader made the signal to execute. 
 Almost immediately I felt the hull of the Flyer 
 take on an accelerated throb as her speed was in- 
 creased, and a moment later the wake began to boil 
 higher as the helm was put hard-a-starboard to 
 bring her round. We were steaming a cable's length 
 on the starboard bow of the Olympus, the leading 
 ship of the squadron at the time, and the carrying 
 out of the manoeuvre involved the Flyer's leading 
 her division across the head of the battleship line 
 and down the other side on an opposite course, so 
 that the destroyers would be in a position to resume 
 night-screening formation when the fleet had fin- 
 ished turning. 
 
 Just how the captain of the Flyer happened to 
 cut his course so fine I never learned, but the 
 patchiness of the drifting mist must have had a 
 good deal to do with making him misjudge his dis- 
 tance. At any rate, just as we had turned through 
 nine or ten points, I suddenly saw the ominously 
 bulking bows of the Olympus come juggernauting 
 out of the night, with the amorphous loom of the 
 bridge and foretop towering monstrously above. 
 The Flyer seemed fairly to jump out of the water 
 
FIREBRAND " 
 
 37 
 
 at the kick her propellers gave her as the turbines 
 responded to the bridge's call for " More steam," 
 and a spinning puff of smoke darkened the glow 
 above the funnels for a moment as fresh oil was 
 sprayed upon the fires beneath the boilers. 
 
 It was a good deal like a cat scurrying in front 
 of a speeding motor-car, and the consequences 
 would have been more or less similar had not one of 
 the Olympus' s swarming lookouts, peering into the 
 darkness from his screened nest, gathered hint of 
 the disaster that menaced in time to warn the fore- 
 bridge. The great super-dreadnought responded 
 to her helm very smartly considering her tonnage, 
 and she turned just far enough to starboard to 
 avoid grinding us under. I could almost look up 
 through the port hawse-pipe as the flare of her 
 bow loomed above my head, and the man standing 
 by the depth-charges on the all-but-grazed stern of 
 the Flyer might well have been pardoned even if 
 the story his mates afterwards told of his action 
 on this occasion were true that he had tried to 
 lend off one of the largest battleships afloat with 
 a boat-hook. 
 
 A silhouette against the barely perceptible glow 
 at the back of the forebridge of a " brass-hatted " 
 officer shaking his fist as though in the act of ramp- 
 ing and roaring like a true British sailor moved by 
 righteous anger; a forty or fifty degree heel to 
 starboard as the curling bow- wave of the Olympus 
 thwacked resoundingly along her port side, and 
 
38 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 the Flyer drove on into the sleet-shot darkness to 
 blow off accumulated steam in rolling clouds, allow 
 her fluttering pulse to become normal, and resume 
 the even tenor of her way. 
 
 Melton, A.B., whistling over and over the open- 
 ing bars of the chorus of " Do You Want Us to 
 Lose the War? " started his metallically clanking 
 jig again, but presently, like a man with something 
 on his mind, sidled over and shoved his Balaklava- 
 bordered face against the outside of the closely- 
 reefed hood of my " lammy " coat, and muttered 
 thickly something about being afraid he had got 
 himself into trouble. When I had pulled loose a 
 snap and improved communications by unmuffling 
 a lee ear, I learned that it had just occurred to the 
 good chap that he failed to report to the bridge 
 the battleship he had sighted " fifty yards to the 
 port beam," and he was wondering whether there 
 would be a " strafe " coming from the skipper 
 about it. 
 
 " Fact is, sir," he said, speaking brokenly as the 
 galloping gusts every now and then forced a word 
 back into his mouth, " that that rip-rarin' stem, 
 with the white foam flyin' off both sides of it, bear- 
 ing down right for where I was standin* all that 
 was so like what I saw the night of Jutland in the 
 Firebrand that that the turn it give me took my 
 mind right back and and I wasn't thinkin' o' 
 anything else till the 'Lympus was gone by." 
 
 I assured him that, since the Olympus had doubt- 
 
FIREBRAND 
 
 39 
 
 less been sighted from the bridge several winks 
 before she had been visible from his less-favourable 
 vantage, they would probably have been too busy 
 to respond to his call at the voice-pipe even had he 
 tried to report what he saw. 
 
 " If I were you," I said, " I would forget all 
 about that, and try to explain how a cruiser that 
 the Firebrand was about to ram bow-to-bow" (I 
 had, of course, already heard something of that 
 dare-devilish exploit) "could have looked to you 
 like the Olympus ramping down on a right-angling 
 course and threatening to slice off the Flyer's stern 
 with all her depth-charges. I quite understood that 
 one ramming is a good deal like another, as far as 
 a big ship hitting a destroyer fair and square is 
 concerned, but " 
 
 " 'Twasn't that first cruder 'tall, sir," Melton in- 
 terrupted, nuzzling into my " lammy " hood again 
 to make himself heard. " Twas Another 'un, sir a 
 wallopin' big un. The seas was stiff wi' cru'sers fer 
 a minit, sir, an' no sooner was we clear o' the first 
 un than the second come tearin' down on us, tryin' 
 to cut us in two amidships. An' that last un was a 
 battP cru'ser nigh as big as the 'Lympus, all shot 
 up in the funnels and runnin' wild an' bloody- 
 minded like a mad bull. We were pretty nigh to 
 bein' stopped dead, an' if she hadn't been slower'n 
 cold grease wP her helm she'd ha' eat us right up." 
 
 There had been nothing of malice aforethought 
 in my action in cornering Melton on the search- 
 
40 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 light platform that night, for, as it chanced, I had 
 failed to learn up to that moment that he had been 
 in the famous Firebrand at Jutland. Nor, with the 
 wind and sea getting up as fast as the glass and 
 the thermometer were going down, was the time or 
 the place quite what a man would have chosen for 
 anything in the way of cosy fireside reminiscence. 
 But, both these facts notwithstanding, I felt that, 
 since I was leaving the Flyer to go to another base 
 directly she arrived in harbour on the morrow, it 
 would be criminal to neglect the opportunity of 
 hearing what was perhaps the most sportingly 
 spectacular of all the Jutland destroyer actions 
 related by one who was actually in it. I did not 
 dare to distract Melton's attention from his look- 
 out by drawing him into talking while he was still 
 on watch, but, when he was relieved at ten o'clock, 
 I waylaid him at the foot of the ladder with a pot 
 of steaming hot ship's cocoa (foraged from the 
 galley by a sympathetic ward-room steward) and 
 both pockets of my " lamrny " coat filled with the 
 remnants of a box of assorted Yankee "candy" 
 looted from the American submarine in which I 
 had been on patrol the week before. 
 
 Melton rose to the lure instantly or perhaps 
 I should say " fell to the bribe " for the British 
 bluejacket, if only he were given a chance to de- 
 velop, is quite as sweet of tooth as his brother 
 Yank. Because I could hardly take him to the 
 captain's cabin, which I w r as occupying for the 
 
"FIREBRAND" 
 
 41 
 
 moment, for a yarn, and because he, likewise, 
 could not take me down to the mess deck to disturb 
 the off-watch sleepers with our chatter, there was 
 nothing to do but carry on as best we could in the 
 friendly lee of one of the funnels. 
 
 It was a night of infernal inkiness by now, and 
 only clinging patches of soft snow and their 
 blanker blankness revealed the dimly guessable 
 lines of whaler and cowls and torpedo tubes and the 
 loom of the loftier bridge. The battleship line was 
 masked completely by the double curtain of the 
 darkness and the snow, and only a tremulous grey- 
 ness, barely discernible in the intervals of the 
 flurries of flakes where the starboard bow-wave 
 curled back from the Olympus, gave an intermit- 
 tent bearing to help in keeping station. Underfoot 
 was the blackness of the pit, not the faintest gleam 
 reflecting from the waves washing over the weather 
 side to swirl half-knee high about our sea boots. 
 Even overhead all that was visible were fluttering 
 patches of snow flakes dancing through the haloes of 
 pale rose radiance that crowned the tops of the fun- 
 nels. The wail of the wind in the wireless aerials, 
 the crash of the surging beam seas, the throb of the 
 propellers, and the pussy-cat purr of the spinning 
 turbines these were the fit accompaniment to 
 which Melton A.B. recited to me the epic of the 
 Firebrand at Jutland. 
 
 The cocoa I quaffed mug for mug with Melton, 
 down to the last of the sweet, sustaining " set- 
 
42 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 tlings" in the bottom of the pot; but the candy I 
 kept in reserve to draw on from time to time as it 
 was needed to lubricate his tongue and stoke the 
 smouldering fires of his memory. I started him off 
 with a red-and- white " barber's pole " stick, which 
 took not a little fumbling with mittened hands to 
 extract from its greased tissue paper wrapper, and 
 the seductive fragrance of crunched peppermint 
 mingled with the acrid fumes of burning petroleum 
 
 as he leaned close and began to tell how the th 
 
 Flotilla, to which the Firebrand belonged, screen- 
 ing the th B.S. of the Battle Fleet, came upon 
 
 the scene toward the end of the long summer after- 
 noon. He had witnessed Beatty's consummate 
 manoeuvre of " crossing the T " of the enemy line 
 with the four that remained of his battered First 
 Battle Cruiser Squadron, and he had seen the main 
 Battle Fleet baulked of its action the lowering 
 mists and the closing in of darkness ; but it was not 
 until full night had clapped down its lid that the 
 fun for the Firebrand really began. 
 
 " It was just 'twixt daylight an' dark," he said, 
 reaching me a steadying hand in the darkness as 
 the Flyer teetered giddily down the back of a re- 
 ceding sea, " that the flotilla dropped back to take 
 stashun 'stern the battl'ships we was screenin'. The 
 Killarney was leadin' an' after her came the Fire- 
 bran', Seagull, Wreath, an' Consort, makin' up the 
 First Divishun. Wreath an' Consort sighted some 
 Hun U-boats and 'stroyers while this move was on, 
 
FIREBRAND " 
 
 43 
 
 an' plunked off a few shots at 'em. Don't think wi' 
 any fatal consequence. Then there come the rattle 
 of light gun fire from the southward, like from 
 cru'sers or battleships repellin' T.B.D.'s. Then it 
 was all serene for mor'n an 'our, an' then all hell 
 opens up." 
 
 I suspected, from the sounds he made, that Mel- 
 ton had bitten into a block of milk chocolate 
 without removing its wrapping of foil and paper, 
 but presently his enunciation grew less explosive 
 and more intelligible. 
 
 " It was Hun cru'sers drivin' down on us from 
 the starboard quarter that started the monkey- 
 show," he said, "an' that bein' the nor'west it was 
 hardly where we'd reason to expect 'em from. It 
 looks like we had 'em clean cut off, wi' the 'hole 
 BattF Fleet steamin' 'tween 'em an' their way back 
 home, an' that they was tryin' to sneak through in 
 the darkness. The Wreath, at the end o' the line 
 nearest 'em, spotted 'em first, and she, 'cause she 
 didn't want to give herself 'way wi' flashin', re- 
 ported what she'd seen by low-power W.T. to the 
 rest o' the flotilla. Course I standin' watch aft 
 didn't know nothin' 'bout that signal, so that the 
 first I hears o' the Huns was when they all opened 
 up on the poor ol' Killarney, 'cause she was the 
 leader. I s'pose, and she started firin' back at 
 their flashes. 
 
 " The leadin' Hun flashed his searchlight on the 
 Killarney as he opened up, but shut off sharp when 
 
44 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 Killarney came back at him. I could see some o' 
 tlie projes flittin' right down the light beam until 
 it blinked off, an' it was a flock of two or three of 
 these that I kept my eye on all the way till they 
 bashed into the Killarney' s bridge and busted. 
 She was zigzaggin' a coupP o' points on Firebrand's 
 starboard bow just then, so my standin' aft didn't 
 prevent my gettin' a good look at what was hap- 
 penin'. I could see the bodies o' four or five men 
 flyin' up wi' the wreckage o' the explosion, an' then, 
 all in a niinnit, she was rollin' in flames from the 
 funnels right for'ard. By the light o' it I could see 
 the crews o' the 'midships and after guns workin' 
 'em like devils, an' twice anyhow, an' I think three 
 times, I saw a bright, shiny slug slip over the side, 
 an' knew they were loosin' mouldies to try to get 
 their own back from the Hun. 
 
 " The sea was boilin' up red as blood where the 
 light from the burnin' Killarney fell on the spouts 
 the Huns' projes was throwin' up all round her. 
 She was the fairest mark ever a gun trained on, 
 and p'raps that was what tempted the Hun to keep 
 pumpin' projes at her instead o' givin' more at- 
 tenshun to the rest of the divishun trailin' astern. 
 That was w f hat gave Firebran' her first chance o' 
 alterin' the Hun navy list that night. 
 
 " The second cru'ser in the Hun line was bearin' 
 right abeam to starboard by now, an' I could see by 
 her gun-flashes she was of good size, wi' four long 
 funnels fillin' up all the deck 'tween her two masts. 
 
" FIREBRAND " 45 
 
 She was firing fast in salvoes wi' all the guns that 
 would bear on the burnin' Killarney. I could just 
 make out by the light from the Killarney, which 
 was growin' stronger every minnit, that the crew of 
 our after torpedo tube was gettin' busy, an' while I 
 was watch in' 'em, over flops the mouldie and starts 
 to run. I knew it was aimed for one or t'other o' 
 the two leadin' Huns, but wasn't dead sure which 
 till I saw the after funnels an' mainmast o' the 
 second toppl' over an' a big flash o' fire take their 
 place. Then it looked like there was exploshuns 
 right off fore an' aft, and then fires broke out all 
 over her from stem to stern. Next thing I knows, 
 she takes a big list to starboard, an' over she goes, 
 wT more exploshuns throwin' up spouts o' steam, as 
 she rolls under. The second mouldie it got away 
 right after the first was never needed to finish 
 the job. The Fircbran' had evened up the score for 
 the Killarney, wi' a good margin over. 
 
 " The captain turned away to reload mouldies 
 after that, an' just as we swung out o' line I saw a 
 salvo straddle the Killarney ', and two or three 
 shells hit square 'tween her funnels an' after 
 sup'rstructV. They must have gone off in her en- 
 gine room, for there was more steam than fire risin' 
 from her as we turned an' left her astern, an' she 
 looked stopped dead. A Hun cru'ser was closin' 
 the blazin' wreck o' her, firin' hard ; but, by Gawd, 
 what d'you think I saw. The only patch on the 
 oP Killarney that was free o' the ragin' fires was 
 
SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 her stern, an' from there the steady flashes of her 
 after gun showed it was bein' worked as fast an' 
 reg'lar as ever I seen it done at any night-firm' 
 practice. I looked to see her blow up every minnit, 
 but she was still spittin' wF that littF after gun 
 when the sudden flashin' up of the fightin' lights 
 for'ard turned my attenshun nearer home. 
 
 " I could just make out a line of what looked like 
 'stroyers headin' cross our bows, an' thought we'd 
 stumbled into 'nother nest o' Huns till they an- 
 swered back wF the signal o' the day, an' I knew 
 it was one of our own flotillas we'd been catchin' 
 up to. That flashin' up o' lights come near to doin' 
 for us tho', for it showed us up to a big Hun 
 steamin' three or four miles off on the port beam, 
 an' he claps a searchlight on us an' chases it up wF 
 a sheaf o' shells. The only proj that hit us bounced 
 off wFout doin' much hurt to the ship, but some 
 flyin' hunks o' it smashed the mouldie davit and 
 knocked out most o' the crews o' the after tubes, 
 iucludin' the *T.G.M. That put a stop to reloadin 1 
 operashuns wF a mouldie in only one o' the tubes. 
 By good luck we managed to zigzag out o' the 
 searchlight beam right after that, an' was free to 
 turn back an' try to start a divershun for the poor 
 ol' Killamey. 
 
 " Her fires looked to be dyin' down when we first 
 picked her up, but right after that some more projes 
 bust on her an' she started blazin' harder than 
 
 * Torpedo Gunner's Mate. 
 
s 
 
 
 "FIREBRAND" 47 
 
 ever. I watched for the spittin' o' that littP after 
 gun, but when it come it looked to spurt right out 
 o' the heart o' a blazin' furnace, showin' the fire was 
 now burnin' from stem to stern. One more salvo 
 plastered over her, an' that one got no reply. The 
 good ol' ' Killy' had shot her bolt, an' her finish 
 looked a matter o' minnits. 
 
 " It was plain enough if anyone was still livin' 
 they was goin' to need pickin' up in a hurry, an' 
 the captain put the Firebrari at full speed to close 
 her an' stan' by to give a han'. Just then I saw a 
 Hun searchlight turned on and start feelin' its 
 way up to where the Killarney was burning, wi' 
 a cru'ser followin' up the small end o' the beam, 
 seemin' to be nosin' in to end the mis'ry. She did 
 not bear right for a mouldie, but we opened up wi' 
 the foremost gun, an' I saw the shells bustin' on 
 her bridge and fo'c'sl' like rotten apples chucked 
 'against a wall. The light blinked off as the first 
 proj hit home, but there was no way to tell if it 
 was shot away or no. It was the second time that 
 night that we'd done our bit to ease off the hell 
 turned loose on the Killarney. Likewise it was the 
 last. From then on we had our own partic'lar hell 
 to wriggle out of, wi' no time left to play ' Venging 
 Nemisus ' to our stricken sisters. Just a big bon- 
 fire sittin' on the sea an' lickin' a hole in the night 
 wi' its flames that was the last I saw of the ol' 
 Killarney." 
 
 Melton paused for a moment as if engrossed in 
 
48 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 the memories conjured up by his narrative, and I 
 took advantage of the interval to hand him one of 
 those most loved lollipops of Yankee youngster- 
 hood, a plump, hard ball of toothsome saccharinity 
 called obviously from its resistant resiliency an 
 " All-Day Sucker/' When he spoke again I knew 
 in an instant that a sure instinct had led him to 
 make the proper disposition of the succulent dainty 
 that it was stowed snugly away in a bulging 
 cheek like a squirrePs nut, to melt away in its own 
 good time. 
 
 " 'Tween the glare of the burnin- Killarney," Mel- 
 ton went on after thrashing his hands across his 
 shoulders for a minute to warm them up, " the 
 gleam o' the Hun cruiser's searchlight an' the flash 
 o' our own gun-fire, we must all have been more or 
 less blinded in the Firebrand, for we had run close 
 to what may have been a part of the main en'my 
 battr line wi'out nothin' bein' reported. Our firin' 
 had give us away, o' course, an' the nearest ships 
 must have had their guns trained on us, waitin' to 
 be sure what we was. One o' 'em must have made 
 up his mind we was en'my even before we spotted 
 'em at all, for the first thing I saw was the white 
 o' the bow wave an' wake as she turned toward us, 
 prob'ly to ram. She'd have caught us just about 
 midships if the bridge hadn't sighted her an' done 
 the only thing open to do turned to meet her 
 head on. 
 
 " I don't remember that either she or us switched 
 
" FIREBRAND 
 
 49 
 
 on recognition lights, but the Hun opened with 
 ev'rything that would bear just before we slammed 
 together. It must have been by the gun-flashes 
 that I saw she had three funnels, wi' what 
 looked like some kind o 1 marks painted on 'em in 
 red. I saw our second funnel give a jump and 
 crumple up as a proj hit it, an' then a spurt o' 
 flame from a big gun fired almost point-blank- 
 looked to shoot right on to the bridge. I thought 
 that it must have killed ev'ry man there an' carried 
 away all the steering gear. But no. 
 
 "The old Firebrand wi' helm hard-a-port, went 
 swingin' right on thro' the point or two more that 
 saved her life. I could feel by the way she jumped 
 an' gathered herself that last second that the oP 
 girl was still under control. Then we struck wi' 
 a horrible grind an' crash, an' I went sprawlin' 
 flat. 
 
 " If the Hun had hit us half a wink sooner, or if 
 we had turned half a point less, we'd have been 
 swallowed alive and split up in small hunks. As 
 it was, we didn't have a lot the worst o' it, an' 
 p'raps we more than broke even. It was like a 
 mastiff an' terrier runnin' into each other in the 
 dark, an' the terrier only gettin' run over an' the 
 mastiff gettin' a piece bit clean out o' his neck. It 
 was our port bows that come together, an' for only 
 a sort o' glancin' blow. But it was the stem o' the 
 Firebran' that was turned in sharpest, an' it was 
 
50 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 her that was hittin' up by a good ten knots the 
 most speed. She was left in a terribl' mess, but 
 most o' the damage was from her rammin' the Hun, 
 not from the Hun rammin' her. While as for what 
 she did to the Hun, the best proof o' it was the 
 more'n twenty feet of her side-platin' an upper 
 strake, wi' scuttP holes in it an' pieces o' gutterway 
 deck hangin' to it that we found in the wreck of 
 our foVsP. If the hole that hunk of steel left be- 
 hind it didn't put that Hun out o' business as a 
 fightin* unit till she got back to port an' had a 
 refit, I'll eat it." 
 
 I wasn't quite clear in my mind whether Melton 
 meant to imply that he would eat the hole in the 
 Hun cruiser or the hunk of steel that came out of it, 
 but there was no room for doubt that the violent 
 crunch with which he emphasised the assertion had 
 put a period to the life of his " All-Day Sucker," 
 which was never intended to be treated like chewing 
 toffy. Dipping into the grab-bag of my " lammy " 
 coat pocket for something with which to replace it, 
 therefore, I brought up a stick of chewing gum, and 
 he resumed his story in an atmosphere sweet, with 
 the ineffable odour of spearmint and escaping 
 steam. 
 
 " How much the Hun was shook up by that 
 smash," Melton continued, " you can reckon from 
 this: We was almost dead stopped for some 
 minnits, an' all out o' control from the time of 
 rammin' till they started connin' her from the en- 
 
 I 
 
" FIREBRAND " 
 
 51 
 
 gine-rooin. There was one fire flickerin' in the 
 wreckage o' the forebridge, an' another somewhere 
 'midships, while there was also a big glare throwin' 
 up where the foremost funnel was shot away. We 
 was as soft an' easy a target as even a Hun could 
 ask for ; an' yet that one was in too much of a funk 
 wi' his own hurts to let off a singl' other gun at us 
 in all the time that he must have been flounderin' 
 on at not much more'n point-blank range. Mebbe 
 he was knocked up even more'n we thought. 
 Nothin' else would account for him not havin' 
 Another go at us. 
 
 " Just one wild bally mess that was what the 
 Firebran' looked like when I got to my feet again 
 an' cast an eye for'ard. There was too much 
 smoke an' steam to see clear, an' it was mostly 
 flickers o' red light where the fires were startin', 
 an' big, black shadows full o' wreckage. As it 
 looked to me from aft tho', o' course, the full 
 effects wasn't vis'bl' till daylight, the bridge an' 
 searchlight platform an' mast was shoved right 
 back an' piled up on the foremost funnel. The 
 whaler an' dingy was carried away, an' my first 
 thought, for I was sure she was sinkin', was that 
 we had no boats to put off in. I could see two or 
 three wounded crawlin' out o' the raffle, but I knew 
 that the most to be dished would be in the wreck 
 o' the bridge. The queerest thing o' all was the 
 flashes o' green an' blue light flutterin' thro' the 
 tangled steel o' the wreckage. At first I thought 
 
52 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 I was sort o' seem' things ; but fin'lly I figgered it 
 out as the juice from the busted 'lectric wires short- 
 circuitin'. It meant, I tol' myself, that the men 
 under them tons o' steel was bein' 'lectrocuted on 
 top o' bein' crushed. 
 
 " It looked like any one o' three or four things 
 would be enough to finish the ol' Firebrand I re- 
 member thinkin' that if she didn't blow up, she was 
 sure to burn up ; an' that if, by chance, she 
 missed doin' one o' them, she was goin' to founder 
 anyhow. She was already well down by the head, 
 an' leastways, it looked so to me at the time still 
 settlin' fast. An' I was just reflectin' that, even if 
 she was lucky enough not to burn up, or blow up, 
 or founder, she was still too easy pickin' for the 
 Huns to miss doin' her in one way or 'nother, when, 
 thunderin' out o' the darkness an' headin' up to 
 crumpl' underfoot what was left o' the stopped an' 
 helpless Firebran', come a hulkin' big battl' cru'ser, 
 the one I was just tellin' you the 'Lympus set me 
 thinkin' on a while back. 
 
 " Starin' at our own fires must have blinded me a 
 good bit, or I'd have seen him sooner'n I did. He 
 looked like he been gettin' no end o' a hammerin', 
 for his second funnel was gone, an' out of the hole 
 it left a big spurt o' flame an' smoke was rushin' 
 that would have showed him up for miles. There 
 was a red hot fire ragin' under his fo'c'sl', too, an' 
 I saw the flames lashin' round thro' some jagged 
 shell holes in his port bow. Lucky for us, he was 
 
 
" FIREBRAND " 
 
 53 
 
 runnin' for his life, an' had no time to more than 
 try to run us down in passin'. 
 
 " It must have been just from habit I yelled 
 down my voice-pipe, for I knew they was no longer 
 controllin' her from the bridge; but the roarin' o' 
 a fire an' the clank of bangin' metal was the only 
 sounds that come back. When I looked up again 
 the Hun was right on top of us, an 1 I must have 
 just stood there froze like to-night wi' the 
 'Lympus. By the grace o' Gawd, he hadn't been 
 abl' to alter course enough to do the trick. His 
 stem shot by wi' twenty feet or more clearance, an' 
 it was only the fat bulge of him that kissed us off 
 in passin'. It was by the glare o' his fires, not ours, 
 which throwed no light abaft the superstructure 
 I was on, that I saw some of the hands was already 
 workin' to rig a jury steerin' gear aft. Then he was 
 gone, an' much too full o' his own troubles to turn 
 back, or even send the one heavy proj that would 
 have cooked us for good an' all. A few minutes 
 more, an' the wreck o' the Firebran' begun gatherin' 
 way again, an 1 when I saw her come round to her 
 nor'westerly course an' push ahead wi'out settlin' 
 any deeper, I knew that the bulkheads were holdin' 
 an' that always providin' we run into no more 
 Huns there was a fightin' chance o' pullin' thro'. 
 
 " There was about a hundred jobs that needed 
 doin' all at once, an' 'tween the loss o' dead an' 
 wounded only about half the reg'lar ship's com- 
 pany was fit for work. The bulkheads had to be 
 
54 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 shored, for, wi' the fo'c'sl' crumpled up like a con- 
 certina an' the deck an' side platin' ripped off from 
 the stem right back to the capstan engine, she was 
 open to the whole North Sea from the galley right 
 forward. This made the first an' second bulkheads 
 o' no use, an' made the third bulkhead all that stood 
 'tween us an' goin' to the bottom. Then there was 
 the fires 'bove deck an' 'tween decks that had to 
 be put out 'fore they got to the magazines, an' the 
 engines to be kept goin', an' the ship to be navi- 
 gated, an' the wounded to be looked to. An' on top 
 o' all this, the ship had to be got into some kind o' 
 fightin' trim in case any more Huns come pokin 
 her way. I won't be havin' to tell you it was one 
 bally awful job, carryin' on like that in the dark, 
 an' wi' half the ship's company knocked out. 
 
 " When I saw it was the first lieutenant that 
 seemed to be directin' things, I took it the captain 
 was done for, an' that was what everyone thought 
 till, all o' a sudden, he come wrigglin' out o' the 
 wreck o' the bridge all messed up an' covered wi' 
 blood, but not much hurt other ways an' began 
 carryin' on just as if it was c Gen'ral Quarters.' 
 Some cove wi' the stump o' his hand tied up wi' 
 First Aid dressin' was sent up to relieve me on the 
 lookout, an' I was put to fightin' fires an' clearin' 
 up the wreck 'bove decks. As there ain't much 
 burn on a 'stroyer if the cordite ain't started, 
 were not long gettin' the fires in hand, even wi' 
 havin' cause the hoses an' the fire-mains was 
 
 in' 
 
 I 
 
BACK FROM THE JAWS 71 
 
 secondaries. Anyhow, the first thing I remember 
 was that she was gone, and that the 'Nectar was 
 leading the Nairobi all that was left of the divi- 
 sion on a course to cross the bows of the enemy 
 battle cruisers. The Hun destroyers, which had no 
 chance with us in a gun fight, had now turned tail 
 and were heading back for the shelter of their battle 
 line. Several of them appeared on fire, but I didn't 
 see any sinking. 
 
 " I am not quite sure what orders were made to 
 the flotilla at this time, but I rather think that after 
 the Hun attack had been stopped the signal was 
 hoisted to return to the battle cruisers. I think that 
 is what the other divisions did do, but for our divi- 
 sion or what remained of it things were looking 
 too promising just then to turn our backs on. I 
 was standing by the foremost tubes at the time, and 
 all of a sudden the Hun line began to turn away, 
 and I saw that the leading ship was being heavily 
 hit and that she was afire in two or three places. As 
 she turned she presented us a fine broadside target 
 at about three thousand yards, and the order came 
 from the bridge to ' Stand by foremost tubes and 
 fire when sights come on.' 
 
 " The turning of the Hun battle cruiser line ex- 
 posed us to the fire of a number of his light cruisers 
 which had been seeking shelter behind it, and some 
 smashing salvoes from these began to plump down 
 all around us just as we got ready to launch the tor- 
 pedoes. Though there was not one direct hit, we 
 
72 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 were ' straddled ' a dozen times, and the foam 
 spouts tossed up by the shells exploding on striking 
 the water made a wall of smoke and spray that al- 
 most shut off a view of our target. Shell fragments 
 were slamming up against the funnels and tinkling 
 on the decks, and I believe two or three men were 
 hit by them, though not much hurt. It was this sud- 
 den savage shelling that spoiled the only chance we 
 had at the Hun big 'uns. Just as the sights were com- 
 ing on to the leading ship a salvo came down ker- 
 plump right abreast of the foremost tubes, throwing 
 a solid spout of green water all over them. I saw 
 both mouldies start to slide out, but only one struck 
 the water and began to run. A moment later I saw 
 that the other, for some reason we never found out, 
 but probably because it had been knocked sideways 
 by the rush of water or perhaps a fragment of shell, 
 was hanging by its tail to the lip of the tube, with 
 its war-head full of gun-cotton trailing in the sea. 
 It cleared itself when the next sea slapped it against 
 the side, and started diving and jumping about like 
 a wounded porpoise, most likely because its pro- 
 pellers had been knocked out. Luckily, our speed 
 carried us on before it had a chance to ( boomerang ' 
 back and blow up the old Nairobi. We could not 
 watch the first torpedo run on account of the spouts 
 from the falling shells, but though it started right 
 to cross the enemy's line, there was nothing to make 
 us believe it scored a hit. 
 
 " Before there was time to grieve over losing our 
 
 
BACK FROM THE JAWS " 73 
 
 chance at the battle cruisers the * T.I.' called me to 
 give him a hand with the 'midships' tubes, as one 
 of his men had been knocked out. < There's a light 
 cruiser just going to bear for a shot/ he yelled 
 from his seat between the tubes as I ran round to 
 the breech; ' jump up and tell me what speed she's 
 making. I can't see her fair from here.' The trouble 
 was that the awful speed the Nairobi was going at 
 settled her down so low that, anywhere abaft the 
 bridge, a man couldn't see over the bow wave from 
 the deck. But, standing on top of the tubes, I was 
 high enough to get a good look at the Hun, when he 
 wasn't shut off by the spouts from the fall of shot. 
 He was a small three-funnelled light cruiser, and 
 every gun he had looked to be training on us. 
 Another cruiser astern of him was also firing on thp 
 Nairobi, while two or three others were concentrat- 
 ing on the Nectar. She was getting it even hotter 
 than we were, and all I could see of her when one 
 of her zigzags brought her to one side or the other 
 so the bridge didn't cut her off from my view was 
 some masts and funnels sliding along in the middle 
 of a dancing patch of foam fountains. Both Nectar 
 and Nairobi were replying for all they were worth 
 with their foremost guns; the after ones were too 
 low down to fire at such close range with much 
 effect. I saw one of our shells bursting on the Huns, 
 and why their shooting at us was so bad I have 
 never quite understood. The fact we were settled 
 so deep aft from our speed was plainly making a lot 
 
74 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 of shells ricochet over what would otherwise have 
 been hits, but, at the same time, the bows being so 
 much higher out of the water offered all the more 
 target forward. It was more ' Joss ' than anything 
 else, I suppose. Besides, the Nectar was just on 
 the edge of getting hers anyhow. 
 
 " I saw r all these things out of the corner of my 
 eye like, for my mind was centred on getting what 
 the <T.I.' wanted to know about his cruiser. I 
 knew just what this was to a * t,' for I'd taken many 
 a turn of drill at the tubes. < Parallel courses, 
 thousand yards range, speed about twenty-five/ I 
 shouted, jumping down again ; ' and you'll have to 
 slip her right smart or you'll miss your chance.' 
 Right then the seas flattened down for a few sec- 
 onds, and the * T.I.', giving me an order of how to 
 train her, set his sights and pulled the cocking 
 lever. A moment later he fired, and the mouldie 
 slipped out smooth and easy and started running 
 straight and true for a point the Hun was going to 
 arrive at about a minute later." 
 
 Prince had been poking away at a sprayer as he 
 talked, with the fluttering light-mote from the fire 
 in the heart of the furnace playing on one of his 
 squinting eyes in a way that, with the other 
 quenched in shadow, gave his face a look of Cyclo- 
 pean fierceness. " I jumped up on the tubes again to 
 follow our little tin fish on its swim/' he resumed. 
 " There seemed to be a bit of a flap on the cruiser, 
 for its next salvo fell a long way short of us. One 
 
BACK FROM THE JAWS 
 
 75 
 
 of the shells a five- or six-incher did not explode, 
 but bounced off the water and came ' skip-jacking ' 
 along straight for us. It kicked into the water 
 twice before it reached us, the second time right 
 at the base of the wave that was rolling up and 
 hiding our sunken stern, and that seemed to give 
 it just enough of an up-flip to make it clear the 
 Nairobi's shivering hull. It came so slow that I 
 caught the glint of the copper band round its base, 
 and so low that the after superstructure blotted it 
 off from my sight as it passed over the stern. One of 
 the after gun's crew told me he could have reached 
 up and patted it as it tumbled along over his head. 
 He said it was going so slow that he hardly felt any 
 wind at all from it. Perhaps that was because he 
 had his own wind up, though, for it was making a 
 great buzz, and must have been carrying a big 
 6 tail ? of air in its wake. 
 
 " I lost track of our mouldie when I ducked no, 
 I don't mind admitting that's just what I did, 
 though it missed me by a mile and before I could 
 get my eye on its wake again it had gone home. I 
 think they must have spotted it coming on the 
 cruiser, for I saw her begin to alter course away 
 just about the time I figured it was due to arrive. 
 If they were altering to avoid the mouldie, they 
 turned the wrong way, for it only brought right 
 abreast the funnels what'd 'a' been a hit somewhere 
 about the bridge. I've got a picture in my mind 
 of what happened that I'm dead certain is as true 
 
76 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 as a photograph, and the spout of water that went 
 up must have been almost exactly amidships. If 
 the hit had been anywhere for'rard it would never 
 have broken her back the way it did, and she might 
 have got away. The funny part of it was that it 
 was not the 'midships section of her, where the 
 mouldie hit, that seemed to be lifted by the ex- 
 plosion. That part of her seemed just to go to 
 pieces and begin to sink all at once, while the bow 
 and stern halves started to come up and close to- 
 gether like a jack-knife. She must have gone down 
 inside of a minute or two, but things were hap- 
 pening so fast I don't think I was looking when she 
 disappeared." 
 
 Prince, engrossed in his story, forgot that the end 
 of his poker had a sheet of flame playing upon it, 
 and the heat which crept back from the rosy-red tip 
 gave his palm a sharp singe as he clutched the 
 handle preparatory to executing one of his sweep- 
 ing gestures. From then on to the end of his nar- 
 rative he paused frequently to lick with his tongue 
 the blistered cuticle, the stoker's sovereign remedy 
 for a slight burn. " I was just starting to give the 
 ' T.I. ? an account of what I had had a lot better 
 chance to see than he had," he went on thickly, 
 still touching the blisters gingerly with an extended 
 tongue-tip, " when I heard him growl, ' Stand by ! 
 here's another one. What speed d'you think she's 
 making? ' I was still standing up on top of the 
 tubes, and to get a better view right in front of 
 
" BACK FROM THE JAWS " 77 
 
 the i T.I.', with my waist on just about the level of 
 his face. As I turned my head to look at the sec- 
 ond Hun he straddled us fair with a full salvo. 
 Most of it went over, but one proj struck right 
 alongside and just about flooded us out. But there 
 was something heavier than water that it sent 
 aboard. I felt a sharp sting across my stomach, 
 as if someone had given me a cut with a whip. As 
 I put my hand down to it the whole front of my 
 overall dropped away where a fragment of shell 
 casing had shot across it. A few threads I found 
 out later had been started on my singlet, but my 
 hide was not even scratched. I heard the * T.I/ give 
 a yell, and when I looked round saw his face 
 covered with blood, and a flap of skin from his fore- 
 head hanging down over one eye like a skye terrier's 
 ear. The piece of proj had caught him a nasty 
 side-swipe, though without hurting anything but 
 his looks in the least. And it wasn't that he was 
 yelling about, either, but at me for not giving him 
 the course and speed of the second cruiser. He had 
 the flap of skin tied up out of his eye using a strip 
 of my overall because neither of us could find a 
 handkerchief by the time I was back at the handle. 
 I saw the blood dribbling over his sights, but he 
 seemed to be seeing through them all right, for he 
 was telling me how to train when I felt the helm 
 begin to grind as it was thrown hard over to make 
 a sudden alteration of course. She heeled fifteen 
 or twenty degrees as she turned six points to star- 
 
78 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 board, and the boil of her wake flooded across her 
 stern three or four feet deep. The sudden heel 
 threw me off my feet, and I pulled up just in time 
 to see us rushing by, and just missing by a few 
 yards, a stopped destroyer that was nothing but 
 spurts of fire flashing under a rolling cloud of 
 steam and smoke. 
 
 " She seemed to be afire all over, and about ready 
 to blow up; yet, from the quick flashes of some of 
 the spurts of fire, I knew they came from a hard- 
 pumped gun that some stout-hearted lads were 
 working to the last. There was nothing in the look 
 of that spouting volcano of smoke and steam that 
 would help a man to tell whether it was a battle- 
 ship or a trawler, but I knew that it could be only 
 the Nectar f our Division leader. We never saw 
 her nor anyone in her again. She must have gone 
 down within a few minutes, and anyone that sur- 
 vived fell into the hands of the enemy. She led us 
 a fine dance while it lasted, and the only pity was 
 that she couldn't trip it to the end. 
 
 " That left the old Nairobi as the last of the Divi- 
 sion, and I haven't any recollection of any of the 
 rest of the flotilla being in sight by then. Not that 
 I had any time to look for them, though. Our sud- 
 den change of course to keep from ramming the 
 Nectar spoiled our chance at the second Hun 
 cruiser, but we were left no time to mourn that any 
 more than the finish of the Nectar. Hardly had we 
 left the wreck of her astern than a full salvo of 
 
" BACK FROM THE JAWS " 
 
 79 
 
 
 large shells I think they must have come from one 
 of the battle cruisers, for they were much heavier 
 than anything the light cruisers were firing struck 
 only thirty or forty yards short of us. The shells 
 were bunched together like a salvo of air-bombs 
 kicked loose all at once. The wall of water they 
 threw up shut everything on that side off from 
 sight for a few seconds, and when the spouts settled 
 down there was a Hun destroyer inside of a mile 
 away. I jumped up to give her course and speed to 
 the ( T.I.', but before I had time more than to see 
 that she had two funnels and many tubes the burst- 
 ing projes from our foremost and midships guns 
 began knocking her to pieces so fast that I soon saw 
 there was no use of wasting a mouldie on the job. 
 
 " I saw the captain waving encouragement from 
 the bridge to the crew of the midships guns, and, 
 when the noise died down for a moment, I heard 
 him shout, ' You've got her ! Give it to her ! ' Just 
 then another salvo was plastered a-straddle of us, 
 and I saw a fragment of shell knock the sight-setter 
 of the midships gun out of his seat. He looked a 
 little dazed as he climbed back, but his eye must 
 have been as good as ever, for I saw his next shot 
 make a hit square on a whaler they were lowering 
 from the sinking Hun and blow it to bits. A minute 
 or two more, and the destroyer itself blew up and 
 disappeared under a column of steam and smoke. 
 
 " That," continued Prince, beginning to prod 
 anew his neglected sprayers, " just about concluded 
 
80 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 our day's work. As there was no longer any pros- 
 pect of getting in mouldie-range of any of the big 
 Huns, and as none of the little Huns were in sight 
 to fight with gun-fire, it must have occurred to the 
 captain that it was time he was rejoining the 
 flotilla. There was only some dark blurs on the 
 north'ard skyline to steer for at first, and the Huns 
 did all they knew to keep us from getting there, 
 too. For a while we -were doing nothing but play- 
 ing ' hide-and-seek ' among the salvoes they tried to 
 stop us with, and I have heard since that the way 
 the captain used his helm to avoid being hit at this 
 stage of the show was rated as about the cleverest 
 work of the kind in the whole battle. 
 
 "It was the Fifth B.S. the Queen Elizabeth 
 class that we caught up to first, and a grand sight 
 it was, the four of them standing up and giving 
 battle to about the whole of the High Sea Fleet. 
 They were taking a heavy pounding without turn- 
 ing a hair, so far as a man could see, and even when 
 the Warspite had her steering gear knocked out 
 and went steaming in circles it didn't seem to upset 
 the other three very much. We sighted our own 
 Battle Fleet about six, and rejoined the flotilla in 
 good time to be back with the battle cruisers when 
 Beatty took them round the head of the Hun line 
 and only failed to cut off their retreat through 
 night coming on. 
 
 " Compared with what the next six or eight 
 hours held for some of our destroyers or even 
 
BACK FROM THE JAWS 
 
 81 
 
 with what we had just been through ourselves 
 e night for us was fairly quiet. We were in 
 action once or twice, and I saw several ships 
 mostly enemy, but one or two of our own go up 
 in flame and smoke before I went on watch down 
 here at midnight. But through it all the devil's 
 own luck which had been with us from the first 
 held good. Although we were through the very 
 hottest of the day action, and not the least of the 
 night, the old Nairobi did not receive one direct hit 
 from an enemy shell. She accounted for at least 
 two Hun ships, saw the other three destroyers of 
 her division sunk or put out of action, and returned 
 to base with almost empty oil tanks and perhaps 
 the largest mileage to her credit of any craft in 
 the Jutland battle all without a serious casualty 
 or more than a few scratches to her paint. On top 
 of it all, on the way back to harbour, by the queer- 
 est fluke you ever heard of, she rammed and ex- 
 ploded the air-chamber of a mouldie that had been 
 fired by a Hun U-boat at the destroyer next in line 
 ahead of her. As the Yanks say, ' Can you beat 
 it? ' 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 I 
 
 HUNTING 
 
 F it's destroyer work you want, there are five 
 of them getting under weigh at four 
 o'clock," said the " Senior Officer Present," 
 looking at his watch. " You'll have just about 
 time to pick up your luggage and connect if you 
 want to go. I can't tell you what they're going to 
 do they won't know that themselves till they get 
 to sea, and their orders may be changed from hour 
 to hour, and things may happen to send them to 
 the Channel, France, or to several other places, on 
 and off the chart, before they put in here again. 
 But there'll be work to do plenty of it. That's 
 the best part of this corner of the North Atlantic 
 in which our Allies have done the American de- 
 stroyers the honour of setting them on the U-boats. 
 Whatever else you may suffer from, it won't be 
 from ennui." It was luck indeed, on two hours' 
 notice, to have the chance of getting out in just the 
 way I had planned, where I had been quite pre- 
 pared to stand-by for twice as many days, and I 
 fell in with the arrangement at once. 
 
 Captain X ran his eye down a board where 
 
 the names of a number of destroyers were dis- 
 
HUNTING 
 
 83 
 
 played against certain data indicating their where- 
 abouts and disposition. " Zop, Zap, Zip, Zim, 
 Zam" he read musingly. " Zip yes, I don't think 
 I can do better than send you on the Zip. Her 
 skipper is as keen as he is able, and the Zip herself 
 has the reputation of having something of a nose 
 for U-boats on her own account I'll advise him 
 you're coming. Pick up your sea togs and put off 
 to her as soon as you can. Good luck." The 
 American naval officer, like the British, never says 
 " Good-bye " if it can possibly be avoided. 
 
 They were already preparing to unmoor as I 
 clambered over the side of the Zip, and by the time 
 I had shifted to sea-boots and oilskins in the cap- 
 tain's cabin which, unoccupied by himself during 
 that strenuous interval, was to be mine at sea she 
 was swinging in the stream and nosing out into the 
 creaming wakes of the two of her dazzle-painted 
 sisters who were preceding her down the bay. 
 
 There are several things that strike one as differ- 
 ent on going to an American warship after a spell in 
 a British ship of the same class, but the one which 
 surges to meet you and goes to your head like wine 
 is the all-pervading spirit of vibrant, sparkling, un- 
 quenchable youthfulness. Everything you see and 
 hear seems to radiate it every throb of the en- 
 gines/ every beat of the screws and at first you 
 may almost get the impression that it comes from 
 the ship herself. But when you start to trace it 
 
SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 down, you find it bubbles from a single fount, the 
 men, or rather the boys the lounging, laughing, 
 devil-may-care boys. Theirs the alchemy to trans- 
 form every one and everything that comes near 
 them into the golden seeming of themselves. 
 
 This youthfulness of the American destroyers is 
 in the crew rather than the officers, for the latter- 
 especial ly the captain and executive will average, 
 if anything, a shade older than their " opposite 
 numbers " in a British destroyer. There is a cer- 
 tain minimum of highly specialised work in navi- 
 gating and fighting a destroyer which must be in 
 the hands of officers and men who can have only 
 attained the requisite training in long years of 
 technical study and practical experience. Given 
 these, and the remainder of the ship's company- 
 provided only that they have digestive organs that 
 will continue to function when tilted through a 
 dozen different slants and angles in as many sec- 
 onds can be trained to perfection in an astonish- 
 ingly short time. Here it is that America has 
 scored, for there is no doubt that the youngsters 
 that have rushed to enrol themselves for her de- 
 stroyer service are better educated and quicker in 
 mind and body than those available for any other 
 navy in the war. It is the incomparable adapt- 
 ability these advantages have conspired to give him 
 that has made the Yankee destroyer rating a com- 
 bination of keenness and efficiency that leaves little, 
 if anything, to be desired on either score. 
 
HUNTING 
 
 85 
 
 Here is the way a British naval officer who is 
 familiar with the work of the American destroyer 
 flotilla expressed himself in this connection : " The 
 ship's company of any one of these American de- 
 stroyers/' he said, " will average a good five years 
 younger than that of a British destroyer. Off 
 hand, one would say that this would tell against 
 them, but, as a matter of fact, quite the contrary 
 is the case. 
 
 " Given that the command and the technical op- 
 erations are in the hands of highly trained and 
 fairly serious-minded officers, you can't have too 
 much slapbang, hell-for-leather, devil-take-the-con- 
 sequences spirit in the ship's company. And where 
 will you find that save in the youngsters tireless, 
 fearless, careless boys. They've found that out in 
 the air services, and we're finding it out in the de- 
 stroyers. And right there in these quick-headed, 
 quick-footed super-boys of theirs is where the Yan- 
 kee destroyers have the best of us. It is they 
 working under consummately clever officers that 
 enabled the American destroyer flotilla to reach 
 in a stride a working efficiency which we had been 
 straining up to for three years." 
 
 The green hills astern had turned grey and dis- 
 solved in mist and darkness before the captain was 
 able to announce what work was afoot for us. The 
 Zim and Zam, it appeared, were to be detached on 
 some mission of their own, while the Zop, Zap, 
 
86 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 and Zip, after " hunting " submarines for some 
 time, were to proceed to a certain port, pick up the 
 Lymptania, and escort her through the danger 
 zone on her westward voyage. The captain was 
 grinning as he finished reading the order. " I can't 
 give you any definite assurance," he said, " that 
 the hunt part of the stunt is going to scare up any 
 U-boats, although the prospects this week are more 
 promising than for some time ; but " he turned 
 his level gaze to the westward, where the in-rolling 
 Atlantic swells were blotting with undulant humps 
 the fading primrose of the narrow strip of after- 
 glow " if this wind and sea keep the same force 
 and direction for three or four days more, I'll 
 promise you all the excitement your heart can de- 
 sire when we take on our escort duties. The last 
 time we took out the old Lymptania well, I've 
 got marks on me yet from the corners I got banged 
 up against, and as for the poor little Zip but she's 
 had a refit since and most of the scars have been 
 removed. As you will have ample chance to see 
 for yourself, there isn't a lot of dolce far niente in 
 any of this life we lead in connection with our little 
 game here, but if there is one phase of our activities 
 that is farther removed from ' peace, perfect peace ' 
 than any other, it is trying to screen an ex- Atlantic 
 greyhound that is boring at umpty-ump knots into 
 a head wind and sea. Strafing U-boats is a Sun- 
 day-school picnic in comparison at any time; but 
 it will be worse this week because they have just 
 
 
 
BACK FROM THE JAWS " 
 
 71 
 
 secondaries. Anyhow, the first thing I remember 
 was that she was gone, and that the Nectar was 
 leading the Nairobi all that was left of the divi- 
 sion on a course to cross the bows of the enemy 
 battle cruisers. The Hun destroyers, which had no 
 chance with us in a gun fight, had now turned tail 
 and were heading back for the shelter of their battle 
 line. Several of them appeared on fire, but I didn't 
 see any sinking. 
 
 " I am not quite sure what orders were made to 
 the flotilla at this time, but I rather think that after 
 the Hun attack had been stopped the signal was 
 hoisted to return to the battle cruisers. I think that 
 is what the other divisions did do, but for our divi- 
 sion or what remained of it things were looking 
 too promising just then to turn our backs on. I 
 was standing by the foremost tubes at the time, and 
 all of a sudden the Hun line began to turn away, 
 and I saw that the leading ship was being heavily 
 hit and that she was afire in two or three places. As 
 she turned she presented us a fine broadside target 
 at about three thousand yards, and the order came 
 from the bridge to ' Stand by foremost tubes and 
 fire when sights come on.' 
 
 " The turning of the Hun battle cruiser line ex- 
 posed us to the fire of a number of his light cruisers 
 which had been seeking shelter behind it, and some 
 smashing salvoes from these began to plump down 
 all around us just as we got ready to launch the tor- 
 pedoes. Though there was not one direct hit, we 
 
72 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 were ' straddled ' a dozen times, and the foam 
 spouts tossed up by the shells exploding on striking 
 the water made a wall of smoke and spray that al- 
 most shut off a view of our target. Shell fragments 
 were slamming up against the funnels and tinkling 
 on the decks, and I believe two or three men were 
 hit by them, though not much hurt. It was this sud- 
 den savage shelling that spoiled the only chance we 
 had at the Hun big 'uns. Just as the sights were com- 
 ing on to the leading ship a salvo came down ker- 
 plump right abreast of the foremost tubes, throwing 
 a solid spout of green water all over them. I saw 
 both mouldies start to slide out, but only one struck 
 the water and began to run. A moment later I saw 
 that the other, for some reason we never found out, 
 but probably because it had been knocked sideways 
 by the rush of water or perhaps a fragment of shell, 
 was hanging by its tail to the lip of the tube, with 
 its war-head full of gun-cotton trailing in the sea. 
 It cleared itself when the next sea slapped it against 
 the side, and started diving and jumping about like 
 a wounded porpoise, most likely because its pro- 
 pellers had been knocked out. Luckily, our speed 
 carried us on before it had a chance to ' boomerang ' 
 back and blow up the old Nairobi. We could not 
 watch the first torpedo run on account of the spouts 
 from the falling shells, but though it started right 
 to cross the enemy's line, there was nothing to make 
 us believe it scored a hit. 
 
 " Before there was time to grieve over losing our 
 
BACK FROM THE JAWS 
 
 73 
 
 chance at the battle cruisers the * T.I.' called me to 
 give him a hand with the 'midships' tubes, as one 
 of his men had been knocked out. ' There's a light 
 cruiser just going to bear for a shot/ he jelled 
 from his seat between the tubes as I ran round to 
 the breech ; ' jump up and tell me what speed she's 
 making. I can't see her fair from here.' The trouble 
 was that the awful speed the Nairobi was going at 
 settled her down so low that, anywhere abaft the 
 bridge, a man couldn't see over the bow wave from 
 the deck. But, standing on top of the tubes, I was 
 high enough to get a good look at the Hun, when he 
 wasn't shut off by the spouts from the fall of shot. 
 He was a small three-funnelled light cruiser, and 
 every gun he had looked to be training on us. 
 Another cruiser astern of him was also firing on the 
 Nairobi, while two or three others were concentrat- 
 ing on the Nectar. She was getting it even hotter 
 than we were, and all I could see of her when one 
 of her zigzags brought her to one side or the other 
 so the bridge didn't cut her off from my view was 
 some masts and funnels sliding along in the middle 
 of a dancing patch of foam fountains. Both Nectar 
 and Nairobi were replying for all they were worth 
 with their foremost guns; the after ones were too 
 low down to fire at such close range with much 
 effect. I saw one of our shells bursting on the Huns, 
 and why their shooting at us was so bad I have 
 never quite understood. The fact we were settled 
 so deep aft from our speed was plainly making a lot 
 
74 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 of shells ricochet over wlial, would otherwise have 
 been hi is, but, at the same time, the bows being so 
 much higher out of the water offered all the more 
 target forward. It was more 'Joss' than anything 
 else, I suppose. Besides, the Nectar was just on 
 the edge of getting hers anyhow. 
 
 " I saw all these things out of the corner of m; 
 eye like, for my mind was centred on getting what 
 the 'T.I.' wanted to know about his cruiser. I 
 knew just what this was to a ' t,' for I'd taken many 
 a turn of drill at the tubes. 'Parallel courses, 
 thousand yards range, speed about twenty-five,' I 
 shouted, jumping down again; 'and you'll have to 
 slip her right smart or you'll miss your chance/ 
 Kight then the seas flattened down for a few sec- 
 onds, and the ' T.I.', giving me an order of how to 
 train her, set his sights and pulled the cocking 
 lever. A moment later he fired, and the inouldie 
 slipped out smooth and easy and started running 
 straight and true for a point the Ilun was going to 
 arrive at about a minute later." 
 
 Prince had been poking away at, a sprayer as he 
 talked, wilh the fluttering light-mote from the fire 
 in the heart of the furnace playing on one of his 
 squinting eyes in a way that, with the other 
 quenched ill shadow, gave his face a look of Cyclo- 
 pean fierceness. " I jumped up on the tubes again to 
 follow our little tin iish on its swim," lie resumed. 
 " There seemed to be a bit of a flap on the cruiser, 
 for its next salvo fell a long way short of us. One 
 
BACK FROM THE JAWS " 
 
 75 
 
 of the shells a five- or six-incher did not explode, 
 but bounced off the water and came * skip-jacking ' 
 along straight for us. It kicked into the water 
 twice before it reached us, the second time right 
 at the base of the wave that was rolling up and 
 hiding our sunken stern, and that seemed to give 
 it just enough of an up-flip to make it clear the 
 Nairobi's shivering hull. It came so slow that I 
 caught the glint of the copper band round its base, 
 and so low that the after superstructure blotted it 
 off from my sight as it passed over the stern. One of 
 the after gun's crew told me he could have reached 
 up and patted it as it tumbled along over his head. 
 He said it was going so slow that he hardly felt any 
 wind at all from it. Perhaps that was because he 
 had his own wind up, though, for it was making a 
 great buzz, and must have been carrying a big 
 ' tail ' of air in its wake. 
 
 " I lost track of our mouldie when I ducked no, 
 I don't mind admitting Hint's just what I did, 
 though it missed me by a mile and before I could 
 get my eye on its wake again it had gone home. I 
 think they must have spotted it coming on the 
 cruiser, for I saw her begin to alter course away 
 just about the time I figured it was due to arrive. 
 If they were altering to avoid the mouldie, they 
 turned the wrong way, for it only brought right 
 abreast the funnels what'd 'a' been a hit somewhere 
 about the bridge. I've got a picture in my mind 
 of what happened that I'm dead certain is as true 
 
76 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 as a photograph, and the spout of water that went 
 up must have been almost exactly amidships. If 
 the hit had been anywhere for'rard it would never 
 have broken her back the way it did, and she might 
 have got away. The funny part of it was that it 
 was not the -midships section of her, where the 
 mouldie hit, that seemed to be lifted by the ex- 
 plosion. That part of her seemed just to go to 
 pieces and begin to sink all at once, while the bow 
 and stern halves started to come up and close to- 
 gether like a jack-knife. She must have gone down 
 inside of a minute or two, but things were hap- 
 pening so fast I don't think I was looking when she 
 disappeared." 
 
 Prince, engrossed in his story, forgot that the end 
 of his poker had a sheet of flame playing upon it, 
 and the heat which crept back from the rosy-red tip 
 gave his palm a sharp singe as he clutched the 
 handle preparatory to executing one of his sweep- 
 ing gestures. From then on to the end of his nar- 
 rative he paused frequently to lick with his tongue 
 the blistered cuticle, the stoker's sovereign remedy 
 for a slight burn. " I was just starting to give the 
 ' T.I.' an account of what I had had a lot better 
 chance to see than he had," he went on thickly, 
 still touching the blisters gingerly with an extended 
 tongue-tip, "when I heard him growl, ' Stand by! 
 here's another one. What speed d'you think she's 
 making? ' I was still standing up on top of the 
 tubes, and to get a better view right in front of 
 
" BACK FROM THE JAWS " 
 
 77 
 
 the ' T.I.', with my waist on just about the level of 
 his face. As I turned my head to look at the sec- 
 ond Hun he straddled us fair with a full salvo. 
 Most of it went over, but one proj struck right 
 alongside and just about flooded us out. But there 
 was something heavier than water that it sent 
 aboard. I felt a sharp sting across my stomach, 
 as if someone had given me a cut with a whip. As 
 I put my hand down to it the whole front of my 
 overall dropped away where a fragment of shell 
 casing had shot across it. A few threads I found 
 out later had been started on my singlet, but my 
 hide was not even scratched. I heard the ' T.I.' give 
 a yell, and when I looked round saw his face 
 covered with blood, and a flap of skin from his fore- 
 head hanging down over one eye like a skye terrier's 
 ear. The piece of proj had caught him a nasty 
 side-swipe, though without hurting anything but 
 his looks in the least. And it wasn't that he was 
 yelling about, either, but at me for not giving him 
 the course and speed of the second cruiser. He had 
 the flap of skin tied up out of his eye using a strip 
 of my overall because neither of us could find a 
 handkerchief by the time I was back at the handle. 
 I saw the blood dribbling over his sights, but he 
 seemed to be seeing through them all right, for he 
 was telling me how to train when I felt the helm 
 begin to grind as it was thrown hard over to make 
 a sudden alteration of course. She heeled fifteen 
 or twenty degrees as she turned six points to star- 
 
78 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 board, and the boil of her wake flooded across her 
 stern three or four feet deep. The sudden heel 
 threw me off my feet, and I pulled up just in time 
 to see us rushing by, and just missing by a few 
 yards, a stopped destroyer that was nothing but 
 spurts of fire flashing under a rolling cloud of 
 steam and smoke. 
 
 " She seemed to be afire all over, and about ready 
 to blow up ; yet, from the quick flashes of some of 
 the spurts of fire, I knew they came from a hard- 
 pumped gun that some stout-hearted lads were 
 working to the last. There was nothing in the look 
 of that spouting volcano of smoke and steam that 
 would help a man to tell whether it was a battle- 
 ship or a trawler, but I knew that it could be only 
 the Nectar, our Division leader. We never saw 
 her nor anyone in her again. She must have gone 
 down within a few minutes, and anyone that sur- 
 vived fell into the hands of the enemy. She led us 
 a fine dance while it lasted, and the only pity was 
 that she couldn't trip it to the end. 
 
 " That left the old Nairobi as the last of the Divi- 
 sion, and I haven't any recollection of any of the 
 rest of the flotilla being in sight by then. Not that 
 I had any time to look for them, though. Our sud- 
 den change of course to keep from ramming the 
 Nectar spoiled our chance at the second Hun 
 cruiser, but we were left no time to mourn that any 
 more than the finish of the Nectar. Hardly had we 
 left the wreck of her astern than a full salvo of 
 
" BACK FROM THE JAWS " 79 
 
 large shells I think they must have come from one 
 of the battle cruisers, for they were much heavier 
 than anything the light cruisers were firing struck 
 only thirty or forty yards short of us. The shells 
 were bunched together like a salvo of air-bombs 
 kicked loose all at once. The wall of water they 
 threw up shut everything on that side off from 
 sight for a few seconds, and when the spouts settled 
 down there was a Hun destroyer inside of a mile 
 away. I jumped up to give her course and speed to 
 the ' T.I.', but before I had time more than to see 
 that she had two funnels and many tubes the burst- 
 ing projes from our foremost and midships guns 
 began knocking her to pieces so fast that I soon saw 
 there was no use of wasting a mouldie on the job. 
 
 " I saw the captain waving encouragement from 
 the bridge to the crew of the midships guns, and, 
 when the noise died dow r n for a moment, I heard 
 him shout, ' You've got her ! Give it to her ! ' Just 
 then another salvo was plastered a-straddle of us, 
 and I saw a fragment of shell knock the sight-setter 
 of the midships gun out of his seat. He looked a 
 little dazed as he climbed back, but his eye must 
 have been as good as ever, for I saw his next shot 
 make a hit square on a whaler they were lowering 
 from the sinking Hun and blow it to bits. A minute 
 or two more, and the destroyer itself blew up and 
 disappeared under a column of steam and smoke. 
 
 " That," continued Prince, beginning to prod 
 anew his neglected sprayers, " just about concluded 
 
SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 our day's work. As there was no longer any pros- 
 pect of getting in mouldie-range of any of the big 
 Huns, and as none of the little Huns were in sight 
 to fight with gun-fire, it must have occurred to the 
 captain that it was time he was rejoining the 
 flotilla. There was only some dark blurs on the 
 north'ard skyline to steer for at first, and the Huns 
 did all they knew to keep us from getting there, 
 too. For a while we were doing nothing but play- 
 ing ' hide-and-seek ' among the salvoes they tried to 
 stop us with, and I have heard since that the way 
 the captain used his helm to avoid being hit at this 
 stage of the show was rated as about the cleverest 
 work of the kind in the whole battle. 
 
 " It was the Fifth B.S. the Queen Elizabeth 
 class that we caught up to first, and a grand sight 
 it was, the four of them standing up and giving 
 battle to about the whole of the High Sea Fleet. 
 They were taking a heavy pounding without turn- 
 ing a hair, so far as a man could see, and even when 
 the Warspite had her steering gear knocked out 
 and went steaming in circles it didn't seem to upset 
 the other three very much. We sighted our own 
 Battle Fleet about six, and rejoined the flotilla in 
 good time to be back with the battle cruisers when 
 Beatty took them round the head of the Hun line 
 and only failed to cut off their retreat through 
 night coming on. 
 
 " Compared with what the next six or eight 
 hours held for some of our destrovers or even 
 
 
" BACK FROM THE JAWS " 
 
 81 
 
 with what we had just been through ourselves 
 the night for us was fairly quiet. We were in 
 action once or twice, and I saw several ships 
 mostly enemy, but one or two of our own go up 
 in flame and smoke before I went on watch down 
 here at midnight. But through it all the devil's 
 own luck which had been with us from the first 
 held good. Although we were through the very 
 hottest of the day action, and not the least of the 
 night, the old Nairobi did not receive one direct hit 
 from an enemy shell. She accounted for at least 
 two Hun ships, saw the other three destroyers of 
 her division sunk or put out of action, and returned 
 to base with almost empty oil tanks and perhaps 
 the largest mileage to her credit of any craft in 
 the Jutland battle all without a serious casualty 
 or more than a few scratches to her paint. On top 
 of it all, on the way back to harbour, by the queer- 
 est fluke you ever heard of, she rammed and ex- 
 ploded the air-chamber of a mouldie that had been 
 fired by a Hun U-boat at the destroyer next in line 
 ahead of her. As the Yanks say, * Can you beat 
 it? ' 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 I 
 
 HUNTING 
 
 P it's destroyer work you want, there are five 
 of them getting under weigh at four 
 o'clock," said the " Senior Officer Present," 
 looking at his watch. " You'll have just about 
 time to pick up your luggage and connect if you 
 want to go. I can't tell you what they're going to 
 do they won't know that themselves till they get 
 to sea, and their orders may be changed from hour 
 to hour, and things may happen to send them to 
 the Channel, France, or to several other places, on 
 and off the chart, before they put in here again. 
 But there'll be work to do plenty of it. That's 
 the best part of this corner of the North Atlantic 
 in which our Allies have done the American de- 
 stroyers the honour of setting them on the U-boats. 
 Whatever else you may suffer from, it won't be 
 from ennui." It was luck indeed, on two hours' 
 notice, to have the chance of getting out in just the 
 way I had planned, where I had been quite pre- 
 pared to stand-by for twice as many days, and I 
 fell in with the arrangement at once. 
 
 Captain X ran his eye down a board where 
 
 the names of a number of destroyers were dis- 
 
 82 
 
HUNTING 
 
 83 
 
 played against certain data indicating their where- 
 abouts and disposition. " Zop, Zap, Zip, Zim, 
 Zam," he read musingly. " Zip yes, I don't think 
 I can do better than send you on the Zip. Her 
 skipper is as keen as he is able, and the Zip herself 
 has the reputation of having something of a nose 
 for U-boats on her own account. I'll advise him 
 you're coming. Pick up your sea togs and put off 
 to her as soon as you can. Good luck." The 
 American naval officer, like the British, never says 
 " Good-bye " if it can possibly be avoided. 
 
 They were already preparing to unmoor as I 
 clambered over the side of the Zip, and by the time 
 I had shifted to sea-boots and oilskins in the cap- 
 tain's cabin which, unoccupied by himself during 
 that strenuous interval, was to be mine at sea she 
 was swinging in the stream and nosing out into the 
 creaming wakes of the two of her dazzle-painted 
 sisters who were preceding her down the bay. 
 
 There are several things that strike one as differ- 
 ent on going to an American warship after a spell in 
 a British ship of the same class, but the one which 
 surges to meet you and goes to your head like wine 
 is the all-pervading spirit of vibrant, sparkling, un- 
 quenchable youthfulness. Everything you see and 
 hear seems to radiate it every throb of the en- 
 gines, every beat of the screws and at first you 
 may almost get the impression that it comes from 
 the ship herself. But when you start to trace it 
 
SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 down, you find it bubbles from a single fount, the 
 men, or rather the boys the lounging, laughing, 
 devil-may-care boys. Theirs the alchemy to trans- 
 form every one and everything that comes near 
 them into the golden seeming of themselves. 
 
 This youthfulness of the American destroyers is 
 in the crew rather than the officers, for the latter 
 especially the captain and executive will average, 
 if anything, a shade older than their " opposite 
 numbers " in a British destroyer. There is a cer- 
 tain minimum of highly specialised work in navi- 
 gating and fighting a destroyer which must be in 
 the hands of officers and men who can have only 
 attained the requisite training in long years of 
 technical study and practical experience. Given 
 these, and the remainder of the ship's company- 
 provided only that they have digestive organs that 
 will continue to function when tilted through a 
 dozen different slants and angles in as many sec- 
 onds can be trained to perfection in an astonish- 
 ingly short time. Here it is that America has 
 scored, for there is no doubt that the youngsters 
 that have rushed to enrol themselves for her de- 
 stroyer service are better educated and quicker in 
 mind and body than those available for any other 
 navy in the war. It is the incomparable adapt- 
 ability these advantages have conspired to give him 
 that has made the Yankee destroyer rating a com- 
 bination of keenness and efficiency that leaves little, 
 if anything, to be desired on either score. 
 
HUNTING 
 
 85 
 
 Here is the way a British naval officer who is 
 familiar with the work of the American destroyer 
 flotilla expressed himself in this connection : " The 
 ship's company of any one of these American de- 
 stroyers," he said, " will average a good five years 
 younger than that of a British destroyer. Off 
 hand, one would say that this would tell against 
 them, but, as a matter of fact, quite the contrary 
 is the case. 
 
 " Given that the command and the technical op- 
 erations are in the hands of highly trained and 
 fairly serious-minded officers, you can't have too 
 much slapbang, hell-for-leather, devil-take-the-con- 
 sequences spirit in the ship's company. And where 
 will you find that save in the youngsters tireless, 
 fearless, careless boys. They've found that out in 
 the air services, and we're finding it out in the de- 
 stroyers. And right there in these quick-headed, 
 quick-footed super-boys of theirs is where the Yan- 
 kee destroyers have the best of us. It is they 
 working under consummately clever officers that 
 enabled the American destroyer flotilla to reach 
 in a stride a working efficiency which we had been 
 straining up to for three years." 
 
 The green hills astern had turned grey and dis- 
 solved in mist and darkness before the captain was 
 able to announce what work was afoot for us. The 
 Zim and Zam, it appeared, were to be detached on 
 some mission of their own, while the Zop, Zap, 
 
86 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 and Zip, after " hunting " submarines for some 
 time, were to proceed to a certain port, pick up the 
 Lymptania, and escort her through the danger 
 zone on her westward voyage. The captain was 
 grinning as he finished reading the order. " I can't 
 give you any definite assurance/' he said, " that 
 the hunt part of the stunt is going to scare up any 
 U-boats, although the prospects this week are more 
 promising than for some time; but" he turned 
 his level gaze to the westward, where the in-rolling 
 Atlantic swells were blotting with undulant humps 
 the fading primrose of the narrow strip of after- 
 glow "if this wind and sea keep the same force 
 and direction for three or four days more, I'll 
 promise you all the excitement your heart can de- 
 sire when we take on our escort duties. The last 
 time we took out the old Lymptania well, I've 
 got marks on me yet from the corners I got banged 
 up against, and as for the poor little Zip but she's 
 had a refit since and most of the scars have been 
 removed. As you will have ample chance to see 
 for yourself, there isn't a lot of dolce far niente in 
 any of this life we lead in connection with our little 
 game here, but if there is one phase of our activities 
 that is farther removed from ' peace, perfect peace ' 
 than any other, it is trying to screen an ex- Atlantic 
 greyhound that is boring at umpty-ump knots into 
 a head wind and sea. Strafing U-boats is a Sun- 
 day-school picnic in comparison at any time; but 
 it will be worse this week because they have just 
 
HUNTING 
 
 87 
 
 put down a couple of big liners, and the skipper of 
 the Lymptania, knowing they will be laying for 
 him, will force her like he was trying to get his 
 company the trans-Atlantic mail subsidy. For us 
 to cut zigzags around that kind of a thing but 
 you'll be able to judge for yourself. I only hope 
 we can catch you a U-boat or two by way of pre- 
 liminary, so as to lead up to the climax by slow 
 degrees." 
 
 Things were fairly comfy that night that is, as 
 comfort goes in a destroyer. There was a good stiff 
 wind and a good deal more than a lop of sea run- 
 ning; but as both were coming on the quarter and 
 we were plodding along at no great speed, the Zip 
 made very passable weather of it. The bridge, save 
 for occasional showers of light spray where a sea 
 slapped over the side, was quite dry, and even on 
 the long run of low deck amidships there were sev- 
 eral havens of refuge where the men off watch could 
 foregather to smoke and yarn without fear of more 
 than an occasional spurt of brine. A dry deck 
 does not chance every day that a destroyer is on 
 business bent at sea, and when it does, like sun- 
 shine in Scotland, is a thing to luxuriate in. 
 
 As the twilight deepened and melted into the 
 light of a moon that was but a day or two from the 
 full " bad luck for the Lymptania convoy, that 
 moon," the captain had said as he noted how it was 
 waxing on his chart I came down from the bridge 
 and worked along from group to group of the sailor 
 
88 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 men where, lounging and laughing, they sheltered 
 in the lee of funnel and boat and superstructure. 
 The first one I pushed into was centred round a 
 discussion, or rather an argument, between two 
 boys, the one from Kansas and the other from 
 Oklahoma, as to which had raised the best and 
 biggest corn in the course of some sort of growing 
 competitions they had once taken part in. Several 
 others standing about also appeared to have come 
 from one or other of those fine naval-recruiting 
 States of the Middle West, and seemed to know 
 not a little about intensive maize culture them- 
 selves. I was just ingratiating myself with this 
 party by nodding assent and voicing an emphatic 
 " Sure! " to one's query of " Some corn that, mister, 
 hey?" when I discovered a cosmopolitan group 
 (two Filipino stewards, the coloured cook, and 
 three or four bluejackets in sleeveless grey 
 sweaters) collaborating in the arduous task of 
 teaching a very sad-faced white mongrel to sit up on 
 his haunches and beg. Or rather it was an elabora- 
 tion of that classic trick. On drawing nearer I 
 perceived that the lugubrious-visaged canine 
 already had mastered begging for food, and that 
 now they were endeavouring to teach him to beg 
 for mercy. At the order " Kamerad ! " instead of 
 sitting with down-drooping paws, he was being 
 instructed to raise the latter above his head and 
 give tongue to a wail of entreaty. He was a 
 brighter pup than his looks would have indicated, 
 
HUNTING 
 
 89 
 
 and had already become letter perfect in the wail. 
 " Kamerading " properly with uplifted paws, how- 
 ever, was rather too much for his balance, at least 
 while teetering on the edge of a condensed milk 
 case which was itself sliding about the deck of a 
 careening destroyer. The dog had been christened 
 " Ole Oleson," one of the sailors told me, both be- 
 cause he was " some kind of a Swede " and because, 
 like his famous namesake, he had tried to come 
 aboard in " two jumps " the day they found him 
 perched on a bit of wreckage of the Norwegian 
 barque to which he had belonged, and which had 
 been sunk by a U-boat an hour previously. The men 
 seemed to be very fond of him, and I overheard the 
 one who picked him up off the box to make a place 
 for me to sit on, whisper into his cocked ear that 
 they were going to try to catch a Hun in the next 
 day or two for him to sharpen his teeth on. 
 
 These boys told me a number of stories in con- 
 nection with the survivors they had rescued, or 
 failed to rescue, from ships sunk by U-boats. Most 
 of them were the usual accounts of firing on open 
 boats in an attempt to sink without a trace, but 
 there was one piquant recital which revealed the 
 always diverting Hun sense of humour at a new 
 slant. This was displayed, as it chanced, on the 
 occasion of the sinking of " Ole's '' ship, the Norwe- 
 gian barque. After this unlucky craft had been put 
 down by shell-fire and bombs, the U-boat ran along- 
 
90 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 side the whaler containing the captain and mate, 
 and they were ordered aboard to be interrogated. 
 Under the pretence of preventing any attempt to 
 escape on the part of the remainder of those in 
 this boat, the Germans made them clamber up and 
 stand on the narrow steel run-way which serves as 
 the upper deck of a submarine. No sooner were 
 they here, however, than the Hun humorist on the 
 bridge began slowly submerging. When the water 
 was lapping round the necks of the unfortunate 
 Norwegians, and just threatening to engulf them, 
 the nose of the U-boat was slanted up again, this 
 finely finessed operation being repeated during all 
 of the time that the captain and mate were being 
 pumped below by the commander of the submarine. 
 No great harm save that one of the sailors, losing 
 his nerve when the U-boat started down the first 
 time, dived over, struck his head on one of the bow- 
 rudders and was drowned was done by this little 
 pleasantry, but it is so illuminative of what the 
 Hun is in his lightsome moods that I have thought 
 it worth setting down. 
 
 The American is more violent in his feelings than 
 the Briton, and much more inclined to say what he 
 thinks; and I found these boys to use the ex- 
 pressive phrase of one of them "mad clean 
 through " at the Hun pirate and all he stands for. 
 America with more time to do that sort of thing 
 has undoubtedly gone farther than any other 
 country in the war in trying to give her soldiers 
 
ili 
 
 KAMERADING WITH FPLIFTED PAWS 
 
 HELPING THE COOK TO PEEL POTATOES 
 
HUNTING 
 
 and sailors a proper idea of the beast they have 
 been sent out to slay. These lessons seem to have 
 sunk home with all of them, and when it has been 
 supplemented as in the case of the sailors in the 
 destroyers by the first-hand teachings of the Huns 
 themselves, it generally leaves a man in something 
 like the proper state of mind for the task in hand. 
 Not that I really think any of the Americans, when 
 they have the chance, as happens every now and 
 then, will carry out all the little plans they claim to 
 be maturing, but well, if I was an exponent of the 
 U-boat branch of German kultur, and my untersee- 
 boot was depth-charged by a British and an Ameri- 
 can destroyer, and I came sputtering up to the sur- 
 face midway between them, I don't think I would 
 strike out for the lifebuoy trailing over the quarter 
 of the one flying the Stars and Stripes. I may be 
 wrong, but somehow I have the feeling that the 
 Briton be he soldier, sailor, or civilian hasn't 
 quite the same capacity as the Yank for keeping up 
 the temperature of his passion, for feeling " mad 
 clean through." 
 
 Joining another group bunched in the lee of a 
 tier of meat-safes, I chanced upon a debate which 
 threw an illuminative beam on the feelings of what 
 might once have been classified as hyphenated 
 Americans. At first the whole six or eight of them, 
 in all harmony and unanimity, had been engaged 
 in cursing Sinn Feiners, with whom it appeared 
 they had been having considerable contact phy- 
 
92 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 sical and otherwise in the course of the last few 
 months. Then one of the more rabid of them on 
 this particular subject he and one of his mates 
 had been waylaid and beaten by a dozen hulking 
 young Irishmen who resented the attentions the 
 Yankees were receiving from the local girls threw 
 a bone of dissension into the ring by declaring that 
 a Sinn Feiner was as bad as a Hun and ought to 
 be treated the same way. 
 
 The most of them could hardly bring themselves 
 to agree to this, but in the rather mixed argument 
 which followed it transpired that the lad who had 
 led the attack on Sinn Fein was named Morarity 
 and had been born in Cork, and that the one who 
 maintained that nothing on two legs, not even a 
 Sinn Feiner, was as " ornery as a Hun," was 
 named Steinholz, and had been born in St. Louis 
 of German parents. 
 
 The wherefore of this they explained to me 
 severally presently, when it turned out that their 
 views; as regards their duties as Americans were 
 precisely similar. Like all good Yankees, they said, 
 they had it in for both the Hun and the Sinn 
 Feiner; but, because each of them had a name to 
 live down, he felt it incumbent on himself to out- 
 strafe his mates in the direction from which that 
 name came. It was a bit nai've, that confession, but 
 at the same time highly instructive; and I wouldn't 
 care to be the Hun or Sinn Feiner that either of 
 those ex-hyphenates had a fair chance at. 
 
HUNTING 
 
 93 
 
 A* very domestic little party I found cuddled up 
 aft among the depth-charges. One lad he had been 
 a freshman at Cornell, I learned later, and would 
 not wait to train for a commission, so keen had he 
 been to get into the war was just back from a 
 week's leave in London, and was telling about it 
 with much circumstance. There were many things 
 that had interested and amused him, but the great 
 experience had been three days spent as a guest in 
 an English home at Wimbledon. The head of the 
 family, it appeared, was some kind of a City man, 
 and, encountering the doubtless aimlessly wander- 
 ing Yank at Waterloo, had forthwith carried him 
 home. Everything had bristled with interest for 
 the young visitor, from the marmalade at breakfast 
 and the port at dinner to croquet on the lawn and 
 a punt on the Thames at Richmond. But the best 
 of it all had been that he had brought a standing 
 invitation from the same family to any of his mates 
 who might be coming up to London while the war 
 was on. During the refit, which was supposed to 
 be imminent, two of these, who had plumped for 
 the great London adventure, had screwed up their 
 courage to following up the invitation to the hos- 
 pitable home in question. Out of his broader ex- 
 perience, their worldly mate was tipping them off 
 against possible breakers. This is the only one I 
 remember: "You'll find," he said, gesturing with 
 an admonitory finger that could just be dimly 
 guessed against the phosphorescence of the tossing 
 
94 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 wake, " that they don't seem to have any great 
 grudge 'gainst us for licking them and going on our 
 own in '76; but go easy on rubbing it in just the 
 same, 'cause you're a guest in the house. Best for- 
 get the Revolution while you're over here. That 
 scrap was more'n a hundred years ago, and we've 
 got another on now. Half the people you meet 
 here never heard of it, anyhow, and when you men- 
 tion it to them they think you refer to another 
 Revolution in France which came off about the 
 same time." 
 
 It was at about this juncture that a change of 
 course brought seas which had been quartering a 
 couple of points forward of the beam, and in a 
 jiffy the swift spurts of brine had searched out the 
 last dry corner of the deck and sent scurrying to 
 shelter every man who had not a watch to stand. 
 Three times I was completely drenched in groping 
 forward from the after-superstructure to the ward- 
 room, under the bridge, so that I was a good deal 
 inclined to take it as a joke and a rather ill-timed 
 one at that when an ensign about to turn in on 
 one of the transoms muttered something about 
 being thankful that we were going to have one 
 quiet night when a man could snatch a wink of 
 sleep. I asked him if he referred to the night we 
 expected to be in port waiting for the Lymptania, 
 but the fact that he had already dozed off proved 
 that he really had not been trying to be funny at 
 my expense. Indeed, it was a fairly quiet night, as 
 
HUNTING 
 
 95 
 
 nights go in destroyers; but, even so, I needed a 
 good high sideboard to keep from rolling out of 
 the captain's bunk, and then two sofa pillows and 
 my overcoat to keep from pulping my shoulder 
 against the sideboard. 
 
 We were still sliding easily along at the same 
 comfortable umpteen knots in the morning, but 
 with the breaking of the new day a subtle change 
 had come over the spirit of the ship. It was just 
 such a change as one might observe in a hunter as 
 he passes from a plain, where there is little cover, 
 to a wood where every tree and bush may hide 
 potential quarry. And that, indeed, was precisely 
 the way it was with us. The night before we were 
 " on our way " ; this morning we were ploughing 
 waters where U-boats were known to be operating. 
 It was only a couple of days previously that the 
 good old Carpathia had been put down, and not 
 many hours had passed since then but what brought 
 word, by one or another of the almost countless 
 ways that have been devised to trace them, of an 
 enemy submarine working in those waters. We 
 were ready enough the night before, ready for any- 
 thing that might have turned up; but this morning 
 we were more than that. 
 
 There was a new tenseness now, and a feeling in 
 the air like that which follows the click-click after 
 a trigger is set to " hair." It was as though every- 
 one, everything, even the good little Zip herself, 
 was crouched for a spring. 
 
96 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 There was an amusing little incident I chanced 
 to see which illustrates the keenness of the spirit 
 animating the men even in the moments of waiting. 
 A favourable course had left the deck unswept by 
 water for an hour, and a half-dozen boys, off watch, 
 but too restless to turn in, were trying to kill time 
 by helping the cook peel potatoes. It was one of 
 these whom I saw stand up, take several swift 
 strides forward across the reeling deck, draw a rag 
 from the pocket of his " jeans," and then, with great 
 care and deliberation, begin to polish a patch of 
 steel plate that was exposed in the angle of two 
 strips of coco-matting. " Wha' cher holystoning 
 deck yeta while fer, Pete? v one of his mates shouted. 
 " Can'cher wait till we gets back to port? We may 
 have to foul your pretty work with greasy Huns 
 any minnit." Unperturbed, Pete went right on 
 rubbing, testing the footing every now and then 
 with the sole of his boot. Only when the job, what- 
 ever it was, was done to suit his fastidious taste 
 did he return to his seat on the reversed water- 
 bucket and start peeling potatoes again. Not till 
 a full dozen or more neatly skinned Murphies had 
 passed under his knife did he vouchsafe to reply to 
 the half-curious, half-pitying looks and remarks 
 his mates had continued to direct at him. Then 
 his explanation was as crushing as complete. 
 
 " It don't look much as if you guys wants to get 
 a Hun," he observed finally, running a critical eye 
 over them. "Oh, you do, do you? My mistake. 
 
HUNTING 
 
 97 
 
 Well, then, don't try to be funny with another guy 
 that's doing his best to effect that same good end. 
 Now looka here. From where I sits to my gun- 
 station is just six steps. Six for me, I mean; it'd 
 be more for most of you ' shorties.' Now I just 
 figures that step number four lands my foot square 
 in the dribble of oil on that patch where there ain't 
 no matting; so what was more natural than for 
 me to go and swab it up. Last time the gong 
 binged I hit half a preserved peach, and sprained 
 a wrist and ankle so bad that I woulda been dead 
 slow on the gun if we'd had to fire it. Keeping my 
 eye peeled for another piece of peach, I pipes that 
 gob of oil, and so goes and gets rid of it. It's pain- 
 ful having to explain a simple thing like that to 
 you bone-heads, but, now that you got it, p'raps 
 you'll ease off on your beefing, and peel spuds. 
 That don't take no brains." 
 
 Two or three times in the course of the morning 
 the look-out's shout of " Sail! " bearing this way or 
 that, brought those in sound of it to their feet in the 
 expectation that it would be followed by the wel- 
 come clanging of the alarm bell; and once or twice 
 the wireless picked up the S.O.S. they do not 
 send it out that way now, but these letters are still 
 the common term in use to describe the call of a 
 ship in distress of a steamer that had been tor- 
 pedoed. But the sails turned out to be friends in 
 every case, while both of the ships reported sinking 
 were too far away for us to be of any use to them. 
 
98 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 Early in the afternoon a suspiciously cruising 
 craft, which proved presently to be a friend, got a 
 high-explosive shell under her nose as a conse- 
 quence of her deliberation in revealing that fact. 
 The smartness with which the men tumbled to 
 quarters, and the almost uncanny speed with which 
 the forecastle gun was served, boded well for de- 
 velopments in case the real thing turned up. 
 
 " Do you always fire a blank across their bows 
 when you don't quite like the look of 'em?" I 
 asked the captain innocently, as he gazed dejectedly 
 through his glass at certain unmistakable evidences 
 proving that he had been cheated of his quarry. 
 "Blank! " indignation and half the look that sits 
 on the face of a terrier who discovers that he has 
 cornered his own family's " Tabby " instead of the 
 neighbour's "Tom"; "blank! did you ever see a 
 blank ' X-point-X ' that threw up a spout as high 
 as a masthead, and all black with smoke? That 
 was the worst punisher we have in our lockers; 
 and, what's more, it was meant to be a hit. And the 
 next one would have been," he added. " You can't 
 afford to waste any time where five or ten seconds 
 may make all the difference between bagging and 
 losing a Hun." 
 
 " But how about bagging something that isn't 
 a Hun?" I protested. " I told you, I think, that 
 I had arranged to go out next week on patrol in 
 one of the American submarines; but after what 
 I've just seen " 
 
HUNTING 
 
 99 
 
 " The burden of proof is up to the craft under 
 suspicion," cut in the captain, " and they ought to 
 have no trouble in supplying it if they have their 
 wits about them." Then, with a grin, " But if 
 you're really going out on submarine patrol next 
 week, why I'll promise to look twice before turn- 
 ing loose one of those those ' blanks.' ' How he 
 kept his word is another story. 
 
 It was about an hour or two later that the wire- 
 less winged word that seemed at last to herald the 
 real thing. It was the S.O.S. of a steamer, and 
 conveyed merely the information that she had just 
 been torpedoed, with her latitude and longitude. 
 The position given was only thirty or forty miles 
 to the northward, and though the name in the mes- 
 sage it was Namoura or something similar 
 could not be found on any of our shipping lists, 
 the Zop, as senior ship, promptly ordered course 
 altered and full speed made in the hope of arriving 
 on the scene in time to be of some use. With every 
 minute likely to be of crucial importance, it was 
 not an occasion to waste time by waiting or asking 
 for orders. A swift exchange of signals between 
 ships, a hurried order or two down a voice-pipe, an 
 advancing of the handle of the engine-room tele- 
 graph, a throwing over of the wheel, and we had 
 spun in the welter of our tossing wake and were 
 off on a mission that might prove one of either 
 mercy or destruction, or, quite conceivably, both. 
 The formation in which we had been cruising when 
 
100 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 the signal was received gave the Zip something like 
 a mile lead at the get-away, and this though one 
 of the others was a newer and slightly faster ship 
 she held gallantly to the end of the race. By a 
 lucky chance, though there was a snoring wind and 
 a lumpy sea running, the course brought both abaft 
 the beam and permitted us to run nearly " all out " 
 without imposing a serious strain on the ship. The 
 difference between running before and bucking into 
 seas of this kind I was to learn in a day or two. 
 For the moment, conditions were all that could be 
 asked to favour our getting with all dispatch into 
 whatever game there was to be played. 
 
 Many a so-called express train has travelled 
 slower than any one of those three destroyers was 
 ploughing its way through solid green w r ater. For 
 a few seconds after " Full speed ! " had been rung 
 down to their engine-rooms, swift-spinning smoke 
 rings had shot up from their funnels and gone 
 reeling off down to leeward; then, with perfect 
 synchronisation of draught and oil, the duskiness 
 above the mouths of the stumpy stacks had cleared, 
 and only the mirage on the horizon astern betrayed 
 the up-spouting jets of hot gases. Only the vibrant 
 throb of the speeding engines so pervading that 
 it seemed to pulse like heart-beats through the 
 very steel itself gave hint of the mightiness of the 
 effort that speed was costing. With that throb 
 stilled and the mounting wake quenched the pro- 
 gress of that thousand tons or so of steam-driven 
 
HUNTING 101 
 
 steel would have seemed scarcely less effortless than 
 that of an aeroplane. 
 
 An order irom the Commander-in-Chief which 
 was picked np presently to go to the assistance of 
 the torpedoed ship and to " hunt submarine " had 
 been anticipated; but the real name of the steamer 
 finally transmitted correctly brought to me at 
 least a distinct shock. It was H.M.S. Marmora, 
 and the Marmora, the former P. & O. Australian 
 liner, was an old friend. To anyone who loves the 
 sea a ship, no matter of what kind, has a person- 
 ality. But in the case of a ship in which he has 
 sailed lived in, worked and played in, been happy 
 in, perhaps gone through certain dangers in has 
 more than a personality, it has a place in his heart. 
 Many and many a morning since the first U-boat 
 campaign was started I had read and never with- 
 out a lump rising in my throat of the passing of 
 just such a friend, of the going out of the world of 
 something almost of " some one ' which I had 
 always looked forward to seeing again. Afric, 
 Arabic, Aragon, I knew their names well enough to 
 compile the list alphabetically. It would have run 
 to some score in length, and from every name would 
 have led a long train of treasured memories. But 
 the blow had never come quite this way before, 
 never fallen quite so near at home. An especially 
 dear friend had just been stricken less than a de- 
 gree of latitude away; byt the poignancy of that 
 realisation was tempered by the thought that I was 
 
102 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 in a ship rushing to her assistance, a ship that 
 could be as swift to succour as to avenge. 
 
 I must confess to a queerly mixed state of mind 
 that next half-hour. Consumed as I was with in- 
 terest in our terribly purposeful progress leading 
 up to the entrance into that grim drama approach- 
 ing its climacteric act just beyond the sky-line, 
 there were also vivid flare-backs of memory to the 
 days of my friendship with the Marmora, arresting 
 flashlights of the swift refreshing morning dive 
 into the canvas pool on her forecastle, of lounging 
 chairs ranged in long rows twixt snowy decks and 
 awnings, of a phosphorescent bow-wave curling 
 back and blotting the reflections of stars in a 
 tropical sea. There was a picture of the clean 
 sweet lines of her as buff, black, and beautiful 
 she lay at the north end of the horseshoe of the 
 Circular Quay at Sydney, with a rakish Mes- 
 sageries liner moored astern of her and a bluff 
 Norddeutscher Lloyd packet ahead. It was her 
 maiden voyage, and Australia, which had never 
 seen so swift and luxurious a liner before, was re- 
 ceiving her like a newly arrived prima donna. I 
 took passage in her back as far as Colombo. That 
 fortnight's voyage had been diverting in a number 
 of ways, I recalled, but most of all, perhaps, as a 
 consequence of the throwing together of a large 
 party of Wesleyan missionaries from Fiji and the 
 members of a London musical comedy company 
 returning from its Australian " triumphs." I was 
 
HUNTING 
 
 103 
 
 just beginning to chuckle inwardly at the recollec- 
 tion of what one of the missionary ladies had said 
 to a buxom chorus-girl who tripped out to the 
 fancy dress cricket-match in her pink tights and a 
 ballet skirt, when the ting-a-ling of a bell brought 
 the captain to the radio-room voice-pipe. " Message 
 just received," I heard him repeat. " All right, 
 Send it up/ * He slapped down the voice-pipe cover, 
 and a messenger had handed him the signal before 
 he had paced twice across the bridge. 
 
 "Marmora just sunk," he read; "survivors 
 picked up by P.B.'s X and Y." 
 
 The sinking made no immediate change in our 
 plans. There was still a chance we might be of use 
 with the survivors, and also the matter of the U- 
 boat to be looked after. With no abatement of 
 speed, all three destroyers drove on. The navigat- 
 ing officer reckoned that in another fifteen minutes 
 we should be sighting the rescuing craft, and 
 probably wreckage; but when twice that time still 
 left a clear horizon ahead, it began to appear as 
 though there had been a mistake of some kind. 
 And so there had, but it was a lucky mistake for 
 us. It was some time later before they figured just 
 how it had chanced, but what had happened was 
 this. The Marmora's last despairing call doubt- 
 less sent out by a breaking-down radio gave her 
 position as some ten or twelve miles out from what 
 it really was. The consequence was that, heading 
 somewhat wide of the sinking ship, to which, how- 
 
104 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 ever, on account of the presence of the patrol boats, 
 which had evidently been close enough to come to 
 her immediate assistance, we could have been of 
 small use, we had steered directly for the one point 
 where it was most desirable we should make our 
 appearance at that psychological moment : for the 
 point, in short, at which the coolly calculative 
 skipper of the U-boat responsible for the outrage, 
 after running submerged for an hour or more and 
 doubtless figuring he had come sufficiently far 
 from the madding crowd that would throng the 
 immediate vicinity of the wreckage to be at peace, 
 had come up to smoke his evening pipe and cogitate 
 upon the Freedom of the Seas. 
 
 It was just as it began to become apparent that 
 we were badly adrift as regards the point where 
 the Marmora had gone down that a whine from the 
 lookout's voice-pipe reported to the bridge that it 
 had sighted a " sail port, ten." 
 
 "What is it?" asked back the captain. 
 
 " Looks like submarine," came the reply ; and with 
 one quick movement the captain had started the 
 alarm-bell sounding " General quarters ! " in every 
 part of the ship. With every man knowing pre- 
 cisely what he had to do, and how to do it, there 
 was incredible speed without confusion. Tumbling 
 to their stations like hounds on a hot scent, they 
 yet managed to avoid getting in each other's way, 
 even in the narrow passages and on the ladders. The 
 
HUNTING 
 
 105 
 
 loom of the conning-tower was plain to the naked 
 eye, now that one knew where to look for it, but 
 only for a few minutes. Even as a swiftly passed 
 shell was thrown into the open breech of the fore- 
 castle gun, came the look-out's whine through the 
 voice-pipe, " She's going down, sir ; she's gone ! " 
 The breech of the gun spun shut, but the eye of the 
 sightsetter groped along an empty horizon. 
 
 " Never mind,' 1 muttered the captain grimly. 
 " Couldn't have croaked him with one shot any- 
 how. Got something better'n shells for him. Now 
 for it," and his hand went back to pull the wire of 
 a gong which gave certain orders to the men stand- 
 ing-by with the depth-charges. That, a word down 
 the engine-room voice-pipe, and a fraction of a 
 point's alteration in the course and there was only 
 one thing left to be done. The time for that had 
 not quite arrived. 
 
 Because a destroyer's engine-room telegraph-hand 
 points to "Full speed!" it does not necessarily 
 mean that there are not ways of forcing more revo- 
 lutions from the engines, of driving her still faster 
 through the water should the need arise. Such a 
 need now confronted the Zip, and, like the thor- 
 oughbred she was, her response was instant and 
 generous. The pulsing throb of her quickened till 
 it was almost a hum ; the quivering insistency of it 
 struck straight to the marrow of the bones, 
 drummed in the depths of one's innermost being. 
 
106 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 If there is anything to stir the blood of a man like 
 a destroyer beginning to see red and go Berserk, 
 I have yet to encounter it. 
 
 There must have been something like three miles 
 to go from the point where the U-boat had been 
 sighted to the point where the inevitable patch of 
 grease would mark the place where it had sub- 
 merged, and rather less than twice that many 
 minutes had elapsed when the cry of " Oil slick- 
 starboard bow ! " came almost simultaneously from 
 the look-outs in the foretop and on the bridge. 
 Over went the helm a spoke or two, and the execu- 
 tive officer, in his hand a thin piece of board with a 
 table of figures pasted on it, moved up beside the 
 captain. Straight down the wobbly track of irides- 
 cent film drove the Zip, and when a certain length 
 of it had been put astern, the captain turned and 
 drew a lever to him with a sharp pull. 
 
 Three, four seconds passed, and then, simul- 
 taneously with a heavy knocking thud, a round 
 patch of water a hundred yards or so astern quiv- 
 ered and fizzed up sharply like the surface of a 
 glass of whisky-and-soda after the siphon has 
 ceased to play on it. Following that by a second or 
 two, a smooth rounded geyser of foam boiled up a 
 dozen feet or so, and then gradually subsided. 
 That one, plainly, was a deep-set charge, whose force 
 was expended far beneath the surface. A second 
 one threw a geyser twice as high as the first, and a 
 third, which fizzed and spouted almost simultan- 
 
HUNTING 
 
 107 
 
 eously, blotted out a great patch of sternward sky 
 with its smoke-shot eruption. 
 
 Presently the Zop " struck oil," and then the Zap, 
 Soon the muffled booms of their rapidly scuttled 
 depth-charges began to drum, while astern of them 
 the foam-spouts nicked the sky-line like a stubby 
 picket fence. 
 
 Perhaps the lad whom I later overheard de- 
 scribing that bombardment by saying that " 'tween 
 the three of us, we was scattering ' cans ' like rice 
 at a wedding " was guilty of some exaggeration ; 
 but it is a fact that they were spilling over very 
 fast and, there is little doubt, with telling effect. 
 The savageness of the bolts of wrath released by 
 the exploding charges was strikingly disclosed when 
 two of them chanced to be dropped at nearly the 
 same time by destroyers a mile or more apart, when 
 the under-sea " jolts " would meet half-way and 
 form weird evanescent " rips " of dancing froth 
 strongly suggestive of chain-lightning. The way in 
 which even the most distant of the detonations 
 made a destroyer " bump the bumps/' quite as 
 though it was striking a series of solid obstructions, 
 gave some hints of the bolts that were descending 
 upon the lurking pirate. 
 
 At the end of a minute or two a quick order from 
 the captain sent the wheel spinning over, and, with 
 raucous grinding of helm, round we swung through 
 sixteen points to head back in reverse over the path 
 of destruction we had just traversed. Just as the 
 
108 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 steel runners of a racing skater throw ice when he 
 makes a sudden turn, so the screws of a speeding 
 destroyer hurl water. The stern sank deep into 
 the propeller-scooped void, so that the high-tossed 
 side-slipping wake buried it beneath a frothing 
 flood. Through several long seconds I saw the 
 water boiling above the waists of the men at the 
 depth-charges, without appearing to disturb them 
 in the least; then the wheel was spun back 'mid- 
 ships and a spoke or two beyond to meet and 
 steady her the bow wave resumed its curled 
 symmetry and the wake began trailing off astern 
 again. 
 
 It was into a peaceful sea, indolently rolling, 
 sunset tinged and slightly sleeked* with a thin 
 streak of oil, that we had raced five minutes before ; 
 it was a troubled sea, charge-churned and wave- 
 slashed, that we now nosed back into to see what 
 good our coming had wrought. The grey-blue-black 
 of the long oil wake had been scattered into broken 
 patches by the explosions. Most of these were pale, 
 sickly, and highly anremic in colour, and of scant 
 promise; but for one, where fresh oil rising spread 
 rainbow-bright upon the surface, the Zip headed 
 full tilt. The explosion here appeared to have been 
 an unusually heavy one, for the sea was dotted with 
 the white bellies of stunned fish, most of them float- 
 ing high out of the water, with trickles of blood 
 running from their upturned mouths and distended 
 
HUNTING 
 
 109 
 
 gills. A six or eight-foot shark, wriggling drunk- 
 en ly along the surface with a broken back, was 
 hailed with a howl of delight by the men, who 
 claimed to see in the fact that the unlucky monster 
 could not submerge his telltale dorsal, a sign that 
 their Fritz might be in the same difficulty. 
 
 Another " can " or two was let go as we dashed 
 through that iridescent " fount of promise " ; and 
 when we turned back to it again the wounded shark 
 had ceased to wriggle and now floated inertly 
 among his hapless brothers. But of Fritz save' 
 for a glad new gush of oil no sign. Prisoners or 
 wreckage are rated as the only indubitable evidence 
 of the destruction of a U-boat, and neither of these 
 were we able to woo to the surface in that busy hour 
 which elapsed before the descending pall of dark- 
 ness put a period to our well-meant efforts. Dur- 
 ing that time not the most delicate instrument de- 
 vised by science for that purpose revealed any 
 indication of life or movement in the depths below. 
 As the water at this point was far too deep to allow 
 a submarine to descend and lie on the bottom with- 
 out being crushed, this fact appeared morally con- 
 clusive. It was this I had in mind when I tried to 
 draw the captain out on the subject. " Of course 
 there's no -doubt we bagged him? " I hazarded, in 
 a quiet interval when we were watchfully waiting 
 for something to turn up, or rather come up. He 
 smiled a rather tired smile. " Oh, very likely we 
 
110 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 have/' he replied. " But, unluckily, there's noth- 
 ing we can lay our hands on to carry away and 
 prove it. In case this particular Fritz doesn't come 
 to life and sink another ship in the course of the 
 next few days, there is just a chance that we may 
 be credited with a ' Possible.' They never err on 
 the optimistic side in sizing up a little brush of 
 this kind, and perhaps it's just as well. Anyhow, 
 a game like this is worth playing on its own 
 account, whether you come in with a scalp at your 
 belt every time or not." 
 
 It was just a darkness was slowing down our 
 anti-U-boat operations, that a signal came through 
 stating that there were believed to be several sur- 
 vivors still alive among the wreckage of the Mar- 
 mora, and ordering us to proceed to the scene of 
 her sinking with all dispatch. The moon was ris- 
 ing as we began to nose among the pathetic litter 
 of scraps that was all that remained afloat of what, 
 five or six hours previously, had been a swift and 
 beautiful auxiliary cruiser. 
 
 There was enough light for us to be reasonably 
 sure, at the end of an hour's search, that our mis- 
 sion was in vain ; that there remained no living man 
 to pick up. There was something strangely 
 familiar, though, in the lines of a cutter which, in 
 spite of a smashed gunwale, was still afloat, and I 
 was just thinking of how grateful a lee, in the mon- 
 soon, the windward side of the old Marmora's life- 
 boats had furnished for a deck-chair or two, when 
 
HUNTING 
 
 111 
 
 the captain, advancing the handle of the engine- 
 room telegraph, turned to me with : " We're off to 
 rendezvous with the Lymptania now; I think we 
 can promise you some real excitement in the course 
 of the next day or two." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE CONVOY GAME 
 
 THE fantastic pile of multi-coloured slabs blot- 
 ting out a broken patch of sky above the sea- 
 ward end of the estuary, if it had been on 
 land, might have been anything from a row of 
 hangars, viewed in slant perspective, to the scaffold- 
 ing of a scenic railway, or a " Goblin's Castle " in 
 Luna Park. But there in the middle of the chan- 
 nel, the mountainous bulk could only be one thing, 
 the Lymptania, the ship which our division of 
 American destroyers had been ordered to escort on 
 that part of its westbound voyage in which there 
 was reckoned to be danger of submarine attack. 
 Distorted by the camouflage, the tumbled mass of 
 jumbled colours continued to loom in jagged in- 
 definitiveness as we closed it from astern, and it 
 was only when we had come up well abreast of it 
 that the parts settled down into "ship-shapeli- 
 ness," and the silhouette of perhaps the most 
 famous of the world's great steamers sharpened 
 against the sunlit afternoon clouds. 
 
 The change which had been wrought in the ap- 
 pearance of the Lymptania since last I had seen 
 her was almost beyond belief. Then she had been 
 
THE CONVOY GAME 
 
 113 
 
 a hospital ship, with everything about her, from 
 snowy whiteness to red crosses in paint and col- 
 oured lights, calculated to establish her character, 
 to give her the protection of conspicuousness. Now 
 she sought protection in quite the opposite way. 
 Every trick of scientific camouflage had been em- 
 ployed to render her inconspicuous; while, if that 
 failed, there were the destroyers. The protection 
 of these big liners is a considerable undertaking, 
 but it has its redeeming features. As U-boat bait 
 they are unrivalled, and the number of German 
 submarines which have been sent to the bottom as 
 a direct consequence of attempting to sink one of 
 them will make a long and interesting list when the 
 time comes to publish it. 
 
 There was something almost awesome in the 
 emptiness of the great ship, in the lifelessness of 
 the decks, in the miles of blinded ports. The heads 
 of a few sailors " snugging down " on the fore- 
 castle, a knot of officers at the end of the bridge, 
 and two stewardesses in white uniforms leaning 
 over the rail of one of the upper decks that was all 
 there was visible of human life on a ship which a 
 few days before had been packed to the funnels 
 with its thousands of American soldiers. A lanky 
 destroyer gunner lounging by a ladder, described 
 her exactly when he said to one of his mates : " Gee, 
 but ain't she the lonesome one! " 
 
 The captain of the Zip turned his glasses back 
 to cover the little group of officers on the liner's 
 
114 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 bridge. " There's the skipper," he said presently. 
 " I only hope he's well ahead of the game on the 
 sleeps, for I wouldn't mind betting that he won't 
 be leaving that bridge for a cup of coffee for some 
 time. It's going to be an anxious interval for him 
 very anxious. It's quite beyond calculation, the 
 value to the Allies at this moment of a ship of the 
 size and speed of the Lymptania, and her skipper 
 must know from what has happened the last week, 
 that the Huns are all out to bag her this time, and 
 he can hardly be able to extract any too much com- 
 fort out of the fact that it's about a hundred to one 
 that we'll bag the Fritz that tries it either before 
 or after the event. Yes, it will be an anxious time 
 for him but," a grimly wry smile coming to his 
 face as he turned his eyes to the opening seaward 
 horizon, " even so, it'll be nothing to the time we're 
 in for in the Zip and all the rest of the escort. He'll 
 be able to sleep if he happens to take a notion to ; 
 we won't, at least, not during the time we've got 
 her to shepherd. Again, he's only got the chance 
 of being hit by a torpedo to worry about; we've 
 got the certainty of being hit by head-seas that have 
 as much kick in them to a driven destroyer as a 
 tin-fish full of gun-cotton. Unless the weather gets 
 either a good deal better or a shade worse, we're 
 sure up against the real thing this time. 
 
 " The fact is," continued the captain, taking up 
 the slack in the hood of his weather-proof jacket as 
 a slight alteration of course brought a new slant 
 
THE CONVOY GAME 
 
 115 
 
 
 of wind; "the fact is, I'd much rather see it get 
 worse than better. If it would only kick up enough 
 sea so that there was no chance of a submarine 
 operating in it, she could drive right along on her 
 own without any need of destroyers. But so long 
 as we've this weather there's a possibility of a tor- 
 pedo running in, we've got to hang on to the last 
 shiver, and there are two or three things which are 
 going to make * hanging on ' this particular trip 
 just a few degrees worse than anything we've 
 stacked up against before. This is about the way 
 things stand: The Lymptania's best protection is 
 her speed; but while she is just about the fastest 
 of the big ships, she is also just about the biggest 
 of the fast ships. This means that the size of the 
 target she presents goes a long way toward off- 
 setting the advantage of her speed; so that the 
 presence of destroyers in any kind of weather a 
 submarine can work in is very desirable, and may 
 be vital. 
 
 " Now the escorting of any steamer that makes 
 over twenty knots an hour is a lively piece of busi- 
 ness, no matter what the weather, for destroyers, 
 to screen most effectively, should zigzag a good 
 deal more sharply than their convoy, and that, of 
 course, calls for several knots more speed. This 
 can be managed all right in fair weather, or even 
 in rough, where there is only a following or a beam 
 sea; but where the seas come banging down from 
 more than a point or two for'ard of the beam it is 
 
116 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 quite a different matter. In that event, the speed 
 of the whole procession depends entirely on how 
 much the destroyers can stand without being re- 
 duced to scrap-iron. Naturally, the ship under 
 escort endeavours to make her speed conform to the 
 best the destroyers can do under the circumstances ; 
 but since an extra knot or two an hour might well 
 make all the difference in avoiding a submarine 
 attack, the tendency always is to keep the escorting 
 craft extended to just about their limit of en- 
 durance. 
 
 " Just how the mean will be struck between what 
 a fast steamer thinks its escorting destroyers ought 
 to stand, and what the destroyers really can stand, 
 depends upon several things. Perhaps the prin- 
 cipal factor is the state of mind of the skipper of 
 the steamer, and that, in turn, is influenced by the 
 value of his ship both actual and potential and 
 the danger of submarine attack at that particular 
 time in the waters under traverse. When the de- 
 stroyers set out to escort a very fast and valuable 
 ship, steering into heavy head seas in waters where 
 there are known to be a number of U-boats operat- 
 ing, they've got the whole combination working 
 against them, and the result is just what you're 
 slated to see this trip. Best take a good look at the 
 Zip while you've got a chance ; she may be quite a 
 bit altered by the time we get back to port again. 
 And you might take a squint at the Flossie over 
 there, too. She's our latest and swiftest, the 
 
THE CONVOY GAME 
 
 117 
 
 Fotilla's pride. But this is her first experience of 
 taking out an ex-ocean greyhound, and if, in a 
 burst of fresh enthusiasm, she chances to tap any 
 of these several extra knots of speed she is sup- 
 posed to have well, the Flossie's sky-line in that 
 case will be modified more than those of all the 
 rest of her older and wiser sisters put together." 
 
 Those were prophetic words. 
 
 " The one thing that makes it certain that we'll 
 be put to the limit to-night," resumed the captain, 
 after he had rung up more speed on our coming out 
 into opener water, " is the news in this morning's 
 official announcement of the sinking of the Justicia. 
 We seem just to have struck the peak of the mid- 
 summer U-boat campaign. It was scarcely a week 
 ago that they got the Carpathian. Then, a few 
 days later, came the Marmora (you won't forget 
 for a while the strafe we had at the U-boat which 
 put her down), and now it's the Justicia, the big- 
 gest ship they've sunk in a year or so. That's the 
 thing that must be worrying the skipper of the 
 Lymptania, for it shows they're after the great 
 troop-carriers. The way they stuck to the Justicia 
 proves they're not yet beyond taking some risk if 
 the stake is high enough. Now and then some 
 Fritz is found desperate enough to commit hari- 
 kari by coming up close (if the chance offers) and 
 making sure of getting his torpedo home. He gets 
 what's coming to him, of course, but there is also 
 a fair chance of his getting the ship he is after ; and 
 
118 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 a fast liner for a U-boat is a poor exchange from 
 our standpoint. Naturally, these things all make 
 the skipper of the Lymptania anxious to minimise 
 his risks by hitting up just as hot a pace as he can, 
 and that, with her size and her power, will be just 
 about full speed. I can't tell you to a knot how fast 
 that is, but I can tell you this : if you were on the 
 bridge of a destroyer going at that speed when it 
 hit a good heavy head-sea, the only thing that would 
 tell you it wasn't a brick wall she had collided with 
 would be the sort of moist feeling about the pile- 
 driver that knocked you over the side. So it looks 
 like the rub is going to come in getting the Lymp- 
 tania to content herself with a speed at which 
 well, at which you can detect some slight difference 
 between a head-sea and a brick wall from the bridge 
 of the destroyer doing the butting. Whatever that 
 proves to be, you'll have such a chance as you may 
 never get again to see what stuff your Uncle Sam's 
 destroyers are made of.'' 
 
 We made screening formation as soon as we were 
 well clear of the barraged waters of the estuary, 
 though the sea we had to traverse before enter- 
 ing the open Atlantic was considered practically 
 empty of menace. The Lymptania, making aston- 
 ishingly little smoke for a coal-burner, worked up 
 to somewhere near her top speed in a very short 
 time; but, with the light-running seas well abaft 
 the beam, the destroyers cut their zigzags round 
 and about her with many knots in reserve. The big 
 
THE CONVOY GAME 
 
 119 
 
 liner, with much experience to her credit, knew 
 precisely what to do and how to do it, and the 
 whole machine of the convoy worked as though 
 pulled by a single string. Her very movements 
 themselves seemed to give the various units of the 
 escort their cues, for, though she steered a course 
 so devious and irregular that no submarine could 
 have possibly told how to head in order to waylay 
 her, she was never " uncovered." Ahead and 
 abreast of her, going their own way individually, 
 but still conforming their general movements to 
 hers, the destroyers wove their practically impen- 
 etrable screen. 
 
 Whatever there was ahead, it was ideal destroyer 
 weather for the moment, and all hands came 
 swarming out on the dry sun- warmed deck to make 
 the most of it while it lasted. An importunate 
 whine from a nest of arms and legs sprawling 
 abreast the midships torpedo-tubes attracted my 
 attention for a moment as I sauntered aft to see 
 what was afoot, and presently the rattle of dice on 
 the deck and an imploring " Come on, you Seven ! " 
 told me they were " shooting Craps," with, I 
 shortly discovered, bars of milk chocolate and 
 sticks of chewing-gum for stakes. Several others 
 were playing " High, Low, Jack," and here and 
 there using elbows and knees to keep the bellying 
 pages from blowing away were little knots clus- 
 tered about the latest Sunday Supplement from 
 New York. 
 
120 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 But quite the best thing of all was two brown- 
 armed youngsters going through a proper battery 
 warming-up with a real baseball. I had seen enthu- 
 siasts on two or three of the American units with 
 the Grand Fleet playing catch right up to the 
 moment " General Quarters " was sounded for tar- 
 get, practice; but that was on the broad decks of 
 battleships, with some chance of saving a ball that 
 chanced to be muffed. But here the pitcher had to 
 wind-up with a sort of a corkscrew stoop to keep 
 from hitting his hand against a stay, while the 
 catcher braced himself with one foot against a 
 depth-charge and the other against the mounting 
 of the after-gun. There were four or five things 
 that the ball had to clear by less than a foot in its 
 flight from one to the other, but the only ones of 
 these I recall now are a searchlight diaphragm and 
 a gong which sounded from the bridge a standby 
 signal to the men at the depth-charges, I actually 
 saw that skilfully directed spheroid make two com- 
 plete round-trips, from the pitcher to the catcher 
 and back, before it struck the gong a resonant bing! 
 caromed against the side of an out-slung boat and 
 disappeared into the froth of the wake. 
 
 The pitcher and catcher were in a hot argument 
 as to whether that was the twenty-sixth or the 
 twenty-seventh ball they had lost overboard since 
 the first of the month, but they fell quiet and 
 turned sympathetic ears to my description of a net 
 
THE CONVOY GAME 
 
 121 
 
 I had seen rigged on one of the American battle- 
 ships to prevent that very trouble. 
 
 " Nifty enough," was the pitcher's comment when 
 I had finished describing how the net was drawn 
 taut right under the stern to prevent all leakage. 
 " Only thing is, the captain might rule it off on the 
 score that it'd catch the ' cans ' we was trying to 
 drop on Fritz as well as the ' wild pitches.' Might 
 do for harbour use, though. Lost balls is a con- 
 siderable drain even there/' 
 
 It was just before dinner-time that the lengthen- 
 ing life of the seas gave warning that we were com- 
 ing out into the Atlantic. The force of them was 
 still abaft the beam, however, and their principal 
 effect was to add a few degrees of roll, with an 
 occasional deluge dashing in admonitory flood 
 across the decks. But it was enough to make the 
 Ward Room untenable, so that dinner had to be 
 wolfed propped up on the transoms, one nicely bal- 
 anced dish at a time. There would be about an 
 hour more of this comparative comfort, the captain 
 said, before we reached a position where the full 
 force of the seas would be felt, but things would not 
 really "begin to drop " till the Lymptania altered 
 course and headed westerly. "If you have any 
 writing, reading, sleeping, or anything except just 
 existing to do," he warned, as he kept his soup from 
 overflowing by an undulant gesture of the hand 
 which poised it, " better do it now. It's your last 
 chance." 
 
122 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 The forty winks I managed to snatch as a result 
 of following up the sleeping part of that recom- 
 mendation stood me in good stead in the times 
 ahead. It took no little composing to doze off even 
 as it was, and it was the sharp bang my head got 
 from the siderail of my bunk that put a period to 
 the nap I did get. The rolling had increased enorm- 
 ously, and though it was apparent we were not yet 
 bucking into it, the swishing of the water on the 
 forecastle overhead indicated that there had been 
 enough alteration of course to bring the seas on 
 one leg of the zigzags at least well forward of the 
 beam. I climbed out, pulled on my weather-proof 
 suit and sea-boots, and clambered up to the bridge. 
 
 There were still a couple of hours to go before 
 dark, and in the diffused light of a bright bank of 
 sunset clouds the gay dazzle colours of all the ships 
 showed up brilliantly as they ploughed the white- 
 cap-plumed surface of a sea which now stretched 
 unbrokenly to the westward horizon. There was a 
 world of power behind the belligerent bulk of swells 
 which had been gathering force under the urge of a 
 west-nor'-west wind that had chased them all the 
 way from Labrador, and the destroyers, teetering 
 quarteringly along their foam-crested tops, were 
 rolling drunkenly and yawing viciously ahead of 
 jagged wakes. 
 
 Still driving on at express speed, however, they 
 continued to maintain perfect formation on the 
 swiftly steaming Lymptania. The latter, appar- 
 
THE CONVOY GAME 
 
 123 
 
 ently as steady as though " chocked up " in a dry- 
 dock, drove serenely on in great swinging 
 zigzags. 
 
 The captain came up from the chart-room and 
 took a long look around. " It's just about as I ex- 
 pected," he said, shaking his head dubiously. " It 
 isn't so rough but what a submarine might stage an 
 attack if her skipper had the nerve ; and it's a darn 
 sight too rough for destroyers to screen the Lymp- 
 tania with her holding to anything like full speed. 
 It's all up now to what speed she will try to hold 
 us to.'' 
 
 " But what's the matter with this? " I protested. 
 " We're still hitting the high places for speed, and, 
 while I wouldn't call this exactly comfortable, we 
 still seem to be making pretty good weather of it/" 
 
 The captain smiled indulgently. " You're right," 
 he said, " as far as you go. We are indeed hitting 
 the high places, but the high places haven't 
 started hitting us yet. Wait just about five or ten 
 minutes," he added, turning his glasses to where 
 the great liner, silhouetted for the moment against 
 the sunset clouds, ploughed along on our port beam, 
 "and you'll see the difference. Ah!" this as he 
 steadied his glasses on where the boiling wake of 
 the Lymptania, beginning to bend away in a sharp 
 curve indicating a considerable alteration of course. 
 " There she goes now. Hold tight ! " 
 
 With his hand on the engine-room telegraph, the 
 captain gave the men at the wheel a course to con- 
 
124 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 form to that of the Lymptama. Quick as a cat on 
 her helm, the Zip swung swiftly through eight 
 points and plunged ahead. This brought on her 
 bows seas that had been rolling up abeam, and we 
 were up against the real thing at last. 
 
 The first sea, which she caught while she was 
 still turning, the Zip contented herself with slicing 
 off the truculently-tossing top of before crunching 
 it underfoot. It w r as a smartly-executed perform- 
 ance, and seemed to promise encouragingly as to 
 the way she might be expected to dispose of the 
 next ones. The second in line, however, which she 
 met head-on and essayed the same tactics with, 
 dampened her ardour and just about everything 
 and everybody else below the foretop by detaching 
 a few tons of its bumptious bulk and raking her 
 fore-and-aft with its rumbling green-white flood. 
 The bridge was above the main weight of that blow, 
 but 'midships and aft I saw men bracing them- 
 selves against a knee-deep stream. One bareheaded 
 'and bare-armed man, who had evidently been sur- 
 prised in making his w r ay from one hatch to 
 another, I saw rolled fifteen or twenty feet and 
 slammed up against the torpedo-tube which pre- 
 vented his going overboard. He limped out of 
 sight, rubbing his shoulder, and probably never 
 knew how lucky he was in being caught by that 
 wave instead of one which came along a minute 
 later. 
 
 The slams which she received from the next two 
 
THE CONVOY GAME 
 
 125 
 
 or three seas left the Zip in a somewhat chastened 
 mood, and rather less sanguine respecting her 
 ability to go on pulling off that little stunt of sur- 
 mounting waves by biting them in the neck and 
 then trampling their bodies under foot. She was 
 beginning to realise that she had a body of her 
 own, and that there was something else around that 
 could bite yes, and kick, and gouge, and punch 
 below the belt, and do all the other low-down tricks 
 of the underhand fighter. 
 
 Languid and uncertain of movement, like a dazed 
 prize-fighter, she was just steadying herself from 
 the jolt a bustling brute of a comber had dealt her 
 in passing, when the skyline ahead was blotted out 
 by the imminent green-black loom of a running wall 
 of water which, from its height and steepness, 
 might well have been kicked up by a Valparaiso 
 " Norther '' or a South Sea hurricane. 
 
 It may have been the chastened state of mind the 
 last sea had left her in which was responsible for 
 Zip's deciding to take this one " lying down" ; or 
 again, it may be that she was acting, in reverse, 
 after the example set by the rabbit who, because he 
 couldn't go under the hill, went over it. At any 
 rate, after one shuddering look at the mountainous 
 menace tottering above her bows, she made up her 
 mind that she was better off under the sea than on 
 the surface, and deliberately dived. Of course, it 
 was the Parthian kick the last sea had given her 
 stern that was really responsible for her bows 
 
126 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 starting to go down at the very instant those of 
 every other ship that one had had experience of 
 would have been beginning to point skyward, but 
 to all intents and purposes she looked, from the 
 bridge, to be submerging of her own free and con- 
 sidered decision. The principal thing which 
 differentiated it from the ordinary dive of a sub- 
 marine was the fact that it was made at a sharper 
 angle and at about four times the speed. 
 
 There was something almost uncanny in the 
 quietness with which that plunge began ; though, on 
 the latter score, there was nothing to complain of 
 by about half a second later. I have seen at one 
 time or another almost every conceivable kind of 
 craft, from a Fijian war canoe to the latest battle- 
 cruiser, trying to buck head seas, and invariably 
 the wave that swept it had the decency to an- 
 nounce its coming by a warning knock on the 
 bows. This time there was nothing of the kind. 
 The retreating sea had lifted her stern so high that 
 the forecastle was under water even before the com- 
 ing one had begun to topple over on to it. The 
 consequence was that there was no preliminary 
 bang to herald the onrush of the latter. 
 
 The base of the mountainous roller simply 
 flooded up over the diving forecastle and crashed 
 with unbroken force against the bridge. We had 
 collided with the " brick wall " right enough, and 
 for the next few seconds at least the result was 
 primal chaos. 
 
THE CONVOY GAME 
 
 127 
 
 I have a vivid but detached recollection of two 
 or three things in the instant that the blow im- 
 pended. One is of the helmsman, crouching low, 
 with legs wide apart, locking his arms through the 
 slender steel spokes of the wheel the better to 
 steady her in the coming smash. Another is of the 
 captain, with hunched shoulders and set jaw, throw- 
 ing over the telegraph to stop the engines. But 
 the clearest picture of all is of the submarine look- 
 out on the port side a black-eyed, black-haired boy 
 with a profile that might have been copied from an 
 old Roman coin who was leaning out and grinning 
 sardonically into the very teeth of the descending 
 hydraulic ram. It was his savagely-flung anatomy, 
 I believe, though I never made sure, which bumped 
 me in the region of the solar plexus a moment later 
 and broke my slipping hold on the buckling stan- 
 chion to which I was trying to cling. 
 
 There was nothing whatever suggestive of water 
 soft, fluent, trickling water in the first shatter- 
 ing impact of that mighty blow. It was as solid 
 as a collision between ship and ship; indeed, the 
 recollection I have of a railway wreck I was once 
 in on a line in the Argentine Pampas is of a shock 
 less shattering. It is difficult to record events in 
 their proper sequence, partly because they were all 
 happening at once, and partly because the self- 
 centred frame of mind I was in at the moment was 
 not favourable for detached observation. The 
 noise and the jar of the crash were stupendous, yet 
 
128 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 neither of these has left so vivid a mental impres- 
 sion as the uncanny writhing of the two-inches- 
 thick steel stanchion to which I was endeavouring 
 to hold, and the nerve-racking sound of rending 
 metal. I have no recollection of hearing the clink 
 of broken glass, nor of being struck by pieces of 
 it; yet all the panes of heavy plate which screened 
 the forward end of the bridge of a thickness, one 
 had supposed, to withstand anything likely to assail 
 them were swept away as though they had been no 
 more than the rice-paper squares of a Japanese 
 window. 
 
 The rush of water, of course, followed instantly 
 upon the crash, yet, so vivid are my impressions of 
 the things intimately connected with the blow itself 
 that it seems as though there was an appreciable 
 interval between the fall of that and the time when 
 the enveloping cataclysm transformed the universe 
 into a green-white stream of brine. From ahead, 
 above and from both sides the flood poured, to meet 
 and mingle in a whirling maelstrom in the middle 
 of the bridge. There was nothing of blown spind- 
 rift to it ; it was green and solid and flowed with a 
 heave and a hurl that made no more of slamming a 
 man to the deck than of tossing a life-buoy. I went 
 the whole length of the bridge when I lost my grip 
 on the port stanchion, brought up against the after- 
 rail, and then went down into a tangle of signal 
 flags. I remember distinctly, though, that the walls 
 of water rushing by completely blotted out sea and 
 
WHERE THE GREAT LINER PLOWED ALONG 
 
 WE HAD COLLIDED WITH THE BRICK WALL 
 
 NOW SHE WAS BACK AT BASE 
 
THE CONVOY GAME 
 
 129 
 
 sky to port and starboard, and that there was all 
 the darkness of late twilight in the cavern of the 
 engulfed bridge. Then the great sea tumbled aft 
 along the main deck, and it grew light again. 
 
 The captain and the helmsman had both kept 
 their feet, and the latter, dripping from head to 
 heel, was just throwing over the engine-room tele- 
 graph as I shook off my mantle of coloured bunting 
 and crawled back to my moorings at the stanchion. 
 Immediately afterwards I saw him jump on to the 
 after-rail and make some sort of negative signal to 
 a couple of half-drowned boys who, waist-deep in 
 swirling water, were pawing desperately among the 
 depth-charges. Then he came over and joined me 
 for a few moments. 
 
 " Some sea, that," he said, slipping down his 
 hood and throwing back the brine-dripping hair 
 from his forehead. " It's happened before, but 
 never like that. Lord only knows what it's done to 
 her. S'pose we'll begin to hear of that in a minute." 
 He pointed to a string of porcelain insulators 
 dangling at the end of twisted bits of wire in front 
 of one of the paneless windows. " That's the re- 
 mains of our auxiliary radio,'' he said, grinning; 
 " and look at the foVsle. Swept clean, pretty near. 
 Thank heaven, the gun's left. But, do you remem- 
 ber that heavy iron bar the muzzle rested on? 
 Gone! It was probably that, with some of the 
 shells in the rack, that made all that rat-a-tat. But 
 what of it? Look how she rides 'em now that she's 
 
130 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 eased down a bit. Only trouble is, she's got to go 
 it again. Look how we've dropped back." And 
 he gave the engine-room, by voice-pipe, a new 
 " standard " speed, and threw the telegraph over 
 to Full." 
 
 The pulsing throb began anew, and under the 
 urge of speeding propellers the Zip, steering in nar- 
 rowed zig-zags quickly regained her station. All of 
 the destroyers, and the Lymptania as well, had 
 eased down slightly, and the reduced speed meant 
 also a reduction of the danger of another of those 
 deep-sea dives, something no craft but a submarine 
 is built to stand the strain of. But even as it was 
 we were driving right up to the limit of endurance 
 all the time, and the sea that did not qome rolling 
 up green right over the bows was the exception 
 rather than the rule. From the forecastle right 
 away aft there was never more than a few seconds 
 at a time when the main deck was free of rollicking 
 cascades of boiling brine, and there were moments 
 when only the funnels and the after superstructure, 
 rearing up like isolated rocks on a storm-beaten 
 coast, were visible above the swirling flood. There 
 were times when the men standing-by at the guns 
 and torpedo-tubes seemed almost to be engulfed; 
 yet none of them was swept away, and they even 
 from the way they kept joking each other in the 
 lulls appeared to be getting a good deal of sport 
 out of the thing. 
 
 The barometer was falling, and both wind and 
 
[E CONVOY GAME 
 
 131 
 
 waves gained steadily in force as the afternoon 
 lengthened and merged into a twilight that was 
 itself already melting before the rising moon. 
 Clouds were few and scattering, and it was plain 
 there were to be no hours dark enough to offer any 
 protection from submarine attack. Looming as 
 large as ever, the big liner offered scarcely a better 
 target on the side she was illuminated by the moon- 
 light than on the one from which she was silhou- 
 etted against it. From either side a fifth of a mile 
 of steel would "take a lot of missing," and her 
 captain, sensibly enough, would not ease his en- 
 gines by a revolution more than was necessary to 
 keep within his destroyer screen. It was plainly 
 up to the destroyers to stick it to the limit, and 
 that is just what they did. As I heard one of the 
 men put it, it was the " bruisiest '' bit of escort- 
 work they had ever been or probably ever will be 
 called upon to face, but every one of those Yan- 
 kee destroyers stayed with it to the finish. 
 
 Now it would be the Zop that would emerge 
 from under a mountainous sea and come drifting 
 back without steerage weigh, rolling drunkenly in 
 the trough, and now it would be the Zap. And 
 now this or that result of a " hydraulic ramming ' 
 would disable one of the others temporarily. But, 
 game to the last flake of brine-frosted camouflage, 
 back they came to it again, and again, and yet 
 again. Sunrise of the next day found them plug- 
 ging on in station, and in station they remained 
 
132 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 until the Lymptania, beyond the zone of all pos- 
 sible submarine danger, made a general signal of 
 " Thank you," and headed off to the westward on 
 her own. 
 
 Out of the dim grey dawn of the morning after 
 the night before, battered and buckled, but still un- 
 broken, the wearily waggling line of the Lymp- 
 tania's late escort trailed back into harbour. The 
 mussed-up silhouette of every one of them bore 
 mute testimony to the way she had been put 
 " through the mill/' and, in most cases, the things 
 that met the eye were not the worst. The Zop 
 needed every yard of the channel as she zig-zagged 
 up it under a jury steering-gear, and the Zap, like 
 a man dazed from a blow, would have sudden 
 " mental hiati " in which she would straggle care- 
 lessly out of line with an inconsequential going-to- 
 pick-flowers-by-the-roadside sort of air. The Zim's 
 idiosyncrasies had more of an epileptic suddenness 
 about them, and her hectic coughing plainly in- 
 dicated some kind of " lung trouble." Our little 
 Zip presented a very brave front to the outer world, 
 but I heard hollow clankings punctuating the erst- 
 while even hum of the engines, while the drip, drip, 
 drip and the drop, drop, drop through the crinkled 
 sheet-steel sheathing of my cabin told that the deck- 
 plates of the forecastle fitted a good deal less 
 snugly than before they had played anvil to the 
 lusty head-sea hammer. 
 
THE CONVOY GAME 
 
 But the Flossie, the " latest, the swiftest, the 
 flotilla's pride" the wounds of all the rest of us 
 put together were as nothing to those of the Flossie. 
 In trying to maintain her pride of place at the 
 head of the escort, she had, for a brief space, un- 
 leashed those extra knots of speed the captain had 
 spoken of, and all that, and even more than, he 
 had prophesied had come to pass. It was just such 
 a swaggerer of a sea as that first one that Zip had 
 dived into which did the trick, only, as the Flossie 
 was going faster, the impact was somewhat more 
 severe. She was a mile or more distant from us 
 when it happened, and, watching from the bridge 
 of the Zip, we simply saw her dissolve into a sky- 
 tossed spout of foam. When she reappeared she 
 was floating, beam-on, to the seas, and, for the 
 moment, an apparently helpless hulk. 
 
 The captain's instant diagnosis of a couple of 
 muffled detonations which followed was entirely 
 correct. 
 
 " That sea must have ' jack-knifed ' the Flossie so 
 sharply," he said, " that the recoil took up the 
 slack in the wires, releasing two ' cans ' she seems 
 to have had set and ready. It's about the same 
 thing as just happened to us, except that the taut- 
 ened wire only rang the stand-by bell, the signal 
 for the men to set the depth-charges. First thing 
 I did after we came to the surface was to negative 
 that supposed order. That was what I was doing 
 when I waved to those boys who were clawing at 
 
134 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 the ' cans,' with their heads under water. Lucky 
 they weren't carried away." 
 
 It was a chastened Flossie which had gone 
 floundering back to station a few minutes later, but 
 somehow or other she had managed to carry on, and 
 now she was back at Base. I won't " give comfort 
 to the enemy " by trying to describe her appear- 
 ance, but some hint of it may be gleamed from the 
 laconic comment of one of the Zip's signalmen, as 
 the " Flotilla's Pride " was warping in to moor 
 alongside the mother ship. 
 
 " Gee whiz ! " he ejaculated. " See the old Vin- 
 dictive limpin' home from Zeebruggy! S'pose 
 they'll fill her up with concrete now an' block a 
 channel." 
 
 The captain grinned as he overheard the remark 
 where he waited by the starboard rail for the last 
 of the mooring lines to be made fast. " It's not 
 quite so bad as that,'' he said. " If need be, they'll 
 have her, and all the rest of us, right as trivets in 
 three or four days, and quite ready to take the sea 
 again when our turn comes. It's all in the convoy 
 game, anyhow, and not such bad fun after all, 
 'specially when it's behind you, and you've got a 
 bath, and a change, and a lunch at the Club, and 
 an afternoon of tennis in immediate prospect. 
 Come along." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 YANK BOAT VCTSUS U-BOAT 
 
 IT was the turn of the tide and the turn of the 
 day on the " quiet waters of the River Lee.' 7 
 Pale blue columns of smoke rose above the 
 verdant boskiness which masked the squat brown 
 cabins where the peat fires smouldered, and along 
 the straggling stone wall which crowned the ridge 
 the swaying heads of home-returning cows showed 
 intermittently against the glowing western sky. 
 The peacefulness of it was almost palpable. You 
 seemed to breathe it, and could all but reach out 
 with the hand and touch it. 
 
 It permeated even to the long lines of lean de- 
 stroyers in the stream, and it was the subtly sugges- 
 tive influence of it which had deflected homeward 
 the minds of the motley-clad sailors who were 
 lounging at ease about the stern of the first of a 
 " cluster " of three of these like a sheaf of bright 
 multi-coloured arrows the trim craft looked, with 
 the level rays of the setting sun striking across 
 them where they lay moored alongside each other 
 and set tongues wagging of the little things which, 
 magnified by distance, loom large in the imagina- 
 tions of men in exile, 
 
 135 
 
136 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 They were deep in the " old home town " stuff 
 when I sauntered inconsequently aft on the off- 
 chance of picking up a yarn or two, but as there ap- 
 peared to be no one present froin my part of the 
 country, no immediate opportunity to break in 
 presented itself. Equally an outsider was I when 
 the flow of discussion turned to woollen sweaters 
 and socks and mufflers, and the golden" trails of 
 romance leading back from the names and messages 
 sewed or knitted into them. 
 
 No fair unknowns had ever sent me any of these 
 soft comforts, and after I had heard a lusty young- 
 ster from Virginia tell how a "sweater address '' he 
 had written what he described as a " lettah that was 
 good and plenty w'am, b'lieve me/' replied that she 
 was " jest goin' twelve years," and that her mother 
 didn't think she ought to be thinking of marriage 
 just yet after that I didn't feel quite so bad over 
 not having had a chance to open one of these 
 " woolly " correspondences. There was some 
 solace, too, in hearing a pink-cheeked young ex- 
 bank clerk tell how the " abdominal bandage " 
 (they name them, as a rule, after the garment that 
 starts the correspondence), with whom he had ex- 
 changed something like a dozen letters of cumula- 
 tive passion, brought the affair to a sudden and 
 violent end by some indirect and inadvertent 
 admission which showed that she remembered when 
 Grant was President. 
 
 But when the talk drifted, as it always does in 
 
YANK BOAT VERSUS U-BOAT 137 
 
 the end, to baseball and baseballers, I knew that 
 there was going to be an opening for me presently, 
 and stood by to take advantage of it. A three- 
 year absentee from the bleachers, I was not suffi- 
 ciently up on last season's pennant race " dope '' to 
 do more than make frequent sapient observa- 
 tions on this or that big-leaguer's stickwork or 
 fielding as he was mentioned; but when they began 
 to discuss, or rather to wrangle over, for discuss is 
 far too polite a term, the theory of the game and to 
 grow red in the face over such esoterics (or " inside 
 stuff," to put it in "Fanese") as how and when 
 a " squeeze " ought to be pulled off, I showed them 
 the bulbous first joint of the little finger of my 
 right hand which there is no other way of acquir- 
 ing than by the repeated telescopings of many 
 seasons on the diamond and was welcomed at last 
 on equal terms. A seat was offered me on a depth- 
 charge, across the business end of which an empty 
 sack had been thrown to prevent a repetition of 
 what came near happening the time a stoker, who 
 was proving that Hans Wagner could never again 
 be a popular idol now that we were at war with the 
 Huns, punctuated his argument by hammering with 
 a monkey-wrench on the firing mechanism. 
 
 They were not as impressed as they should have 
 been when I told them that I learned the game 
 under the tutelage of the mighty Bill Lange (this, 
 of course, because the incomparable " Big Bill " 
 was at his zenith long before their time) ; but they 
 
138 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 were duly respectful when I said I had played 
 three years' Varsity baseball, and became quite 
 deferential when I assured them I had also survived 
 a season of bush-league in the North-West. There 
 was some kind of electrician rating in the crowd 
 who had been a bush-league twirler before his 
 " wing went glass," as he put it, and he, it soon 
 transpired, had played in one place or another with 
 a number of my old team mates of the Montana 
 League. Deep in reminiscence of those good old 
 days, I quite forgot my subtle scheme of using base- 
 ball as a stalking-horse for destroyer yarns, when 
 the arrival of some callers from a British sloop 
 lying a mile or two farther down the harbour re- 
 called it to me. They had been in the Moonfloiver, 
 the man next me said, when she put a U-boat out 
 of business not long before, and one of them he 
 had some sort of decoration for his part in the 
 show spun a cracking good yarn about it if you 
 got him started. This latter I managed to do by 
 asking him how it chanced that the Moonflower 
 was allowed to sport a star on her funnel. The 
 story he told, the while he rolled cigarettes and 
 worked his jaws on Yankee chewing-gum, revealed 
 rather too much that may be used in some future 
 surprise party to make it possible to publish just 
 yet, but it had the desired effect of turning the cur- 
 rent of reminiscence U-boat ward. That was what 
 I wanted, for, now that men from several other de- 
 stroyers had come aboard and sauntered aft to join 
 
YANK BOAT VERSUS U-BOAT 139 
 
 the party, the opportunity for finding out at first- 
 hand just what the American sailors thought of 
 the anti-submarine game at the end of a year and a 
 half of it was too good to be missed. 
 
 There was a considerable variety of opinions ex- 
 pressed in that last hour of the second dog-watch 
 on the intricate inside stuff of the anti-U-boat game, 
 just as there had been about baseball, but there was 
 one point on which they were practically agreed: 
 that Fritz, especially during the last six months, 
 was not giving them a proper run for their money. 
 This is the way one of them, a bronzed seaman 
 gunner, with the long gorilla-like arms of a Sam 
 Langford, and gnarled knots of protuberant 
 muscles at the angles of his jaws, epitomized it: 
 " We sees Fritzie, or we don't. Mostly we don't, 
 for he ducks under when he pipes our smoke. If 
 he's stalkin' a convoy there's jest a chance of him 
 givin' us time for a rangin' shot at him on the sur- 
 face. Then we waltzes over to his grease and scat- 
 ters a bunch of ' cans ' round his restin'-place. An' 
 if the luck's with us, we gets him ; an' if the luck's 
 with him, we don't. If we crack open his shell, 
 down he goes; if we jest start him leaking up he 
 comes. Only dif rence is that, in one case, it's all 
 hands down, and in t'other, all hands up 
 ' Kamerad ! ' In both cases, no fight, no run for 
 our money. Now when we first come over, an' 'fore 
 we'd put the fear o' God into Fritzie's heart, he 
 wasn't above takin' a chance at a come-back now an' 
 
140 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 again. Then there was occas'nal moments of 
 ple'surabl' excitement, like the time when" and 
 he went on to tell of how an enterprising U-boat 
 commander slipped a slug into the Courser abreast 
 her after superstructure, and " beat it " off before 
 that stricken destroyer had a chance to retaliate. 
 Only the fact that, by a miracle, the torpedo failed 
 to detonate her depth-charges saved the Courser 
 from destruction, and even as it was, rare seaman- 
 ship had been required to take her back to port. 
 And he also told of the unlucky John Hawkins, 
 which a U-boat had actually put down, and the 
 grim situation which confronted the sailors when 
 they found themselves sinking in a ship which 
 carried a number of depth-charges set on the 
 " ready." But all that, he said, with the air of an 
 old man speaking of his departed youth, was be- 
 fore they had begun to learn Fritzie's little ways, 
 and before Fritz, perhaps as a consequence, had 
 begun to lose his nerve. Now, far from being will- 
 ing to put up a fight with a destroyer, it was only 
 " onct in a blue moon that he's got the guts to put 
 up a scrap even to save his own hide." 
 
 A slender fair-haired lad, with a quick observant 
 eye which revealed him as a signalman even before 
 one looked at his sleeve, cut in sharply at this 
 juncture. 
 
 " Then there must have been a blue moon shed- 
 ding its light over these waters last month," he 
 said decisively. " I quite agree with you that 
 

 YANK BOAT VERSUS U-BOAT 141 
 
 Fritz hasn't got the nerve or it may be because 
 he's got too much sense to take a chance at a de- 
 stroyer any more. But in the matter of putting up 
 a fight for his life yes, even for giving a real run 
 for the money well, all I can say is that if you'd 
 been out on the Sherill about three weeks ago, you 
 wouldn't be making that complaint about one 
 particular Fritz at least. If going eighteen hours, 
 with two or three destroyers and a sloop or two 
 doing everything they know how to crack in his 
 shell all the time, without chucking his hand in, 
 and very likely getting clear in the end if that 
 isn't putting up a fight for life and giving a run 
 for the money, I don't know what is." 
 
 I had heard this astonishing " battle of wakes 
 and wits," as someone had christened it, referred 
 to on several occasions, but had never had the 
 chance to hear any of the details from one who had 
 had anything like the opportunities always open 
 to a signalman to follow what is going on. " Most 
 of the bunch have heard all they want to hear of it 
 already," the lad replied with a laugh when I 
 asked him to tell me the story; "and, besides, a 
 more or less long-winded yarn of the kind I suppose 
 you want would tire 'em to tears anyway. If you 
 really want to hear something of it, come over to 
 the Sherill (that's her stern there, just beyond the 
 Flossie) any time after eight bells. I go on watch 
 then, but it's a 'stand easy ' in port, and there'll 
 be time for all the yarning you want." 
 
142 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 I closed with that offer at once, and eight bells 
 had not long gone before I had picked my pre- 
 carious way over to the Sherill, and climbed the 
 ladders to her snug little bridge. My man was 
 there already, whiling away the time by rewriting 
 an old college football song (he had been in his 
 freshman year at Michigan when America came into 
 the war) to fit destroyer work in the North Atlan- 
 tic. I found him stuck at the end of the second 
 line of the first verse, because the only rhymes he 
 could think of for flotilla were Manila and cam- 
 arilla, neither of which seemed sufficiently opposite 
 to be of use, and he was rather glad of an excuse for 
 putting the job by to await later inspiration. 
 
 I gave him a " lead " for the U-boat yarn he had 
 lured me there to hear, and he launched into it at 
 once. This is the story the young signalman of 
 U.S.S. Sherill told me, the while the red squares of 
 the cottagers' windows blinked blandly along the 
 bank in the lengthening twilight and the purple 
 shadows of the western hills piled deeper and 
 duskier upon the " quiet waters of the River Lee." 
 
 " We were out on convoy,'' he said, speaking the 
 first words slowly between the teeth which held the 
 string of the tobacco sack from which the gently 
 manipulated paper in his hand had been filled. " It 
 was some kind of a slow convoy probably a collier 
 or an oiler or two and there were only two of us 
 on the job the McSmall and the Sherill. It was 
 
YANK BOAT VERSUS U-BOAT 143 
 
 just the usual ding-dong sort of a drudge up to 
 about four in the afternoon of the first day out, 
 when the McSmall made a signal that she had 
 sighted a submarine on the starboard bow of the 
 convoy, distant about five miles, and immediately 
 stood off to the west to see if anything like a strafe 
 could be started. She was more than hull-down on 
 the horizon when I saw, by the way the angle of 
 her funnels was changing, that she was manoeuvr- 
 ing to shake loose a few * cans ' into the oil-slick 
 she had run into, but I remember distinctly that I 
 felt the jolt of the under-water explosions stronger 
 than from many we had kicked loose from the 
 Sherill, and which had detonated only a hundred 
 yards or so off. It's just a little trick the depth- 
 charge has. The force of it seems to shoot out in 
 streaks, just like an explosion in the air, and you 
 may feel It strong at a distance and much less at 
 fairly close range. So far as we ever learned, this 
 opening salvo did not find its target. 
 
 " Meanwhile the Sherill was escorting to the best 
 of her ability alone. Or at least we thought we 
 were alone. About half an hour after the McSmall 
 had laid those first 'cans, 1 however, one of the 
 quartermasters reported sighting a periscope on 
 the port quarter of the convoy, about five hundred 
 yards distant, and headed away. We signalled its 
 presence to the convoy, turned eight points to port, 
 and drove at full speed for the point where the wake 
 of the moving finger had pinched out. 
 
144 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 " We had received a report that morning to the 
 effect that two submarines were operating in these 
 waters, and there is just the chance, therefore, that 
 this was a joint attack. Everything considered, 
 however, we have been inclined to believe that the 
 Fritz we were now starting to make the acquaint- 
 ance of was the same one which the McSmall was 
 still assiduously hunting some miles off to the west- 
 ward. It was a mighty smart piece of * Pussy- 
 wants-a-corner ' work, shifting his position like 
 that under the circumstances; but it was quite 
 possible if the Fritz only had the guts for it, and 
 that I think you'll have to admit this particular 
 one had. 
 
 " It's seconds that count in a destroyer attack on 
 a U-boat, and the captain hadn't lost a tick in 
 jumping into this one. The dissolving ' V ' which 
 the ducked-in periscope had left behind it was still 
 visible in the smooth water when the SheriU's fore- 
 foot slashed into it, and it was only a few hundred 
 yards beyond that a slow undulant upcoiling of 
 currents marked, faintly but unmistakably, the 
 under-water progress of the game we were after. 
 There was no oil-slick, understand, because an 
 uninjured submarine only leaves that behind 
 except through carelessness when it dives after 
 a spell on the surface running under engines. Then 
 the exhausts cough up a lot of grease and oil, and 
 a layer of this, sticking to the stern, leaves a trail 
 that rises for some little time after submergence, 
 
YANK BOAT VERSUS U-BOAT 
 
 and which almost any kind of a dub who has been 
 told what to look for can follow. 
 
 " The spotting of the surface wake of a deep-down 
 submarine, and the holding of it after it almost 
 disappears with the slowing down of the screws that 
 make it, is quite another thing. That takes a man 
 with more than a keen eye it takes instinct, mixed 
 with a lot of common sense. It's a common thing to 
 say of a successful look-out that he has a ' quick 
 nose for submarines. 1 The expression is used more 
 or less figuratively, of course; and yet the nose 
 the sense smell is by no means a negligible factor 
 in detecting the presence, and even the bearing, of 
 a hunted U-boat. I will tell you shortly how it 
 figured in this particular instance. 
 
 " That wake was swirling up so strong when we 
 struck it that it was plain the submarine was still 
 only on the way down, and it was no surprise when, 
 a few seconds later, the distinct form of it was 
 visible, close aboard under the starboard side of the 
 bridge. 
 
 " I don't mean that it was distinct in the sense 
 that you could see details such as the bow or stern 
 rudders, or even the conning-tower, but only that a 
 moving cigar-shaped blob of darker green could be 
 plainly made out. The forward end was rather 
 more sharply defined than the after, probably be- 
 cause the swirl from the propellers made uneven 
 refraction about the tail. It was doubtless a good 
 deal deeper than it looked, and the fact that it 
 
146 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 could be seen at all must have been almost entirely 
 due to the fact that the absence of wind left the 
 surface quite unrippled. 
 
 " The appearance of the submarine abreast the 
 bridge was our cue to get busy, and I won't need 
 to tell you that we went to it good and plenty. We 
 were primed for just that kind of an emergency, 
 and we slapped down a barrage in a way that 
 looked more like chucking coppers for kids to 
 scramble after than the really scientific planting 
 of high explosives that it was. For a minute or two 
 the little old Sherill, dancing down the up-tossed 
 peaks of the explosions, jolted along like the canoe 
 you are dragging over a l corduroyed ' portage. 
 Then the going grew smooth again, and under a 
 hard-over right rudder we turned back rejoicing to 
 gather in the sheaves. Yes, it looked quite as sim- 
 ple as harvesting on the old home farm, and it 
 didn't seem that there could be anything left to do 
 but to go back and pick up with the rake what the 
 mower had brought low. And so it would have 
 been on an ordinary occasion, which, unluckily, 
 this was not. From the first to last, indeed, it was 
 quite the contrary. 
 
 " The whole map of that little opening brush was 
 spread out before us as we came back, and almost 
 as clearly, for the moment, as though modelled in 
 coloured clay. The Sherill's wake, though it had 
 obliterated that of the submarine, coincided with 
 the tell-tale swirl of the latter we had followed, 
 
YANK BOAT VERSUS U-BOAT 147 
 
 while the round patches of spreading foam made the 
 dizzily dancing buoys temporarily superfluous as 
 markers of the spots where the depth-charges had 
 exploded. Like every other story that is writ in 
 water, this one was rapidly dissolving ; but, from all 
 that we needed to learn from it, the record was as 
 complete as a bronze rejief. 
 
 "That there was to be another chapter to the 
 story became evident before we had doubled back 
 half the length of that part of the wake we had 
 sprinkled with ' cans.' At about the point where 
 two-thirds of that sheaf of depth-charges had been 
 expended a clearly defined wake of oil and bubbles 
 turned sharply off to the left. The presence of that 
 little trail cleared up several important points 
 right then and there without following it any 
 farther, though I will hardly need to tell you that 
 we didn't drop anchor to hold a court of inquiry 
 over it. The vital thing it told us was that 
 strange as it seemed our under-water bombard- 
 ment had not sent the U-boat to the bottom, nor 
 even injured it sufficiently to compel it to come 
 to the surface. But that it was injured, and prob- 
 ably fairly badly, was proved by the wake of oil 
 and bubbles. Don't ever let any one delude you 
 with that yarn about the way Fritz sends up oil 
 and bubbles to baffle pursuit. There may be cir- 
 cumstances under which he could work that 
 particular brand of foxiness with profit, but if 
 there is one place where you could be sure he would 
 
148 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 not try anything of that kind on, it is when a de- 
 stroyer has got his nose on his trail, with her eye 
 and ears a-cock for just that kind of little first-aid 
 to ' can-dropping.' For a submarine voluntarily 
 to release air or oil when a destroyer is ramping 
 round overhead would be just about like a burglar 
 scattering a trail of confetti to baffle the pursuit of 
 the police. Fritz is as full of ways that are dark 
 and of tricks that are vain as Ah Sin, but with the 
 hounds at his heels nothing so foolish as that oil 
 and bubble stunt of popular fiction. 
 
 " The first few of the ' cans ' had evidently burst 
 near enough to this Fritz to buckle his shell and 
 release the oil and air, but his sharp right-angled 
 turn to the left had taken him quite clear of the last 
 of the charges, which had only been thrown away. 
 Wounded and winged as he appeared to be, the next 
 thing in order was to polish him off. Slowing down 
 slightly, the captain steadied the Sherill on the 
 wake. 
 
 " As we passed the point where this was rising, 
 the rate at which it was extended gave the approx- 
 imate speed of the U-boat, and the fact that this 
 was not above three knots seemed only another 
 indication that all was not well with him. Holding 
 on past the ' bubble fount/ we passed over the point 
 below which the U-boat must have been moving, but 
 now he was so much more deeply submerged than 
 before that no hint of his outline was visible on 
 either side. We knew he was there, however, and 
 
YANK BOAT VERSUS U-BOAT 149 
 
 when we hit the proper place shook loose another 
 shower of ' cans ' over him. 
 
 " There is nothing deeply mysterious about the 
 calculations in dropping depth-charges, for in no 
 sense of the term can it be called an instrument of 
 precision. Indeed, it is of the bludgeon rather than 
 the rapier type. If you have a wake to guide, you 
 approximate his speed and course from that, guess 
 at his depth, set the charge at the corresponding 
 depth from which you judge its explosion will do 
 most good, and then, allowing for your own speed 
 and course, release it at a point which you reckon 
 the target will have reached by the time the charge 
 gets down on a level with it. It is something like 
 bomb-dropping from an aeroplane, only rather less 
 accurate, because you don't see your target as a 
 rule. 
 
 " This is more than compensated for, however, by 
 the greater vulnerability of its target and the fact 
 that the force of an under- water explosion is felt 
 over a wider area than that of an air-bomb. That's 
 about all there is to it. Success in < can-dropping ' 
 depends about half on the skill and judgment of 
 the man directing it, and about half on luck. Or 
 perhaps I should say that fifty-fifty was about the 
 way it stood when we started in at the game. 
 Naturally, as we have accumulated experience, 
 skill and judgment begin to count for more and 
 luck for less, though we are a long way from reach- 
 ing the point where the latter is eliminated entirely. 
 
150 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 " Again we circled back to pick up the pieces, and 
 again we found only a wake of oil and bubbles 
 angling sharply off from where the ' cans ' had been 
 dropped. It was encouraging to note that both oil 
 and bubbles were rising faster than before, but 
 there was surprise and disappointment in the fact 
 that they were now streaming along at a rate which 
 indicated Fritz was hitting an under-water speed 
 of six or seven knots. 
 
 " By now it was plain what his method was, how- 
 ever. This was to steady on his course till his 
 hydrophones, which all U-boats are fitted with, of 
 course, told him we were bearing down on him, and 
 then to start making ( woggly ' zigzags. The cap- 
 tain was doing some deep thinking as we headed in 
 for the next attack, and I noticed him following 
 his stopwatch with more than usual care as he 
 jiggled off the * cans.' 
 
 " One of the detonations had a different kick from 
 the others, and I was just speculating if it had been 
 a hit, when up comes Fritz, rolling like a harpooned 
 whale. 
 
 " We were just turning sharp under left rudder 
 and, not wanting to take any chances, the captain 
 gave orders for all guns fearing to open fire. No. 
 1 and No. 2 of the port battery got off about five 
 rounds apiece, and when the splashes from the ex- 
 ploding shells had subsided Fritz had gone. It 
 looked like a hundred to one that we had finished 
 him until we ran into another of those darn wakes 
 
r ANK BOAT VERSUS U-BOAT 151 
 
 
 f oil and bubbles reeling off at a good five or six 
 knots. 
 
 " Again we ' canned ' him, and again the thicken- 
 ing trail of grease gave promise that, if nothing 
 else, we were at least bleeding him hard, perhaps 
 to death. As there was no doubt that he was still 
 a going concern, however, the captain decided on a 
 change of tactics, to try attrition, so to speak, 
 instead of direct assault. 
 
 " There is, of course, a limit to the number of 
 * cans ' a destroyer can carry, and those which still 
 remained he wanted to husband against a better 
 chance to use them with effect. The several remain- 
 ing hours of daylight would be enough, if the U-boat 
 could be kept running at maximum speed, to ex- 
 haust its batteries in and force it to come to the 
 surface for lack of power to keep going submerged. 
 A submarine, you understand, unless it can lie on 
 the bottom, which was impossible here on account 
 of the depth, must keep under weigh to maintain 
 its bouyancy, so it follows that the exhaustion of 
 its batteries leaves no alternative but coming up. 
 That was what we were now driving at with this 
 one. 
 
 " About this time, hearing the radio of the Cusli- 
 man close aboard, the captain sent a signal request- 
 ing her help in clearing up the job in hand. She 
 hove in sight presently, accompanied by the Fanny, 
 which was out with her on some special stunt of 
 their own. They had an hour to spare for us, and 
 
152 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 in that time we played just about the merriest little 
 game of hide-and-seek that any of our destroyers 
 have had with a Fritz since the Yanks came over. 
 
 " He wasn't left time to sit and think for a single 
 minute. Now a destroyer would come charging up 
 his wake from astern and shy a ' can ' at his tail ; 
 now one would ambush him from ahead and try and 
 have one waiting where his nose was going to be. 
 
 " It was a good deal like when three or four of 
 us kids used to spear catfish in a muddy pool. We 
 were always grazing one, but never quite getting 
 it. And, believe me, the wake of one of those catfish 
 didn't have anything on the wake of that Fritz for 
 sinuosity. 
 
 " He was zigzagging constantly, and just after 
 charges had been dropped on him he twice broached 
 surface. It was only for a few seconds though, 
 and never long enough to offer a target for even a 
 ranging shot. Once we tried to ram, but he turned 
 as he submerged, and the forefoot cut into nothing 
 more solid than his propeller swirl. 
 
 " After the Cushman and Fanny left us to resume 
 their own job the Sherill took up the chase again on 
 her own account. There were still about three 
 hours to go till dark, and two of these we spent in 
 keeping our quarry on the jump by every trick we 
 knew. Then we stood away, and gave him a chance 
 to come up and start charging on the surface. 
 When it finally became evident that he was not 
 going to take advantage of our consideration on this 
 
YANK BOAT VERSUS U-BOAT 153 
 
 score, we closed in again, picked up his wake, sent 
 down another l can ' or two to tell him what we 
 thought of him. 
 
 " The last of these must have been near to a hit, 
 for it brought up oil bubbles three feet in diameter, 
 with smaller bubbles of air inside of them. The 
 oil-slick left behind by his wake was so heavy that, 
 even in the failing light, it was visible for several 
 miles. He was now making about five knots. We 
 followed that broad slick of oil for some time after 
 darkness had fallen, and it was not till a little 
 before midnight that we lost it. 
 
 " There wasn't much hope of regaining touch 
 before daybreak, but on the off-chance the captain 
 started circling in a way that would cover a lot of 
 sea, and yet not take us too far from the centre of 
 interest. 
 
 " It was a little after one in the morning that 
 one of the look-outs perhaps * sniff-outs ' would be 
 a better term under the circumstances reported an 
 oil smell to windward. The captain promptly 
 ordered her headed up into the wind, with sniffers 
 stationed to port and starboard, fore and aft. 
 Every man on watch was sniffing away on his own, 
 of course, and you can bet it would have been a 
 funny sight if there had only been enough light for 
 us to see one another in. Nosing I can use the 
 term literally this time slowly along, turning now 
 to port, now to starboard, as the oil smell was 
 strongest from this side or that, within ten minutes 
 
154 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 we picked up a slick which, even in the darkness, it 
 was evident was trending to southward. For an 
 hour and a half we zigzagged up along that wake, 
 keeping touch by smell until just before three 
 o'clock, when the new well-risen moon showed it 
 up distinctly to the eye. No," answering my friv- 
 olous interruption, " I don't recall noticing at the 
 time that it was a blue moon. 
 
 " Ten minutes later we came up to where the 
 wake turned to south-westward, and had a brief 
 glimpse of Fritz trying to evade detection by run- 
 ning down the moon-path. He was plainly near 
 the end of his juice, and taking every chance that 
 offered to charge on the surface. He ducked under 
 before there was time for a shot, but, knowing that 
 he could hardly stay there for long, we continued 
 following down his wake. 
 
 " It was broad daylight when, at half-past four, 
 we sighted him again, running awash about five 
 hundred yards ahead and slightly on the starboard 
 bow. Ordering the bow gun to open fire, the cap- 
 tain put the Sherill at full speed and headed in to 
 ram. The shots fell very close, but no hit was 
 observed. 
 
 " He turned sharply to port, preparing to dive. 
 We tried to follow with full left rudder, but missed 
 by twenty feet. His conning-tower and two peri- 
 scopes showed not over thirty feet from the port 
 side as we swept by. It was too close for a torpedo, 
 nor was there a fair chance for a depth-charge. 
 
YANK BOAT VERSUS U-BOAT 155 
 
 The port battery was opening on him as he sub- 
 merged. 
 
 " The strengthening breeze began kicking up the 
 surface about this time, making it difficult to follow 
 the wake. It was six o'clock before we circled into 
 it again, to find that Fritz was now trying to blind 
 pursuit by steering his course so that the wake led 
 away straight toward the low morning sun. It 
 was probably by accident rather than design that 
 his now reversed course also laid his wake across 
 some of the zigzags of his old oil-slick. At any rate, 
 between that and the sun, we got off the scent 
 again, and did not get in touch till an hour later, 
 when a thin blue-white vapour to the eastward 
 revealed the blow-off of his exhaust where he had 
 resumed charging on the surface. 
 
 " He was a good five miles away, but we turned 
 loose at him with the bow gun and started closing 
 at full speed. At almost the same time, the 
 British sloop Moonflower the same one we were 
 talking about this evening stood in from eastward, 
 also firing at the enemy, who was about midway 
 between us. 
 
 " Fritz disappeared under the foam-spouts 
 thrown up by the fall of shot, and, although two 
 more destroyers joined in the hunt, which was con- 
 tinued all that day and on to nightfall, no further 
 trace of him was discovered. Even if he did not 
 sink at once, the chances are all against his being 
 in shape ever to get back to base. But just the 
 
156 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 same," he concluded, with a wistful smile, " it 
 would have been comforting to have had something 
 more tangible than the memory of an oil smell and 
 thirty-six hours without sleep as souvenirs of that 
 little brush." 
 
 It had been dark for an hour where the waters of 
 the River Lee were streaming seaward with the ebb- 
 ing tide, but the tree-tops along the crest of the 
 eastward hills were silvering in the first rays of the 
 rising moon. The signalman was looking at it 
 when I bade him good night and started down the 
 ladder to the main deck. 
 
 " I hope it isn't a blue one," he said with a grin ; 
 " we're expecting to go out again tomorrow." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 ADRIATIC PATROL 
 
 BORING into a North Sea blizzard in a de- 
 stroyer off the coast of Norway is not exactly 
 the kind of thing that one would think 
 would turn a man's thoughts to sunny climes, with 
 scented breezes blowing over flowery fields, and 
 cobalt skies arching over sapphire waters, and all 
 that sort of thing ; but the human mind moves in a 
 mysterious way, and that is just what Lieutenant 
 
 K started talking about the night we were 
 
 shepherding the northbound convoy together, after 
 it had been temporarily scattered by w r hat had 
 proved to be an abortive German light cruiser raid. 
 Sea-booted, mufflered and goggled, and ponderous 
 w r here his half-inflated " Gieve " bulged beneath his 
 ample duffle-coat, he leaned over the starboard rail 
 of the bridge for a space to get the clear view 
 ahead that the frost-layer on the wind-screen 
 denied him from anywhere inboard. Then, just 
 ducking a sea that rolled in tumultuously fluent 
 ebony over the forecastle gun and smothered the 
 bridge in flying spray, he nipped across and threw 
 a half-Nelson around a convenient stanchion be- 
 fore the pitch, as she dived down the back of the 
 
 157 
 
158 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 retreating wave, threw him against the port rail. 
 
 " Got 'em all in line again/ 7 he said, pushing his 
 face close to mine. " That's something to be thank- 
 ful for, anyhow. Didn't expect to round up half 
 of 'em before we had to stand away to pick up the 
 southbound. Piece of uncommon good luck. Now 
 we can stand easy for a spell." 
 
 I was about to observe that "stand easy " didn't 
 seem to me quite the appropriate term to apply to 
 the act of keeping one's balance on a craft which 
 was blending thirty-degree rolls with forty-degree 
 pitches to form a corkscrew-like motion of an eccen- 
 tricity comparable to nothing else in the gamut of 
 human experience, when he continued with : " Not 
 much like what I was enjoying a month ago, this," 
 indicating the encompassing darkness with a 
 rotary roll of his head. " I was in a destroyer at 
 an Italian base then Brindisi with the smell of 
 dust and donkeys and wine-shops in the air, and 
 straight-backed, black-haired, black-eyed girls, with 
 rings in their ears and baskets of fruit soft red 
 and yellow and blue fruit on their heads. Now 
 it's " and she put her nose deep into a wave that 
 dealt her a sledge-hammer blow and sent spray 
 flying half-way to the foretop in a solid stream 
 " this, just this. Grey by day, black by night, and 
 slap-bang all the time. No light, no colour, no 
 atmosphere, no '> 
 
 " I quite understand," I cut in. " No straight- 
 backed girls with rings in their ears and fruit- 
 
ADRIATIC PATROL 159 
 
 baskets on their heads. Of course, there's more 
 light and colour down there than here ; but wasn't 
 there also a bit of slap-bang to it now and then? " 
 
 " Ay, there was a bit,' 1 he replied. " There was 
 
 the time " He started to tell me the already 
 
 time-worn yarn of the Yarmouth trawler skipper 
 and the Grimsby trawler skipper, each of whom, 
 enamoured of the same Taranto maid, wooed her 
 while the other was absent on patrol; of how one 
 of them, looking through his glass as he stood in 
 toward the entrance on one of his return trips, 
 saw his rival walking on the beach with arm round 
 the waist of the artful minx in question, and her 
 red-and-yellow kerchief-bound head resting on his 
 shoulder; of how the one on the trawler, consumed 
 by a jealousy fairly Latin in its intensity, swung 
 round his six-pounder, discharged it at the faithless 
 pair, and so crookedly did the rage-blind eyes see 
 through the sights hit a fisherman's hut half a 
 mile away from his target ! 
 
 I had heard the story in Taranto a year pre- 
 viously, and knew it to be somewhat apocryphal at 
 best. " I didn't mean that kind of ' slap-bang,' " 
 I said. " I was under the impression that the de- 
 stroyers had some rather lively work down there 
 on one or two occasions." 
 
 " There were several brushes which might have 
 been called lively while they lasted/' he admitted. 
 " I was in one of them myself just before I was 
 transferred north." 
 
160 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 " You don't mean the recent attack on the drifter 
 patrol the one where two British destroyers stood 
 the brunt of the attack of four Austrian destroyers 
 and a light cruiser or two? " I asked. " I have 
 always wanted to hear about that. I've heard 
 Italian naval men say some very flattering things 
 of the way the British carried on." 
 
 " That's the one," he replied. " I was in the Flop 
 the one that got rather the worst banging up." 
 
 " You've just got time for the yarn before your 
 watch is over," I said, settling myself into the 
 nearest thing to a listening attitude that one can 
 assume on the bridge of a destroyer bucking a 
 north-east gale. " Fire away." 
 
 I didn't much expect he would " come through," 
 for I had failed in so many attempts to draw a good 
 yarn by a frontal attack of this kind that I had 
 little faith in it as compared with more subtle 
 methods. Perhaps it was because rough methods 
 were suited to the rough night ; or it may have been 
 
 only because K 's mind (his non-working 
 
 mind, I mean ; not that closed compartment of 
 sense and instinct with which he was directing his 
 ship) had drifted back to the Adriatic, and he was 
 glad of the chance to talk about it ; at any rate, in 
 the hour that had still to go before eight bells went 
 for midnight, to the accompaniment of the banging 
 of the seas on the bows and the obbligato of the 
 spray beating on the glass and canvas of the 
 screens, he told me the story I asked for. 
 
ADRIATIC PATROL 
 
 161 
 
 
 " I don't need to tell you/' lie said, after giving 
 the man at the wheel the course for the next zigzag, 
 " that the Adriatic is full of various and sundry 
 little traps and contrivances calculated to inter- 
 fere as much as possible with the even tenor of the 
 way of the Austrian U-boats which, basing at Pola 
 and Trieste, sally forth in an endeavour to pen- 
 etrate the Straits of Otranto and attack the com- 
 merce of the Mediterranean. You doubtless also 
 know that this work is very largely in British 
 hands. This is no reflection whatever on our 
 Italian ally. Italy simply did not have the material 
 and the trained men for the task in hand, and since 
 Britain had both, it was naturally up to us to step 
 in and take it over. This was done over two years 
 ago; but, like the anti-submarine work everywhere, 
 it is only now 7 just beginning to round into shape to 
 effect its ends. The winter of his discontent for the 
 U-boat in these waters is closing in fast. 
 
 " You will understand, too, that these various 
 anti-U-boats contrivances take a lot of looking after 
 to prevent their interference with, or even their 
 complete destruction, by enemy surface craft. All 
 the good harbours are on the east coast of the 
 Adriatic, and that sea is so narrow that swift 
 Austrian destroyers can raid all the way across it 
 at many points, and still have time to get back to 
 their bases the same night. With our own bases 
 the only practicable ones available at the ex- 
 treme southern end of the Adriatic, our greatest 
 
162 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 difficulty, perhaps, has been in guarding against 
 these swift tip-and-run night-raids by the enemy's 
 speedy surface craft. I don't know whether the 
 fact that we seein to have about put an end to their 
 operations of this kind is a greater tribute to our 
 enterprise or the Austrians' lack of it. The brush 
 in question occurred as a consequence of the latest 
 of the Austrian attempts to interfere with the 
 measures which, he knows only too well, will ulti- 
 mately reduce his U-boats to comparative im- 
 potence. 
 
 " I was Number Two in the Flop, which, with the 
 Flip, was patrolling a certain billet well over 
 toward the Austrian coast of the Adriatic. We had 
 turned at about eleven o'clock, and were heading 
 back on a westerly course, when the captain sighted 
 a number of vessels just abaft the starboard beam. 
 Being almost in the track of the low-hanging moon, 
 they were sharply silhouetted ; but the queer atmos- 
 pheric conditions played such pranks with their 
 outlines that, for a time, he was deceived as to their 
 real character. The warm, coastal airs, blowing to 
 sea for a few hours after nightfall, have a tendency 
 to produce mirage effects scarcely less striking than 
 those one sees on the desert along the Suez Canal. 
 It was the distortion of the mirage that was respon- 
 sible for the fact that the captain mistook two 
 Austrian light cruisers for small Italian transports 
 (such as we frequently encountered on the run be- 
 tween Brindisi and Valona or Santi Quaranti), 
 
ADRIATIC PATROL 
 
 163 
 
 and that be reported what shortly turned out to be 
 enemy destroyers as drifters. 
 
 " The captain had just made a shaded lamp sig- 
 nal to the Flip, calling attention to the ships and 
 their supposed character, when the white, black- 
 curling bow-wave of the two leaders caught his eye 
 and made him suspect they were warships. The 
 alarm bell clanging for < Action Stations' was the 
 first intimation I had that anything was afoot. In 
 the Adriatic, as everywhere else, everyone in a de- 
 stroyer turns in ' all standing ' ; so it was only a 
 few seconds until I was out of my bunk and up to 
 my station on the bridge. It was not many minutes 
 later before I found myself in command of the ship. 
 
 "It was now clear that the force sighted con- 
 sisted of two enemy light cruisers and four 
 destroyers, the latter disposed two on each quarter 
 of the rear cruiser. They were closing on us at 
 high speed at a constant bearing of a point or two 
 abaft the beam. It was up to the Flip, as senior 
 ship, to decide whether to fight or to run away on 
 the off-chance of living to fight another day, some- 
 thing which was hardly likely to happen in the 
 event we closed in a real death grapple. The dis- 
 parity between our strength and that of the enemy 
 would have entirely justified us in doing our utmost 
 to avoid a decisive fight, had it been that the cards 
 on the table were the only ones in the game. But 
 this was hardly the case. Out of sight, but still 
 not so many miles distant, was another subdivision 
 
164: SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 of our destroyers, while overwhelming forces would 
 ultimately be hurrying up to our aid in case the 
 enemy could be delayed long enough. To close in 
 immediate action was plainly the thing, and the 
 Flip was turning in to challenge even as she made 
 us a signal indicating that this was her decision. 
 A moment more, and we were turning into line 
 astern of her. 
 
 " Out of the moon-track now, the outlines of the 
 enemy ships were indistinct and shadowy, and it 
 was from the dull blur of opacity above the slightly 
 phosphorescent glow of the 'bone' in the teeth of 
 the leading cruiser that the opening shot was fired. 
 It lighted her up brilliantly for the fraction of a 
 second, and the ghostly geyser from the bursting 
 shell showed up distinctly a few hundred yards 
 ahead of the Flip. Both the sharpened image of the 
 cruiser in the light of the gun-fire and the time of 
 flight of the shell helped us with the range, and the 
 fall of shot from the Flip's opener looked like a very 
 near thing. We followed it w r ith one from our 
 fo'c'sr gun, which was a bit short, and the next, if 
 not a hit, was only slightly over. At this juncture, 
 all six of the enemy ships came into action with 
 every gun they could bring to bear, and the Flip 
 and the Flop did the same. For the next few 
 minutes things happened so fast that I can't be 
 sure of getting them in anywhere near their actual 
 sequence. 
 
 " We began hitting repeatedly, and with good 
 
ADRIATIC PATROL 
 
 165 
 
 effect, after the first few shots, and the Flip also 
 appeared to be throwing some telling ones home. 
 The enemy were hitting the both of us about the 
 same time, however, and, of course, with many 
 times the weight of metal we were getting to him. 
 At this juncture the skipper of the Flip, evidently 
 figuring that the Austrians, now that they were 
 fully engaged and had a good chance of polishing 
 us off, would not break off the fight, turned south- 
 ward with the idea of drawing them toward the 
 other forces which we knew would be rushing up 
 in response to the signal we had sent out the instant 
 the character of the strange ships was evident. 
 
 " The Flip, like a big squid, began smoke-screen- 
 ing heavily as she turned, the Flop following suit. 
 The sooty oil fumes poured out in clouds thick 
 enough to walk on, but unluckily, neither our 
 course nor the state of the atmosphere was quite 
 favourable for making it go where it would have 
 served us best. Possibly it was because the Flip 
 was making a better screen than the Flop, or pos- 
 sibly it was because they were concentrating on the 
 ' windy corner ' just as we were rounding it. At 
 any rate, trying to observe through our rather 
 patchy smoke the effect of what appeared to be a 
 couple of extremely well-placed shots of ours on 
 the leading cruiser, I suddenly became aware that 
 all four of the destroyers and the second cruiser 
 were directing all of their fire upon the poor little 
 Flop. I don't recall exactly whether I twigged this 
 
166 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 before we began to feel the effects of it or not, but 
 I am rather under the impression that I seemed 
 to sense it from the brighter brightness a gun 
 firing directly at you makes a more brilliant flash 
 than the same gun laid on a target ahead or astern 
 of you of the flame-spurts even before I was aware 
 of the sudden increase of the fall of shot. 
 
 " They had us ranged to a yard by this time, of 
 course, and the captain turned away a couple of 
 points in an endeavour to throw them off. I recall 
 distinctly that it was just as the grind of the ported 
 helm began to throb up to the bridge that a full 
 salvo probably from one of the cruisers came 
 crashing into us. My first impression was that we 
 were blown up completely, for of the two shells 
 which had struck forward, one had brought down 
 the mast and the other had scored a clean hit on the 
 forebridge. There was also a hit or two aft, but the 
 immediate effects of these were not evident in the 
 chaos caused by the others. This was absolutely 
 beyond description. 
 
 " The actual shock to a ship of being struck by 
 a shell of even large calibre is nothing to compare 
 with that from almost any one of these seas that 
 are crashing over us now. But it is the noise of the 
 explosion, the rending of metal, and the bang of 
 flying fragments and falling gear that makes a 
 heavy shelling so staggering, to mind if not to body. 
 Of course everyone on the forebridge was knocked 
 flat by the explosion of the shell which hit it, and 
 
ADRIATIC PATROL 
 
 167 
 
 the worst of it was that the most of us didn't get up 
 again. The sub and the middy who were acting as 
 Control Officers were blown off their platform and 
 so badly knocked up that they were unable to carry 
 on. One signalman and one voice-pipe man were 
 killed outright. 
 
 " The rest of us were only shaken up or no more 
 than slightly wounded by this particular shell, but 
 the one which brought down the mast added not a 
 little both to casualties and material damage. The 
 radio aerials came down with the mast, of course, 
 and it was some of the wreckage from one or the 
 other that fell on the captain, wounding him 
 severely in both arms. Dazed and shaken, he still 
 gamely stuck to the wreck of the bridge, but the 
 active command now fell to me. 
 
 " This damage, serious as it was, was by no means 
 the extent of that inflicted by this unlucky salvo. 
 A third shell, as I shortly learned, had passed 
 through the fore shell-room and into the fore 
 magazine. In which it exploded I could not quite 
 make sure, but both were set on fire. This fire got 
 to some of the cordite before it was possible to get 
 it away, and the ensuing explosion killed or 
 wounded most of the supply parties and the crews 
 of the twelve-pounders. It was brave beyond all 
 words, the fight those men made to save the ship 
 down in that unspeakable hell-hole, and it was due 
 wholly to their courage and devotion that the ex- 
 plosion was no worse than it was. This trouble r 
 
^68 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 luckily, was hardly more than local, but a number 
 of good lives was the price of keeping it so. 
 
 " There was one other consequence of that salvo, 
 and though it sounds funny to tell about it now, it 
 might well have made all the difference in the world 
 to us. In the bad smashing-up of the bridge of any 
 ship by shell-fire the means of communication with 
 the rest of her the voice-pipes, telephones, tele- 
 graphs, etc. are among the first things to be 
 knocked out. This means, if there are no alterna- 
 tives left, that directions have to be relayed around 
 by shouting from one to another until the order 
 reaches the man to carry it out. This would be an 
 awkward enough expedient for a ship that is not 
 under fire and fighting for time and her life. What 
 it is with the enemy's shell exploding about you, 
 and with your own guns firing, I will leave you to 
 imagine. Well, we had all this going on, and be- 
 sides that a fire raging below that always had the 
 possibilities of disaster in it until it was extin- 
 guished. Also, we were already short-handed 
 from our losses in killed and wounded. There 
 wasn't anyone to spare to relay orders about in any 
 case. But what capped the climax was this : When 
 the mast was shot down, some of the raffle of rig- 
 ging or radio fouled the wires leading back to both 
 of the sirens, turning a full pressure of steam into 
 them and starting them blowing continuously. It 
 was almost as though the poor maimed and mangled 
 'Flop were wailing aloud in her agony. 
 
ADRIATIC TATROL 
 
 169 
 
 " I didn't think of it that way at the time, though, 
 for I had my hands full wailing loud enough myself 
 to make even the man at the wheel understand what 
 1 wanted him to do. Luckily, the engine-room tele- 
 graph, though somewhat cranky, was still in action, 
 and orders to other parts of the ship we managed 
 to convey by flash-lamp or messenger. It was ten 
 minutes or more before they contrived to hush the 
 sirens it was cutting off their steam that did it, I 
 believe and by then a new and even more serious 
 trouble had developed through the jamming of the 
 helm. It was hard over to starboard at that, so 
 that the Flop simply began turning round and 
 round like a kitten chasing its tail. This involun- 
 tary manoeuvre had one favourable effect in that 
 it seemed to throw the Austrian gunnery off for a 
 bit, though one shell which penetrated and ex- 
 ploded in the after tiller-flat shortly after she began 
 cutting capers did not make it any easier to coax 
 the jammed helm into doing its bit again. 
 
 " Our 6 ring-around-the- roses ' course had re- 
 sulted in our coming much nearer to the enemy, 
 who, seeing a chance to finish us off, was trying to 
 close the range at high speed. Our rotary course 
 brought them on a continually shifting bearing, and 
 it was while they were coming up on our port bow 
 at a distance of less than a mile that it suddenly 
 became evident that the cruisers were about to 
 present us the finest and easiest kind of a torpedo 
 target. The captain, who, in spite of his wounds, 
 
SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 was still trying to stick the show through, saw the 
 opening as soon as I did, and, because there was no 
 one else free to attempt the trick, tackled it himself. 
 But it was a case of the spirit being willing and the 
 flesh weak. With every ounce of nerve in him he 
 tried to make his almost useless hands work the 
 forebridge firing-gear. The chance passed while 
 he still fumbled frantically but vainly to release the 
 one little messenger a mouldie that would have 
 been enough to square accounts, and with some to 
 spare. It was the hardest thing of all not being 
 able to take advantage of that opening. 
 
 " It was twenty minutes before the helm was of 
 any use at all, and the Austrians had only their 
 lack of nerve to thank for not putting us down 
 while they had a chance. It must have been be- 
 cause they were afraid of some kind of a trap, for 
 there were a half-dozen ways in which a force of 
 their strength could have disposed of a ship as help- 
 less and knocked-out generally as was the Flop. 
 The Flip had also been hard hit, and when I had 
 a chance for a good look at her again it appeared 
 that her mast, like ours, was trailing over the side. 
 She was still firing, however, and it was she rather 
 than the enemy that was trying to close. We were 
 quite cut off from wireless communication, as all 
 attempts to disentangle the aerials from the 
 wreckage of the mast had been unsuccessful ; but it 
 was evident that help was coming to us, and that 
 the Austrians had in some way got wind of it. At 
 
ADRIATIC PATROL 
 
 171 
 
 any rate, our immediate responsibilities were over. 
 We had prevented the enemy from reaching his 
 objective, and possibly delayed him long enough for 
 some of our other ships to have a chance at harry- 
 ing his retreat. It was now up to us to limp to 
 port on whatever legs we had left. 
 
 " We were still a long way from being out of 
 action even now, but with the fires continuing to 
 burn fiercely in the fore magazine and shell-room, 
 with the helm threatening to jam every time course 
 was altered, and with a considerable mixture of 
 water beginning to make its presence felt in the 
 oil, there was no telling what complications might 
 set in at any moment. As one of the Italian bases 
 in Albania was rather nearer than any port on the 
 other side of the Adriatic, it was for that we set 
 our still erratic course. 
 
 " Our troubles were not yet over, however. Just 
 as the moon came down and sat on the sea pre- 
 liminary to setting, squarely against the round 
 yellow background it formed I saw the silhouette 
 of the conning-tower of a U-boat. At almost the 
 same instant the helm jammed again. Then it 
 worked free for a few seconds, but only to jam 
 presently, just as before. This continued during 
 two or three minutes, and just as it was wangled 
 right and we began to steady again I saw the wake 
 of a torpedo pass across our bows. Half a minute 
 later another one missed us in the same way, and 
 by about the same distance. I have always thought 
 
172 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 that nothing but that providential jamming of the 
 helm just then saved us from intercepting both of 
 those mouldies. 
 
 " The fires in the fore shell-room and magazine 
 were eventually got under control by flooding, and 
 we were fairly cushy when we dropped anchor at 
 base a little before daybreak/' 
 
 K lurched over to the starboard rail and 
 
 counted the dark blurs that represented the units of 
 the straggling convoy. He was wiping snow and 
 spray from his face as he slid back on the roll to 
 our stanchion. 
 
 " Fine place, Southern Albania/' he muttered. 
 " Plenty of heat and dust and sunshine and 
 
 I never did hear what the rest of those Albanian 
 attractions were. At that juncture dusky figures 
 emerging from the deeper gloom of the ladder 
 heralded the appearance of the middle watch, and 
 for those relieved, including myself, the world held 
 just one thing a long, narrow bunk, with a high 
 side rail to prevent the occupant from rolling out. 
 You go at your sleep on a destroyer as a dog dives 
 at a bone, for you never know how long it may be 
 before you get another chance. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 T 
 
 PATROL 
 
 HE Senior Naval Officer (or the S.N.O., as 
 
 they clip it down to) at X had prepared 
 
 me for finding an interesting human exhibit 
 in the sharp-nosed, stub-sterned little craft snug- 
 gled up to the breast of its mothership for a drink 
 of petrol, or whatever other life-giving essence she 
 lived and laboured on, but hardly for the highly 
 diversified assortment that was to reveal itself to 
 me during those memorable days we were to rub 
 shoulders and soak up blown brine and grog to- 
 gether as they threaded the gusty sea lanes of her 
 winter North Sea patrol. 
 
 " I am sending you out on M.L.* ," the S.N.O. 
 
 had said as he gazed down with an affectionate 
 smile at the object of his remarks, " for several rea- 
 sons, but principally on account of the men that 
 are in her. You'll find them a living, breathing 
 object-lesson in the adaptability of the supposedly 
 stodgy and inflexible Anglo-Saxon race. Her skip- 
 per, to use one of his own favourite expressions, is 
 a live wire always seems to be able to spark w r hen 
 there's trouble in the wind. He came from some- 
 
 * Motor launch. 
 173 
 
174 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 where in Western Canada, I believe. Seems to have 
 tried farming there for a spell, and I think he said 
 something once about running his own agricultural 
 tractor. At any rate, in some way or another, he 
 has picked up more practical knowledge of petrol 
 engines than many of our so-called experts. 
 
 " The fact is," continued the S.N.O. as we turned 
 back towards his office at the end of the quay, " the 
 
 fact is that D , though he never saw salt water 
 
 before he crossed the Atlantic to do his bit in the 
 War, and though he never has got and never will 
 get, I'm afraid, his sea-legs, is in many respects the 
 most useful M.L. Officer I have ever had to do with, 
 and that's saying a good deal, let me assure you. 
 
 " He's always sick as a dog from the time he puts 
 to sea to the time he returns to port. The only 
 thing that is liable to be more sick is the Hun sub- 
 marine he once gets his nose on. I've heard him 
 say in a joking way, two or three times, that he 
 always could scent a Hun as far as he could a 
 skunk I think that's what he calls it; and from 
 some of the things he's done I must confess I'm 
 more than half inclined to believe him. Perhaps 
 his most remarkable achievement, however, is that 
 of taking eight or ten men, just as green as he was 
 himself regarding the sea, and making of them a 
 crew that will handle that cranky little lump of a 
 craft pretty nearly as smartly as old trawler-men 
 would on the nautical side, and at the same time 
 having a fund of resource always on tap that is 
 
PATROL 
 
 175 
 
 positively uncanny almost Yankee, in fact,-' he 
 
 added with a smile. " Indeed, I believe D 
 
 speaks of having knocked about the States a bit, 
 which may account for some of the ' wooden-nut- 
 meg' tricks he has played on the U-boats. Try 
 to get him to tell you some of them. You'll hardly 
 be allowed to write much of them for a while yet 
 certainly not until they have become obsolete 
 through the introduction of new devices; but you'll 
 find it good material some day." 
 
 M.L. looked more diminutive than ever as I 
 
 was rowed out to her anchorage in the chill grey 
 mists of the following morning; but a raw cold, 
 which had been striking through to the marrow of 
 my bones, dissolved, as by magic, before the friendly 
 warmth of the welcome which awaited me, when I 
 had clambered up the sawn-off Jacob's Ladder and 
 over the wobbly wire rail. A slender but lithely 
 active chap in a greasy overall and jumper, to give 
 it the Yankee name, gave me a finger-crushing grip 
 with his right hand, .while with his left he deftly 
 caught and saved from immersion my kit-bag, which 
 had fallen short in the toss that had been given it 
 from below. Just for an instant the absence of 
 visible insignia of rank made me think that he was 
 a petty officer of engineers, or something of the 
 kind; then the magnetism of his personality flowed 
 to me through the medium of his hand-clasp, and I 
 knew I was looking into the eyes of a man who 
 
176 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 would not be likely to figure for long as anything 
 less than " Number One " on any kind of job he 
 ever undertook. 
 
 " You're just in time for a ' square/ " he said 
 heartily, leading the way to the tiny hatch and pre- 
 ceding me down the ladder. " You'll be needing it, 
 too, after that pull with nothing more than that 
 sloppy dish-wash kaffy-o-lay that you get at the 
 hotel at this hour of the morning on your stomach. 
 Don't try to bluff me that you had anything more. 
 1 know by sad experience. Now /'// give you some- 
 thing that'll stick to your ribs. What do you say 
 to some Boston baked beans and a ' stack o' hots '? 
 Guess I know what a 'Murican likes. Sorry my 
 maple syrup's gone, but here's some dope I syn- 
 thesised out of melted sugar and m'lasses treacle, 
 they call it over here." 
 
 Reaching the lower deck, we edged along to a 
 transom at the end of a table which all but filled 
 the tiny dining-cabin. 
 
 " Shake hands with Mac," said the skipper by 
 way of introducing me to a tall and extremely good- 
 looking youth in a Cardigan jacket, duffel trousers, 
 and sea-boots, who rose with a smile of welcome as 
 we dropped down beside him. " Mac's a Canuck, 
 like myself," he went on, after asking me if I liked 
 my eggs " straight up " or " turned over," and pass- 
 ing the order on to a diminutive Cockney with a 
 comedian's face, who came tripping in almost as 
 though wafted on the "smell o' cooking" which 
 
PATROL 
 
 177 
 
 preceded him through the opened galley door. 
 
 " Mac learned his sailoring on his dad's yacht on 
 Lake Ontario, and I learned mine driving a * deep- 
 seagoing ' side-wheel tractor on a ranch in Alberta. 
 Only time I was ever afloat before I became a 
 * Capt'in in the King's Navee ' was on a raft on the 
 old Missouri, in Dakota; and that isn't really being 
 afloat, you know, for 'bout one half the water of 
 that limpid stream is mud and the other half cat- 
 fish. A great pair of old salts, we two hey, Mac? 
 
 " And the rest of the crew's no more * saline ' 
 than its ' orfficers.' That's the way they say it, 
 ain't it, Mac? Little 'Arry, the galley-slave, was a 
 knock-about artist in the London music-halls before 
 he 'eard the sea a-callin', and now he doesn't 'eed 
 nothin' else, do you, Harry? And you'll hear the 
 sea a-callin' that nice big breakfast of yours just as 
 soon as we get outside the Heads, won't you, Harry? 
 And then you won't 'eed nothin' else for quite a 
 while. And so'll Mac hear the sea a-calling his 
 breakfast, and so'll I, and so'll all the rest of us 
 every mother's son. It's a fine lot of Jack Tars we 
 are, the whole bunch of us. Did I tell you that one 
 of my quartermasters is an ex-piano-tuner, and that 
 the other was a Salvation Army captain before he 
 entered the Senior Service for the duration? And 
 my Chief that's him you hear alternating between 
 tinkering and swearing at the engines on the other 
 side of that bulkhead you're leaning against 
 owned a motor-boat of his own before the War, and 
 
178 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 appears to have divided his waking hours between 
 racing that and his stable of motor-cars? You can 
 tell he was a gentleman once by the fluency of his 
 cussing. He's the only man I've met over here that 
 could give yours truly any kind of a run in dispens- 
 ing the pungent persiflage; but I had the advan- 
 tage of driving mules as a kid. 
 
 " But cussing, though it helps with a lot of things, 
 doesn't make a sailor, and the Chief's no more of 
 a Jack Tar than me or Mac or Harry. Fact is, that 
 the only man aboard who ever made his living out 
 of the sea before the war is a fisherman from the 
 Hebrides ; and even the glossary in the back of my 
 Bobbie Burns won't translate his lingo. Two or 
 three times, when the sea has been kicking up a bit, 
 he has managed to tell us that no self-respecting 
 God-fearing sailor would be oot in such weather. 
 Possibly he's been right; but, as none of us are 
 sailors, we don't feel called on to pay much atten- 
 tion to his ravings. Our duty is to harass any Huns 
 that encroach on our beat; and the fact that we've 
 had a modicum of success in that line proves you 
 don't have to be a sailor to qualify for the job. 
 Which don't mean, though," he concluded with a 
 smile of sad resignation as he rose and reached for 
 his oil-skins, " that I don't hope and pray that 
 I'll develop the legs and stomach of a sailor before 
 the war's over." 
 
 When breakfast was eaten, forward and aft, all 
 hands were piped on deck, and in less than ten 
 
PATROL 
 
 179 
 
 linutes M.L. was under way and threading 
 
 the winding channels of a cliff-begirt Firth to the 
 mist-masked waters of the North Sea. 
 
 As I picked my way forward to the little 
 glassed-in cabin, which served the double purpose 
 of navigating-bridge and wheel-house, I told myself 
 that I was sure of two things first, that the skip- 
 per, by birth, breeding, residence, and probably 
 citizenship, was an American of Americans, and, 
 second, that the chances w r ere he would not admit 
 that fact unless I " surprised him with the goods." 
 An Englishman will often mistake a Canadian for 
 an American but a Yankee himself will rarely make 
 that error. I was sure of my man on a dozen 
 counts, and resolved to lay in figurative ambush 
 for him. 
 
 I all but had him within the hour. We were clear 
 of the Heads, and the skipper, having turned over 
 to Mac, was trying to forget that imperious call o' 
 the sea he had chaffed 'Arry about by showing me 
 round. He had explained the way a depth-charge 
 was released, and was just beginning to elaborate 
 on the functions of an old-fashioned lance-bomb. 
 
 " Now this fellow," he said, balancing the un- 
 gainly contrivance and giving it a gingerly twirl 
 about his head, " is a good deal like the sixteen- 
 pound hammer which I used to throw at college." 
 
 Knowing that the hammer-throw was not a Cana- 
 dian event, I promptly cut in with " What col- 
 
180 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 lege? v " Minnesota," he answered readily enough ; 
 adding, as I began to grin : " A good many Cana- 
 dians go across there for the agricultural courses." 
 I resolved to await a more favourable opportunity 
 before bringing my " charge " point-blank. It came 
 that afternoon, when I stood beside him on the 
 bridge as he bucked her through ten miles of slash- 
 ing head-sea, which had to be traversed to gain the 
 shelter of a land-locked bay beyond a jutting point, 
 where we were to lie up for the night. He w r as 
 telling me U-boat-chasing yarns in the patchy in- 
 tervals between the demands of mal de mer and 
 navigation, and one of them ended something like 
 this : " Old Fritz just as we intended he should 
 caught the reflection of the flame through his 
 upturned periscope and, thinking his shells had set 
 us afire, rose gleefully to gloat over his Hunnish 
 handiwork. Bing! I let him have it just like 
 that." 
 
 The motion with which he flung the lemon he had 
 been sucking as an antidote for sea-sickness could 
 not have been in the least suggestive of what really 
 happened; but that straight-from-the-shoulder, el- 
 bow-flirting, right-off-the-ends-of-the-fmgers action 
 was so like another motion with which I had long 
 been familiar, that, with a meaning side-squint, I 
 observed promptly: 
 
 " So you add baseball to your other accomplish- 
 ments, do you? Did a bit of pitching, if I don't 
 miss my guess? How long have you played? " 
 
 
PATROL 
 
 181 
 
 " Since I was a kid," he admitted with a grin that 
 sat queerly on the waxy saffron of his sea-sick face. 
 " Yes, I even ' tossed the pill ' at college that is, 
 until a shoulder I knocked out trying to slide home 
 one day spoiled my wing/ 1 
 
 I knew I had him the instant that first admission 
 left his lips. " Since the kids weren't playing sand- 
 lot baseball in Canada twenty years ago," I said, 
 ducking low to let the spray from a sea which had 
 just broken inboard blow over, " you might just as 
 well 'fess up and tell me which neck of the Missis- 
 sippi Valley you hail from. Just as one Yankee 
 to another/' I pressed, as his piercing eye turned on 
 me a look that seemed to bore right through and 
 run up and down my spine ; " even as one Middle 
 Westerner to another, for I was born in Wisconsin 
 myself." 
 
 For an instant his lips hardened into a straight 
 line, and the flexed jaw-muscles stood out in white 
 lumps on either side; then his mouth softened into a 
 broadening grin, and a moment later he burst into 
 a ringing laugh. 
 
 " Sure thing, old man, since you put it on ' sec- 
 tional ' grounds, and since we're going to be ship- 
 mates for a week, and " fetching me a thumping 
 wallop on the back " since we both wear the same 
 uniform, anyhow, curly stripe and all, I'll make a 
 clean breast of it. I was born in Kansas got a 
 farm there, near a little burg called Stockton, to- 
 day and was never out of the Middle West in my 
 
382 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 life till I crossed over into Canada to enlist in the 
 first year of the war. I felt I had to get into the 
 show somehow, and the little old U.S.A. was hang- 
 ing fire so in the matter of coming in that I just 
 couldn't wait. I'll tell you the whole story when 
 we're moored for the night." 
 
 I have never been able to recall my yarn with 
 
 D that evening without a hearty guffaw. A 
 
 rising barometer had cleared the grey smother of 
 mist from the sea, but a shift of the wind from 
 south-east to north-east exposed us to a blast which, 
 chilled at its fount in the frozen fjords of Norway, 
 knocked the bottom out of the thermometer and 
 filled the air with needle-like shafts of congealed 
 moisture that seemed to have been chipped from 
 the glassy steel dome of the now cloudless sky. 
 There was a filigree of frost masking the wheel- 
 house windows before the early winter night 
 clapped down its lid, and the men who went forward 
 to pass a line through the ring of the mooring- 
 buoy pawed the icy deck with their stiff-soled sea- 
 boots without making much more horizontal pro- 
 gress than a squirrel treading its wheel. 
 
 It would have been bracing enough if there had 
 been a cheery open fire, or at least a glowing little 
 sheet-iron stove, to thaw and dry out at, as there 
 is on most patrol craft, and even on many trawlers. 
 But in the particular type to which M.L. - be- 
 longed (the units of which are said to have been 
 
PATROL 
 
 183 
 
 built in fulfilment of a rush order given one winter 
 on the assumption that the War would be over be- 
 fore the next) there was no refinements and few 
 comforts. Heating is not included among the lat- 
 ter : the only stove in the boat being in the galley, 
 where the drying of wet togs in restricted quarters 
 is responsible for a queer but strangely familiar 
 taste to the pea-soup and Irish stew which you never 
 quite account for until you discover the line of 
 grease on the corner of the tail of your oilskin or 
 the toe of your sea-boot. 
 
 The diminutive electric heaters are true to the 
 first part of their name rather than the last : that is 
 to say, while they are undeniably electric, it is 
 equally certain that they do not heat. There is a 
 certain amount of warmth in them, as I discovered 
 the time I scorched my blankets by taking one to bed 
 with me; but that is of use only when you can con- 
 fine it and apply locally, which is rarely practicable 
 in a small craft at sea, even when you have the time 
 for it. 
 
 It will be readily understood, therefore, why on 
 a M.L., at sea in really wintry weather, the only 
 alternative to sitting up and being slowly but surely 
 chilled to the marrow is to doff wet togs as soon as 
 you come off watch, don dry ones, bolt your dinner, 
 and turn in. This is just what we had to do on 
 M.L. - that night; for, besides the really in- 
 tense cold, a sea which came through the sky-light 
 of the little dining-cabin early in the afternoon had 
 
184 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 drenched cushions and curtains, with enough lei 
 over to form an inch or two of swashing swirl upon 
 the deck. Poor ' Arry, with the effects of the " call 
 o' the sea" still showing in his hollow eyes and 
 pasty cheeks, was not in shape to do much either in 
 the way of " slicking up " or " snugging down " ; 
 while the extent of his culinary effort was limited to 
 a kedgeree of half-boiled rice and pale canned 
 salmon, and a platter of eggs fried " straight up,' 1 
 
 according to D 's order, with the yolks glaring 
 
 fish-eyedly at you from a smooth, waxy expanse of 
 congealed grease. D , who was still some- 
 what "introspective 1 ' himself, turned down the 
 " straightups " straightaway, bent a look that was 
 more grieved than angry on the forlorn 'Arry, and 
 then, rising shiveringly, started edging along over 
 the sodden divan toward his cabin door. 
 
 " As principal medical officer of this ship," he 
 said through chattering teeth, " I prescribe the only 
 treatment ever found to be efficacious in such cir- 
 cumstances as the present bunk, blankets, and 
 hot toddy/ 1 
 
 There were two bunks in D 's narrow cabin, 
 
 and it was not until we had turned into these he in 
 the lower, I in the upper that the mounting glow 
 of soul and body thawed the reserve w r hich had 
 again threatened to grip him in the matter of 
 where he came from, and set his tongue wagging of 
 his life on the old home farm, and from that to a 
 sketchy but vivid recital of things that he had done, 
 
PATROL 185 
 
 and hoped still to do, as the skipper of a British 
 patrol boat. It is the vision that the memory of 
 
 that recital conjures up: D , with a Balaclava 
 
 helmet pulled low over his ears, gesticulating ex- 
 citedly up to where I, the unblanketed portion of 
 my anatomy shrouded to the eyes in a wool duffel- 
 coat, leaned out over the edge of the bunk above 
 that I can never dwell on without laughing out- 
 right. 
 
 The story of the w r ay in which it happened that 
 
 D came over to get into the game in the first 
 
 place did not differ greatly from those I have heard 
 from a score or more of young Americans who, 
 partly inspired by a sense of duty and partly lured 
 by the promise of adventure, sought service in the 
 British Army or Navy by passing themselves off as 
 Canadians. He had intended to enlist in the Army 
 at first; but when he found that six months or more 
 might elapse before he would be sent to the other 
 side, he crossed at his own expense on the chance of 
 avoiding the delay. At the end of a disappointing 
 month spent in trying to enlist in some unit that 
 had a reasonable expectation of going into active 
 service at once, the intervention of an old college 
 friend an able young chemical engineer occupying 
 a prominent post in Munitions secured him a sub- 
 lieutenant's commission in the R.N.V.R. Al- 
 though, as he naively put it, the sea was no friend 
 of his, it appears that the M.L. game had proved 
 congenial from the outset : so much so, indeed, that 
 
186 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 something like three years of service found him 
 with two decorations and innumerable mentions to 
 his credit, to say nothing of the reputation of being 
 one of the most resourceful, energetic and generally 
 useful men in a service in which all of those qual- 
 ities are taken more or less as a matter of course. 
 He had gone in as a Canadian for fear that he 
 might be turned down as a Yankee, and then, to 
 use his own words : " By the time the U.S.A. began 
 to take a hand, I had told so many darn lies about 
 hunting and fishing and farming in Alberta and 
 British Columbia that I concluded it would be less 
 trouble to go on telling them than to start in deny- 
 ing them. The boundary between Canada and the 
 U.S.A. is more or less of an imaginary line, any- 
 how, and so is that between the average Yankee and 
 Canuck. I reckon I've made it just as hot for the 
 Hun as the latter as I would have as the former, 
 and that's really the only thing that counts at this 
 stage of the game.'- It was this last observation, I 
 
 believe, which started D talking of his work. 
 
 " Generally speaking," he said, reaching up the 
 match with which he had just lighted a cigarette to 
 rekindle the tobacco in my expiring pipe, "the 
 role of the M.L. is very much more defensive than 
 it is offensive. It is supposed to police certain 
 waters, watch for U-boats, report them when 
 sighted, and then carry on as best it can till a de- 
 stroyer, or sloop, or some craft with a real punch in 
 it, comes up and takes over. Well, my idea from 
 
PATROL 187 
 
 the first has been to make that ' defensive ' just as 
 * offensive ' as possible, and it's really astonishing 
 how obnoxious some of us have been able to make 
 ourselves to the Hun. Off-hand, since, with his 
 heavier guns, the average Hun is more than a 
 match for us even on the surface, there wouldn't 
 seem much that we could do against him beyond 
 running and telling one of our big brothers. The 
 perfecting of the depth-charge gave us one very 
 formidable weapon, however, and that of the lance- 
 bomb another, though the days when Fritz was 
 tame and gullible enough to allow himself to be 
 enticed sufficiently near to permit the use of the 
 latter are long gone by. The most satisfying job 
 I ever did, though, was pulled off with a lance- 
 bomb ; and, since there is not one chance in a thou- 
 sand of our ever getting away with the same kind 
 of stunt again, there ought to be no kick on my tell- 
 ing you just how it happened. 
 
 " You see," he went on, pulling a big furry- 
 backed mitten on the hand most exposed to the cold 
 in gesticulation, and tucking the fingers of the other 
 inside the neck of the Balaclava for warmth, 
 " Fritz is an animal of more or less fixed habits, 
 and so the best way to hunt him, like any other 
 animal, is to begin by making a study of his little 
 ways. I specialised on this for some mouths, con- 
 fining myself almost entirely to what he did in 
 attacking, or when being attacked by, M.L.s, and 
 ignoring his tactics with sloops, trawlers, and other 
 
188 
 
 3A-HOUNDS, 
 
 light craft. It wasn't long before I discovered that 
 his almost invariable practice when it was a mat- 
 ter of only himself and a M.L. was to get the 
 latter's range as quickly as possible, endeavour to 
 knock it out, or at least set it afire, by a few hurried 
 shots, and then to submerge and make an approach 
 under water for the purpose of making a closer 
 inspection of the damage inflicted. In this way the 
 danger of a hit from the M.L.'s gun was reduced to 
 a minimum an important consideration, as a 
 holing by even a light shell might w r ell make it 
 impossible to submerge again. And a U-boat in- 
 capable of seeking safety in the depths is, in any 
 part of the North Sea where it would have been 
 likely to meet a M.L., just as good as done for. 
 
 u I also found that when explosions had taken 
 place in the M.L., or when it was heavily afire by 
 the time the U-boat drew near, it was the practice 
 of the latter to come boldly up and finish the good 
 work at leisure, with the addition of any of the 
 inimitable little Hunnisms such as firing on the 
 boats, or ramming them, or running at full speed 
 back and forth among the wreckage so as to give 
 the screws a good chance to chop up the swimming 
 survivors of which Unterseeboot skippers were 
 even then becoming past masters. 
 
 " In short, 11 here D - paused for a moment 
 while he lifted the little electric heater and lighted 
 a fresh cigarette on one of the glowing bars, "in 
 short, I studied the vermin in just the same way I 
 
A DEPTH CHARGE 
 
 DISABLED DESTROYER IN TOW 
 
PATROL 
 
 189 
 
 did the gophers and prairie-dogs when I started to 
 exterminate them on my Kansas farm. I found out 
 when they were most likely to come up, when to 
 stay down; what things attracted them, and what 
 repelled. Then I went after them. Of course, there 
 was no chance for the clean sweep I made of the 
 gophers and prairie-dogs, but we've still managed 
 to keep our own little section of the beat pretty 
 clear. 
 
 " Having satisfied myself regarding the Hun's 
 penchant for stealing up, submerged, to gloat over 
 the dying agonies of his victim, it seemed to me that 
 the obvious thing to do was to lead him on with an 
 imitation death-agony, and then have a proper sur- 
 prise waiting for him when he came up to gloat. 
 The first thing I started working on was how to 
 4 burn up ' and ' blow up ' with sufficient realism to 
 deceive the skipper of a submerged U-boat, and still 
 be in shape to spring an effective surprise if he 
 could be tempted into laying himself open to it. 
 
 " My first plan proved too primitive by far. I 
 reckoned that the ' blowing-up ' touch might be pro- 
 vided by dropping a depth-charge, and that of 
 * burning up ' by playing my searchlight on the 
 surface of the water on the side the approach was 
 to be expected from. Neither was good enough. 
 The ' can ' might have been set to explode on the 
 surface, but that could not be affected without run- 
 ning the chance of blowing in my own stern. But 
 the bing of a depth-charge detonating well under 
 
SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 the water is quite unmistakable, and the first U-- 
 boat I tried to lure with one made off forthwith, 
 plainly under the impression that it was the object 
 of an active attack. As for the searchlight, I saw 
 that it wouldn't do the first time I went down and 
 took a peep at a trial of it through the periscope of 
 one of our own submarines. The beam did cast 
 a patch of brightness discernible through the up- 
 turned 'eye' at a depth of from sixty to eighty 
 feet, but it was neither red enough nor fluttery 
 enough to suggest anything like a burning ship. I 
 set to work to devise something more life-like, with- 
 out ever waiting for a chance to draw a Fritz 
 with it. 
 " First and last, I tried a goodly variety of ' fire ' 
 
 experiments," D continued, snuggling down for 
 
 a moment with both arms under the blankets, " and 
 I don't mind admitting that I'd like to have a few 
 of 'em, smoke and all, flaming up all over this 
 refrigerator right now. The thing I finally decided 
 to try consisted of nothing more than a light, shal- 
 low tank of ordinary kerosene paraffin oil, I be- 
 lieve they call it here made fast to a small, 
 roughly built raft. The modus operand i was as 
 simple as the contrivance itself. As soon as a U- 
 boat was sighted, the raft was to be launched on the 
 opposite side, and kept about thirty feet out by 
 means of a light boom. The next move was to be 
 up to Fritz, and it was fairly certain he would do 
 one of two things submerge and make off, or re- 
 
PATEOL 191 
 
 main on the surface and begin to shell us. In the 
 latter case we were to start firing in reply, of 
 course; but that was only incidental to the main 
 plan. This was to wait until we were hit, or, pre- 
 ferably, until he fired an ' over/ the fall of which, 
 on account of his low platform, he could not spot 
 accurately, and then to fire the tank of kerosene. A 
 line to a trigger, rigged to explode a percussion- 
 cap, made it possible to do this from the rail. As 
 the flames, besides giving off a lot of smoke, would 
 themselves leap high enough to be seen from the 
 other side, it was reasonable to suppose that Fritz 
 would be deluded into thinking we were burning 
 up, and make his approach a good deal more care- 
 lessly than otherwise. If he persisted in closing 
 us on the surface, there would be nothing to it but 
 to make what fight we could with our foVsl 1 gun, 
 and try to make it so hot for him that he would have 
 to go down before his heavier shells had done for 
 us. But if, following his usual procedure, he made 
 his approach submerged, then there were two or 
 three other little optical and aural illusions pre- 
 pared for his benefit. I will tell you of these in de- 
 scribing how we actually used them." 
 
 D - lay quiet for a minute, the wrinkles of a 
 baleful grin of reminiscence showing on both sides 
 of the aperture of the Balaclava. " The first chance 
 we had to try the thing out it nearly did us in," he 
 chuckled presently. " No, Fritz had nothing to do 
 with it. He, luckily for us, submerged and beat it 
 
192 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 off after firing three or four shots probably 
 through mistaking the smoke of a couple of traw- 
 lers just under the horizon for that of destroyers. 
 It was all due to bad luck and bad judgment prin- 
 cipally the latter, I'm afraid. It was bad luck to 
 the extent that the U-boat was sighted down to 
 leeward, so that there was no alternative but to put 
 over my * fire-raft ' on the windward side. The bad 
 judgment came in through my underestimating the 
 force of the wind and the fierceness with which the 
 kerosene would burn when fanned by it, Scarcely 
 had it been touched off before there was a veritable 
 Flammen-ioerfer playing against thirty or forty 
 feet of the windward side, and in a way which made 
 it impossible for a man to venture there to cast off 
 the wire cables which moored the raft. As this 
 class of M.L.s have wooden hulls, you will readily 
 see that this was no joke. 
 
 " The splash of the beam seas proved an effi- 
 cacious antidote, so far as the hull was concerned, 
 however; but how some other highly inflammable 
 material I was carrying 'midships escaped being 
 fired in the minute or more that I was swinging her 
 through sixteen points to bring the raft to the lee- 
 ward of her Well, I can only chalk that up to 
 
 the credit of the special Providence that is sup- 
 posed to intervene especially to save drunks and 
 fools. You can bet your life I never let myself be 
 tempted into making that break again, though it 
 involved a trying exercise of self-restraint when it 
 
PATROL 193 
 
 chanced that the very next Fritz I sighted also bore 
 down the wind. 
 
 " The two or three U-boats which were sighted 
 in the course of the next five or six weeks ducked 
 under without firing a shot, and I was beginning to 
 think that perhaps they had somehow got wind of 
 my little plan and were taking no chances in play- 
 ing up to it. Then, one fine clear morning, up 
 bobs a Fritz about six thousand yards to wind- 
 ward, and begins going through his part of the 
 show almost as though he was one of our own sub- 
 marines with which I had been rehearsing. His 
 firing at us was about as bad as mine at him; but 
 he finally lobbed one over that was close enough, 
 so I knew he couldn't tell whether it was a hit or 
 not, and on that I touched off the fire-raft, which 
 was soon spouting up a fine pillar of flame and 
 smoke. To discourage his approach on the surface, 
 I kept up a brisk firing to give him the impression 
 that we were going to live up to British Navy tra- 
 ditions by going down fighting, and to convince him 
 that it would be much safer to close under water. 
 This came off quite according to plan, and presently 
 I saw the loom of his conning-tower dissolve 
 and disappear behind the spout of one of our 
 shells, which looked to have been a very close 
 thing. 
 
 " I stood on at a speed of five or six knots, but 
 on a course which I reckoned he would anticipate 
 and allow for. When I figured that he was not 
 
194 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 over a mile away, I dropped a float over the stern 
 with a time-bomb attached to it, the detonation of 
 which in this way I had found by experiment to 
 furnish a much more life-like imitation of an in- 
 ternal explosion in a ship when heard in hydro- 
 phones, I mean than that of a depth-charge. The 
 periscope which was shortly poked cautiously up 
 for a tentative ' look-see ' could not, I am pretty 
 nearly dead certain, have revealed anything to belie 
 the impression I had laid myself out to convey- 
 that M.L. - was an explosion-riven, burning, 
 and even already, probably a sinking ship. Besides 
 the gay gush of flames from the fire-raft, which must 
 have appeared to be roaring amidships, lurid 
 tongues of fire were also spouting out of the forrard 
 and after hatches, and from several of the ports; 
 while a thirty-degree list to starboard might well 
 have indicated that she was about to heel over and 
 go down. I had looked at her that way from a 
 periscope myself, while I was studying the effect of 
 some ' stage property ' flares in comparison with 
 ordinary gasoline * blow-torches/ and knew how 
 much she looked like the real thing even when you 
 knew she wasn't. The list? Oh, that was a very 
 simple matter. This class of M.L.s is never on an 
 even keel for long, anyhow, and the installation of 
 a couple of tanks made it possible to pump water 
 back and forth and give her any heel we wanted. 
 We put her almost on her beam ends when we were 
 experimenting on the thing, and without upsetting 
 

 PATROL 195 
 
 things much outside of the galley, which we had 
 Deglected to warn of what devilry was afoot. 
 
 " If we didn't look helpless and harmless enough 
 for any Fritz to run right up alongside and ' gloat 
 over/ I'll eat my hat; and that was what I was 
 counting on this fellow doing. Indeed, I'll always 
 think that was just what he did intend to do even- 
 tually; only it was the way he went about doing it 
 that was near to upsetting the apple-cart. It 
 seemed reasonable to suppose that he would come 
 up and do his gloating on the side he approached 
 from, and so that was the side I had prepared to 
 receive him on. The heavy list she was under to 
 starboard would have made it possible to bring the 
 gun to bear on him until he was almost under the 
 rail, and then there would be a chance for a lance- 
 bomb. If he came up on the other side by any 
 chance, I had figured that the game would be all 
 up; for there was the fire-raft to give it away, 
 while the list would be on the wrong slant to give 
 the gun a show. Well, whether it was accident or 
 intent, that is just what he did broached abeam to 
 port, about half a cable's length off the sizzling 
 tank of flaming kerosene. 
 
 " That next minute or two " (D sat up in bed 
 
 in the excitement of the memory of that stirring in- 
 terval, and I felt one of his gesticulating fists 
 come with a thump against the bottom of my mat- 
 tress) "called for some of the quickest thinking 
 and acting I was ever responsible for pulling off. 
 
196 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 If lie stayed up, it flashed to my mind, there was 
 just the chance I might ram him ; while if he ducked 
 down, there would probably be a good opening for 
 a depth-charge. I rang up full speed at the same 
 time I was shouting orders to cast off the fire-raft, 
 and to bash in one end of the starboard * tilting- 
 tank with an axe. We had considered the pos- 
 sibility of this emergency arising, as much as we 
 hoped it wouldn't, so that no time was lost in 
 meeting it. The fire-raft, boom and all, was cast 
 off clean, and quickly left astern. In scarcely less 
 time was the tank emptied, though the sudden flood 
 from it it was on the upper deck, understand 
 came very near to carrying overboard the man who 
 broached it. With motors, of course, we were run- 
 ning all out in ' two jerks/ and she was doing sev- 
 eral knots over twenty when, with helm hard-a- 
 starboard, she began rounding on the startled 
 Fritz. 
 
 " There was no doubt about the fact that he was 
 startled, let me tell you. And, when you think of 
 it, it must have been a trifle disconcerting to see 
 the blown-up and burning boat he had come up to 
 gloat over, and perhaps loot before she went down, 
 suddenly settle back on an even keel and come 
 charging down on him at twenty-five knots. The 
 ' moony ' fat phizes that showed above the rail of 
 the bridge were pop-eyed with surprise yes and 
 indecision, too, for there were several valuable sec- 
 onds lost in deciding whether to come on up she 
 
PATROL 
 
 197 
 
 Lad risen to the surface with only an < awash ' 
 trim and make a fight with her gun, or to dive. 
 
 " I don't think it would have made a great deal 
 of difference in his own fate which he did, but you 
 can bet it made a lot of difference to me. I don't 
 mind telling you that I was never gladder about 
 anything in my life at least anything since the 
 rain that came at the end of a three-months' 
 drought to save my corn-crop a few years back 
 than when those moon-faces went into eclipse and 
 I saw him begin to submerge. Although it had 
 never formed a part of any plan I had ever worked 
 out, I give you my word that I fully intended to 
 ram him, and that would have meant well, about 
 the same thing as one airplane charging into 
 another. I should almost certainly have finished 
 him, while at the same operation but I don't need 
 to tell you that a match-box like this was never 
 made for bull-at-a-gate tactics. I've never heard of 
 one of this class of M.L.s getting home with a good 
 square butt at a U-boat, and I'm very happy to 
 say that it didn't happen on this occasion. I don't 
 think that we even so much as grazed his ' jump- 
 string ' ; but the whole length of him was in plain 
 sight sloping away from his surface swirl, and it 
 was easy as picking ripe pippins to plant an ' ash- 
 can ' just where it was needed. The only aggrava- 
 ting thing about it was that, although oil came boil- 
 ing up in floods for three days, there was never a 
 Hun, nor even an unmistakable fragment of U-boat 
 
198 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 wreckage, picked up as a souvenir. There was 
 never any doubt about the sinking, however, for 
 the trawlers located the wreck on the bottom with 
 a sweep, and gave it a few more ' cans ' for luck. 
 
 " But the best evidence in my own mind/' con- 
 cluded D , pulling the blankets up higher over 
 
 his shoulders as he settled back into the bunk, " is 
 the fact that, six weeks later, the identical stunt I 
 had tried this time actually lured another Fritz 
 up to eat out of my hand almost exactly as I had 
 been planning for. Now, if that first one had really 
 survived and been able to return to base, it is cer- 
 tain that its skipper would have told what he saw, 
 and that there would have been a general order 
 (such as came out some months later when they 
 finally did twig the game) warning all U-boats 
 against coming up to gloat at close range over 
 burning M.L.s. The fact that this second one was 
 such easy picking proves beyond a doubt that the 
 other never got back." 
 
 " That last was the one you ' threw the hammer ' 
 at, wasn't it? " I asked, leaning far out to make my 
 
 words carry down to D 's now blanket-muffled 
 
 ears. 
 
 " Yes," came the wool-dulled answer. " Tell you 
 some other night. Gotta get warm now. Toddy 
 can's empty. Make a tent of the blankets with your 
 knees, and take the electric heater to bed in it, if 
 you can't stop shivering any other way. Good 
 night." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 "Q" 
 
 A' three miles, as seen from the bridge of the 
 battleship, the small craft which was steer- 
 ing a course that would bring her across our 
 bows in the course of the next few minutes was 
 absolutely nondescript, completely defying classi- 
 fication. A mile closer, however, it appeared to be 
 as plain as day that she was some ancient fishing 
 boat, but bluffer of bow and broader of beam than 
 the oldest of trawlers or drifters in the service. It 
 was only when she was right ahead, and but six or 
 eight cables' lengths distant, that a vagrant sun- 
 patch came dancing along the leaden waters beyond 
 her to form a scintiilant background against which 
 she stood out as what she was the sweetest-lined 
 little steam yacht that ever split a wave. The fish- 
 ing-boat effect had been obtained by a simple 
 arrangement of colours which effectually clipped 
 the clippiness from her clipper bows and equally 
 effectually discounted the graceful overhang of her 
 counter. 
 
 In plain words, they had blocked in the lines of a 
 bluff, squatty tug on her hull with some kind of 
 paint that was very easy to see, and covered the 
 
 199 
 
200 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 rest of her with a paint that was very hard to see. 
 A few changes in rig, and the alteration was com- 
 plete. 
 
 " Quite the cleverest and simplest bit of camou- 
 flage I ever saw," said the captain, lowering his 
 binoculars. " It's only the fact that we're looking 
 down on her from a considerable height against 
 that bright sheet of water that gives a chance to 
 follow her real lines at all. From the deck and 
 even more so from the bridge of a submarine, or 
 through its periscope it would be a lot easier to 
 tell what she isn't than what she is. As a matter 
 of fact, I can't say that I know what she is even 
 now. It is evident that she was a yacht, and no 
 end of a beauty at that. But now, in that guise 
 probably some sort of patrol or anti-U-boat worker, 
 for a guess, perhaps a * Q/ ' 
 
 The officer of the watch turned aside for a mo- 
 ment from the gyro across which he had been sight- 
 ing. " I think she must be the ' ,' sir," he said. 
 
 " Some American millionaire had her in the Medi- 
 terranean, and, wanting to do his bit, brought her 
 up to Portsmouth and turned her over to the Ad- 
 miralty to do what they wanted with her so long 
 as it would help to lick the Hun. She's been mixed 
 up in several kinds of stunts, and is supposed to 
 have a U-boat or two to her credit. Her present 
 skipper's a Yank who came to her from a M.L. 
 They say he's no end of a character, but right as 
 rain on his job and with a natural nose for trouble. 
 
Q " 201 
 
 One of his hobbies is making his ship look what 
 she isn't, and, in order to see her as she would ap- 
 pear to a U-boat, he goes out and studies her 
 through the periscope of one of our own sub- 
 marines. When one of these isn't handy, he some- 
 times goes out in a whaler and studies her through 
 a stubby periscope poked over its gunwale. He 
 got blown right out to sea one night when he was 
 making some experiment from a whaler in ' moon- 
 light visibility,' and didn't get back till the next 
 morning. It had no effect on his enthusiasm, 
 though, for he was out on the same stunt the next 
 night. No question about his nerve, nor his luck, 
 nor his skill, for that matter. Smart seamanship 
 probably has as much to do with the fact that he 
 has never been torpedoed as has his fancy camou- 
 flage." 
 
 I made up my mind at once that here was a man 
 worth meeting and hearing the story of, but as the 
 only base he seemed to have was not easy to reach, 
 and as his ship was reported at sea on the only 
 occasions I was free to go there, some weeks went 
 by before I was able to carry out my plan of paying 
 him a visit. Then, one morning, a nondescript 
 craft, which might have been anything from a 
 wood-pile to a Chinese junk half a mile away, came 
 nosing inconsequentially through the lines of the 
 Grand Fleet and moored alongside the very battle- 
 ship in which I happened to be at that time. 
 
 " K has come in with the ' ' to * swing 
 
202 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 compasses/ " the navigating officer announced to 
 the ward-room. " He's a * converted side-wheel 
 river ferry-boat ' this morning, or something of the 
 kind ; and he's going to get blown to sea in a ' sud- 
 den gale/ or something of the kind; and he says 
 that, if anyone doesn't believe it, to come aboard 
 and he'll give 'em something to stimulate their 
 * stolid British imaginations.' ' 
 
 As certain lockers of the " " had not been 
 
 entirely looted of their age-mellowed treasure when 
 the yacht was dismantled for sterner service than 
 lounging about limpid Mediterranean harbours, 
 the doubters were, naturally, many ; but it is pleas- 
 ant to be able to record that those who came to scoff 
 remained to tea. Indeed, it was not until after 
 tea that I had a chance for a half-hour's yarn alone 
 with K - in the " banquet-hall-deserted " splen- 
 dour of the stripped saloon. It was then that he 
 told me how it was he chanced to "come across 
 and get into the ganie. v 
 
 He used the latter expression several times, I 
 remember, and to no one that I can recall having 
 met, either on land or sea, was the grim work he 
 was doing more of a " game " than to this brave, 
 resourceful, devil-may-care Middle Westerner. 
 
 " I had had a fair bit of experience in yachting 
 and boating during the last six or eight years before 
 the outbreak of the war," he said, settling back at 
 ease in one of the two remaining lounging-chairs, 
 " and most of it has stood me in good stead at one 
 
Q " 203 
 
 time or another since I have been on the job over 
 here. I sailed a single sticker on Lake Michigan 
 for a number of seasons, and I used to run down 
 from my home in Lake Forest to business in Chi- 
 cago in my own motor-boat on and off during the 
 summer. It was what I knew of the latter which 
 got me on a ' M.L.' without any preliminary hang- 
 ing about when I first came over early in the war. 
 What I knew about sailing has been all to the good 
 almost every day I have been at sea, from the time 
 I lured on a U-boat by ringing up my i M.L.' as 
 a disabled fishing-smack to the time when I had to 
 bring this poor little old girl into port under can- 
 vas after I had knocked out her propellers with one 
 of her own depth-charges." It was a fantastically 
 amusing tale, that last, " It was the culmination 
 of my experiments in scientific camouflage," said 
 
 K , with a baleful smile. " Up to that time 
 
 any contrivances to deceive the Hun were getting 
 more and more intricate right along; since then 
 they have tended more and more toward extreme 
 simplicity. It was this way, you see, that I hap- 
 pened to work up to that depth-charge crescendo. 
 From the first I had been striving to give the U-- 
 boat mixed impressions of me, especially on the 
 score of which way I was going. This, as I soon 
 found out from studying the thing in the proper 
 way, is much easier to do in the case of a man 
 whose observation is limited to a few feet above the 
 water than in the case of one who has a more lofty 
 
204 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 coign of vantage to con from. That is to say, it's 
 much easier to convey false impressions, especially 
 regarding your direction, to a man with his eye to 
 a periscope than to one in the foretop of a battle- 
 ship, to take the two extremes. Trying now one 
 thing and now another as I had more experience, 
 I found that where at first every shot fired at me 
 was directed ahead with a more or less approxi- 
 mate allowance for the ship's progress in that 
 direction, after a while they began to go oftener 
 and oftener astern, indicating they were confused 
 as to my rate of change. It was just as I was 
 about to put the crowning touch on my efforts in 
 ' mixing direction ' that the trouble occurred. As 
 the experiments with this particular contrivance 
 never went any further, there will hardly be any 
 harm in my telling you what it was and how it 
 worked. 
 
 " I had already, with the aid of a couple of slant- 
 ing fins, attached something after the fashion of 
 bilge-keels, only just below the water-line on either 
 quarter, worked up a fairly satisfactory ' bow 
 wave ' aft, and I was endeavouring to supplement 
 this by a scheme for making it appear as though 
 the sky was moving past her funnel in the direction 
 it wasn't. You see, I was working on the same 
 principle which deceives you when you think the 
 standing train you are in is in motion when you 
 see the one on the next track start up. 
 
 " As the U-boat skipper's * look-see ' is often 
 
"Q" 
 
 205 
 
 limited to a hurried sort of a peep, I figured that if 
 I could contrive to keep a rather conspicuous imita- 
 tion sky of canvas running past the masts and 
 funnels in the same direction she was going, only 
 faster, it might create the illusion in the dis- 
 torted ' worm's eye ' vision of the man at the 
 periscope that she was going in the opposite 
 direction. I studied some make-shift rigs from 
 water-level through a periscope, and made up my 
 mind the scheme was worth trying." 
 
 K relighted his cigar and resumed with a 
 
 sad smile. 
 
 " I still think the idea was good," he said, " but 
 it took too complicated an installation to carry it 
 out, especially on a small craft with a low free- 
 board. There were gearings and transmissions and 
 rollers, and heavens knows what not, needed to 
 make the endless strip of canvas ' sky ' run 
 smoothly, and there were also many wires and 
 ropes. It was one or the other of the latter which 
 was responsible for the disaster, for while the thing 
 was still in the ' advanced experimental ' stage a 
 U-boat popped up close by one day probably a 
 bold attempt on its skipper's part to see if he 
 really saw what he thought he had seen and I 
 spun the ' - ' around on her tail (one of the nice 
 things about her is that she will turn in a smaller 
 circle than most destroyers) and tried, first choice, 
 to ram him, and, second choice, to drop a depth- 
 charge down the hole he had ducked into. I was too 
 
206 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 late to ram by a few seconds, and there must have 
 been a good fathom or two of clearance between my 
 keel and the conning-tower I had driven for. The 
 bridge and the two periscopes he had < turtle- 
 necked ' in showed clean and sharp in the clear 
 water as I leaned over the port side of the bridge 
 the easiest chance a man ever had for kicking off 
 a * can ' just where it ought to go. As I turned to 
 the depth-charge release I already had visions of 
 him falling apart like a cracked egg, with bobbing 
 bubbles and howling Huns coming up to the sur- 
 face together. It was only a couple of days before 
 that I had picked up several British fishermen 
 all that were left alive after a U-boat skipper had 
 vented his morning hate by shelling the boat in 
 which they were leaving their sinking trawler 
 and I was still mad enough to want to ram Heligo- 
 land if a chance had offered. I felt a kind of 
 savage joy in the chance to put that tin of T.N.T. 
 where it would wipe out a bit of the score I had 
 been checking up against the Hun, and I seemed 
 to see a sort of a Hand of Fate in the fist I was 
 reaching up to the handle of the release. It 
 couldn't miss, I told myself, and well, it didn't. 
 "The explosion ' jolted' at the proper interval 
 all right, but not in the proper place, nor in the 
 proper way. I was watching for the up-boil 
 squarely in the middle of the right-angling propel- 
 ler swirl of the submarine, but that was receding, 
 smooth and unbroken, when the crash came. The 
 
Q 
 
 207 
 
 fact is, I never did see the spout from that charge 
 for the very good reason that it was tossed up 
 
 almost under the ' 's ' counter, where it 
 
 knocked off the blades of both propellers and all 
 but blew in her stern. The depth-charge had 
 fouled a trailing wire from some of my < stage 
 scenery sky ' and been dragged along to detonate 
 close astern. I saw her taffrail shiver and kick up- 
 wards, and the shock was strong enough to upset 
 my balance even on the bridge. That last was the 
 first thing that made me sure something had 
 slipped up, for, ordinarily, the jolt from a properly 
 set ' can ' is no more than that from a sharp bump 
 against the side of a quay. I mean the jolt as felt 
 on the bridge, of course; below, and especially in 
 the engine-room or stokehold, it is a good deal more 
 severe. It was the shattering jar of this one that 
 told me it had gone wrong, and then, when she 
 began to lose way and refuse to answer her helm 
 the rudder had been knocked out, too, but not 
 enough so that it couldn't be tinkered up to serve 
 temporarily I knew it was something serious. 
 
 " It was a good deal of a relief to find that, badly 
 buckled as some of the plates were, she wasn't mak- 
 ing any more water aft than the pumps could easily 
 take care of. That was the first thing I looked 
 after, and the next was the U-boat; or rather, we 
 were looking out for both at the same time. If 
 there was one thing more than another that helped 
 to reconcile me to the double disappointment of 
 
208 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 missing my crack at the Him and knocking my own 
 ship out, it was the fact which soon became ap- 
 parent, that Fritz never knew about the latter. If 
 he Tiad known the shape I was in, he could have 
 finished me off a dozen times over during the hour 
 or more the ' - ' was lying helpless, and before 
 the first armed trawler showed up in answer to my 
 S.O.S. Just why he didn't, I could never make 
 quite sure, but the chances are it was one or both 
 of two things. It is quite possible that the biff 
 from the depth-charge which must still have been 
 almost as near to him as it was to me when it ex- 
 ploded may have done the submarine really 
 serious injury, perhaps even sinking it. We never 
 found any evidence, however, that this had been 
 the case. Whether he was damaged or not, there is 
 no doubt that his close call gave him a bad scare. 
 There could have been nothing in the explosion to 
 tell him that it did any harm to his enemy, and, 
 since he did not have his periscope up, there was 
 no way he could see what had happened. Doubt- 
 less expecting another ' can ' any moment, and 
 knowing well that it would be only a matter of an 
 hour or two until there would be a lot more craft 
 joining in the chase, it is probable that he followed 
 the tactics which you can always count on a U-boat 
 following when it knows a hunt is on that is, 
 to submerge deeply and lose no time in making it- 
 self just as scarce as possible in the neighbourhood 
 where the hue-and-cry has started. That's the only 
 
"Q" 
 
 209 
 
 
 way I can account for the fact that this particular 
 pirate didn't have a revenge after his own Hunnish 
 heart. We were about evenly matched for guns 
 probably, and doubtless I would have had rather 
 better than an even break on that score, because a 
 surface craft can stand more holing than a sub- 
 marine. But there was nothing to prevent his 
 taking a sneaking sight through his periscope from 
 a safe distance and then slipping a mouldie at us, 
 which, helpless as we were for a while, there would 
 have been no way of avoiding. A moving ship of 
 almost any class, provided it has a gun to make 
 him keep his distance, has a good fighting chance 
 of saving herself from being torpedoed by the 
 proper use of her helm; a disabled ship, though 
 she has all the guns in the world, has no show if 
 the Fritz really thinks she's worth wasting two or 
 three torpedoes on. If he has his nerve, and any 
 luck at all, he ought to finish the job with one. 
 
 " So I think you'll have to admit," said K 
 
 with a whimsical smile, " that, under the circum- 
 stances and considering what might have happened, 
 I felt that I had no legitimate kick coming in hav- 
 ing to take her home under sail. Fact is, I con- 
 sidered myself in luck to have a ship to take home 
 at all. The rudder, luckily, though a good deal 
 bent and twisted, had not been blown away. It 
 took a lot of nursing to turn it, and, when we fin- 
 ally got her off under mainsail, forestaysail and jib, 
 the eccentricities it developed took a lot of getting 
 
210 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 used to. Although it was quite fortuitous on oui 
 part, the course we steered during the thirty hours 
 we put in returning to base was the most complex 
 and baffling lot of zigzagging I ever had anything to 
 do with. If a U-boat skipper lying in wait for us 
 could have told what she was going to do next, I 
 can only say that he would have known a lot more 
 than I did. 
 
 " At the end of an hour or two a couple of trawl- 
 ers hove in sight and closed us to be of what help 
 they could in screening. They made a very brave 
 show of it until we got under weigh, and then they 
 were led just about the wooziest dance you ever 
 heard tell of. By a lucky chance, for me, not for 
 the trawlers, there was a spanking breeze on the 
 port quarter (for the mean course to base, I mean) ; 
 and it wasn't long before the little old girl, even 
 under the comparatively light spread of sail on 
 her, was slipping away at close to nine miles an 
 hour. That won't surprise you if you noticed the 
 lines of her. I've turned back in her log and found 
 where she's run for thirty-six hours at fourteen 
 miles, even with the drag of her screws, which al- 
 ways knock a knot or two off the sailing speed of 
 a yacht with auxiliary power. 
 
 " Well, that nine miles an hour was a good bit 
 better than those trawlers could do under forced 
 draught, and after falling astern for a while, they 
 started to catch up by shortening their courses by 
 cutting my zigzags. That was where the fun came 
 
" Q " 211 
 
 in. It would have been easy enough if I had been 
 zigzagging according to Hoyle. But where I didn't 
 know myself just what she was going to do next, 
 how was I going to signal it to them, will you tell 
 me? About every other time that they tried to 
 anticipate my course they guessed wrong, and were 
 worse off than before as a consequence. They 
 must have been a very thankful pair when one of 
 the two destroyers which finally came up took them 
 off to hunt the submarine. The other destroyer 
 stood by to escort me in. Her skipper offered me 
 a tow, but I was anxious to save face as much as 
 possible by returning on my own, and so declined. 
 In case of an attack it would have been better to 
 have him screening than towing anyhow. In the 
 end, when we got in to where the sea room was re- 
 stricted, I was glad to take a hawser from a tug 
 they sent to meet me to keep from putting her on 
 the mud. 
 
 " You may well believe that effectually put an 
 end to my experiments with * movable sky, 1 and 
 other similar mechanical complexities," K con- 
 tinued with a laugh. " Indeed, from that time on 
 I have been inclining more and more to simpler 
 things, rig outs that are sufficiently free from 
 wheels within wheels to leave the mind clear for 
 the real work in hand, which, after all, is putting 
 down the Hun, not merely deceiving him as to what 
 you are. You see how simple a setting our present 
 one is; yet it is very complete in its way, and I 
 
212 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 have reasonable hopes of success with it. No, I can 
 hardly tell you just what I am driving at with it, 
 or just how I am going to go about it. In a month 
 or two, when its possibilities have been exhausted 
 and it has become a wash-out perhaps I shall be a 
 bit freer to talk about it. 
 
 " Come and spend a day or two with me at the 
 end of about six weeks, when my present round of 
 stunting will probably be over, and I'll tell you 
 all the ' Q ' yarns that the law allows. The Hun 
 is dead wise to the game on principle, so there can't 
 be any point in keeping mum any longer on stunts 
 that he's twigged a year or so ago, and which you'd 
 have about as much chance of taking him in with 
 as you'd have in trying to sell a gold brick on 
 Broadway." 
 
 Three months went by before I was able to take 
 
 advantage of K 's invitation to pay him a visit 
 
 at what he had called his " business headquarters," 
 and as I had naturally expected that she would have 
 played many and diverse parts in the interim, it 
 was with some surprise that I found the "- 
 still " dressed " as she had been when I last saw 
 her. 
 
 "We've never quite been able to pull it off," 
 
 K explained, " and the waiting, and the not- 
 
 quites and the might-have-beens have given me no 
 end of a dose of that kind of hope deferred which 
 maketh the heart sick. But we've at least been 
 
"Q" 
 
 213 
 
 lucky enough not to queer the game by showing our 
 hand, so that there's still as good a chance as ever 
 to make good with it under favourable circum- 
 stances. For that reason, the less we say about it 
 for the present the better. That's in regard to 
 this particular stunt, I mean. As for the rest of the 
 * Q ' stuff that we've brought off, or tried to bring 
 off, during the last three years I'm at your service 
 to-night after dinner. The Germans have been 
 publishing accounts of some of the stunts, under 
 the title of ' British Atrocities,' for some months 
 now, but as there are slight variations from the 
 truth here and there, you may still be interested 
 in getting some of the details a bit nearer the ori- 
 ginal fount. 
 
 " They claimed, for instance, that when one of 
 their ' heroic ' U-boats ran alongside an armed 
 British patrol boat, which had surrendered to it, 
 to transfer a boarding-party, an officer of the 
 M.L. rushed on deck and threw down on the deck 
 of the submarine what the skipper of the latter took 
 to be a packet of secret books, and that this 
 'packet/ exploding, eventually resulted in the 
 sinking of the guileless German craft. Now, about 
 the only thing which is correct about that account 
 is the statement that a U-boat was sunk. It wasn't 
 an armed M.L. that surrendered to Herr Ober- 
 Lootenant armed M.L.'s don't do that sort of 
 thing, take my word for it but an unarmed, or 
 practically unarmed, pleasure yacht, which had 
 
214 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 apparently become disabled and blown to sea. 
 And the trusting U-boat did not corne alongside to 
 put aboard a prize crew to navigate its captive to 
 a German port as they'd try to make you believe, 
 but only to sink it with bombs placed in the hold, 
 eo as to save shells or a torpedo. And it wasn't a 
 packet of secret books that put the pirate down, 
 but a ' baby,' and my baby at that. No, I don't 
 mean that I threw a real child of mine to Moloch 
 I haven't any to throw but only that the idea of 
 this literal enfant terrible, with a percussion cap 
 on the top of his head and a can of T.N.T. for a 
 body, originated under my hat. 
 
 " It's not surprising that the Huns didn't get 
 the thing straight at first, though I believe one of 
 their later versions does have a child in the cast, 
 for none of the Germans present have yet returned 
 to tell just what happened. About half of them 
 never will see their beloved < Vodderland ' again, 
 and I don't mind telling you that I'm not wearing 
 any crepe on my sleeve on that account, either. 
 
 Do you know " K 's face flushed red and his 
 
 brow contracted in the anger the thought aroused 
 
 " that those pirates were going right ahead 
 
 to sink what they thought was nothing but a pleas- 
 ure yacht, with a number of women and children 
 in it, although it was plain as day to them that 
 the one boat carried would founder under a quarter 
 of our number? That's your Hun every time, and 
 it was just that insensate lust of his to murder 
 
"Q" 
 
 215 
 
 anything helpless that I reckoned on in baiting my 
 
 trap. I felt dead certain But I'll tell you the 
 
 whole yarn this evening." 
 
 Several bits of salvage from the 
 
 's '* pleas- 
 
 ure-yacht days figured in the little feast K 
 
 had spread that evening, and I remember parti- 
 cularly that the Angostura was from a bottle Com- 
 modore P had himself secured at the time 
 
 when that incomparable bitter was distilled in a 
 little ramshackle pile-built factory at Ciudad Boli- 
 var, on the upper Orinoco. And the coffee that 
 same genial bon vivant had had blended and sealed 
 in glass by an old Arab merchant at Aden, while 
 the Benedictine had cost him a climb on foot 
 through an infernally hot August afternoon to an 
 ancient monastery inland of Naples. It was be- 
 tween sips of Benedictine from a priceless little 
 Morning Glory-shaped curl of Phoenician glass, 
 picked up in Antioch one winter by the owner, and 
 overlooked in the "stripping" operations that 
 
 K told me the story of the first of what he 
 
 called his " Q-rious " operations. 
 
 " There was a story attached to just about every 
 
 little package of food and drink P left in the 
 
 yacht," said K , unrolling the gold foil from a 
 
 cigar whose band bore the name of a PiSar del Rio 
 factory which is famed as accepting no order save 
 from its small but highly select list of private cus- 
 tomers in various parts of the world ; " and in the 
 several letters he has written begging me to make 
 
216 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 free with them he has told me most of the yarns. 
 The consequence was that, while the good things 
 lasted they're most of them finished now I was 
 getting in the way of enjoying eating and drinking 
 them, telling w r here they came from and how T they 
 were come by, just about as much as good old P 
 himself must have done. In fact, I think that their 
 possible loss w r as about my worst worry when I 
 tried my first ' Q ' stunt on. 
 
 " The success of any kind of stunt for harrying 
 the U-boat is very largely a matter of psychology, 
 and this is especially so in the ' Q ' department. 
 The main point of it is to make the enemy think 
 you are more harmless than you really are. There 
 is nothing new in the idea, for it is precisely the 
 same stunt the old pirate of the Caribbean was on 
 when he concealed his gun-ports with strips of can- 
 vas and approached his victims as a peaceful mer- 
 chantman. As a matter of fact, I think it was the 
 Hun himself who started the game in this war, for 
 I'm almost dead sure that we had tried nothing 
 of the kind on in a systematic way, at any rate- 
 up to the time one of his U-boats rigged up a mast 
 and sails and lured on victims by posing as a 
 fisherman in distress. 
 
 " Obviously, it's a game you can't use any kind 
 of craft that is plainly a warship in, and the burn- 
 ing question always is as to how far you will 
 sacrifice punishing power to harmlessness of ap- 
 pearance. A light gun or two is about as far as you 
 
Q 
 
 217 
 
 
 can go in the way of shooting-irons, and even these 
 are very difficult to conceal on a small boat. Like- 
 wise a torpedo tube. I tried that first stunt of 
 mine without either, and that's where the psychol- 
 ogy came in. 
 
 " Most of the ' Q-boats ' they were figuring on at 
 that time were of the slower freighter type, with 
 a rather powerful gun mounted for'ard and con- 
 cealed as well as possible by something rigged up 
 to look like deck cargo. 
 
 " That was, however, all well and good as far 
 as it went, I figured, but, from such study of the 
 Hun's little ways as I had been able to make, I had 
 my doubts as to whether an old cargo boat would 
 prove tempting enough bait to put a Fritz in the 
 proper mental state for a real ' rise ' one in which 
 he'd deliver himself up to you bound and gagged, so 
 to speak. That was the kind of a thing I wanted 
 to make a bid for, and, by cracky, I pulled it off. 
 
 " From all I could pick up, from the inside and 
 outside, about the ships that had already been tor- 
 pedoed, I came to the conclusion that the Hun 
 would go to a lot more trouble, and take a deal 
 bigger chance, to put down a vessel with a number 
 of passengers than he would with a freighter. And 
 even that early in the War a U-boat had exposed 
 itself to being rammed by a destroyer, when it 
 could have avoided the attack entirely by foregoing 
 the pleasure of a Parthian shot at a lifeboat which 
 was already half-swamped in the heavy seas. That 
 
218 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 was the little trait of the Hun's that I reckoned on 
 playing up to when I began to figure on taking the 
 
 < ' out U-boat strafing without any gun larger 
 
 than a Maxim aboard her. I'd have been glad 
 enough of a good four-incher, understand, if there 
 had been any way in the world it could have been 
 concealed. But there wasn't, and rather than miss 
 getting into the game at all, I was quite content to 
 tackle it with such weapons as were available. 
 That was where my ' che-ild ' came in. 
 
 " On the score of weapons available, there were 
 only two the lance-bomb and the depth-charge. 
 For the kind of game I had in mind, it was to the 
 former that I pinned my faith. It was powerful 
 enough to do all the damage needful to the shell 
 of a submarine if only a chance to get home with 
 it could be contrived. * Getting it home' has al- 
 ways been the great difficulty with the lance-bomb, 
 and up to that time the only chap to have any luck 
 with it was the skipper of a M.L. another Yank, 
 by the way, who came over and got into the game 
 in the same way, and about the same time, that I 
 did. He had been the champion sixteen-pound 
 hammer-thrower in some Middle Western college 
 only a year or two before, and, by taking a double 
 turn on his heeling deck, managed to chuck the 
 bomb (which is on the end of a wooden handle, 
 much like the old throwing hammer) about three 
 times as far as anyone ever dreamed of, and cracked 
 in the nose of a lurking U-boat with it. 
 
219 
 
 " Unluckily, I was not a hammer-thrower, and 
 so had to try to bring about an easier shot. It was 
 with this purpose in view that I submitted a pro- 
 posal to reconvert the ' ' temporarily to the 
 
 outward seeming of a pleasure yacht; to make her 
 appear so tempting a bait that the Hun's lust for 
 schrecklichkeit, or whatever they call it, would lure 
 him close enough to give me a chance at him. 
 They were rather inclined to scoff at the plan at 
 first, principally on the ground that the enemy, 
 knowing that there was no pleasure yachting going 
 on in the North Sea, would instantly be suspicious 
 of a craft of that character. I pointed out that 
 there was still a bit of yachting going on in the 
 Norfolk Broads, which the Hun, with his compre- 
 hensive knowledge of the East Coast, might well 
 know of, and that there would be nothing strange 
 in a craft from there being blown to sea in a spell 
 
 of nor'west weather. Of course, the * ' isn't 
 
 a Broads type by a long way, but I didn't expect 
 the Hun to linger over fine distinctions any more 
 than the trout coming up for a fly does. The sequel 
 fully proved that I was right. 
 
 " It was largely because the stunt I had in mind 
 promised to cost little more than a new coat of 
 paint and a few rehearsals, which could easily be 
 carried on in the course of our ordinary patrol 
 duties, that I finally received somewhat grudging 
 authorisation to go ahead with it. It was not till 
 the whole show was over that I learned from the 
 
220 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 laughing admission of the officer who helped secure 
 that authorization, that the fact that the output 
 of real M.L.'s was becoming large enough so 
 that they were about independent of the use of 
 yachts and other pleasure craft for patrol work, 
 also had a good deal to do with the granting 
 of it. 
 
 " I already had several well-trained machine- 
 gunners in the crew, so that about the only addi- 
 tion I had to make to the ship's company was a 
 half-dozen boys to masquerade as ladies. As they 
 were not meant to stand inspection at close range, 
 nothing elaborate in the way of costume or make- 
 up was necessary. They wore middy jackets, with 
 short duck skirts, which gave them plenty of liberty 
 of action. Most of them (as there was nothing 
 much below the waist going to show anyway) sim- 
 ply rolled up their sailor breeches and went bare- 
 legged, and one who went in for white stockings and 
 tennis shoes was considered rather a swanker. 
 Their millinery was somewhat variegated, the only 
 thing in common to the motley units of head-gear 
 being conspicuousness. There was a much berib- 
 boned broad-brimmed straw, a droopy Panama, a 
 green and a purple motor veil, and a very chic 
 yachting effect in a converted cap of a lieutenant 
 of Marines with a red band round it. Less in keep- 
 ing, if more striking, was a Gainsborough, with 
 magenta ostrich plumes, a remnant from some 
 ' ship ' theatricals. 
 
221 
 
 
 " Hair wasn't a very important item, but they 
 all seemed to take so much pleasure in ' coiffeur- 
 ing ' that I took good care not to discourage their 
 efforts in that direction. The spirit that you enter 
 that kind of a game in makes all the difference in 
 the world in its success, and these lads and, in- 
 deed, the whole lot of us were like children play- 
 ing house. All of them were blondes even a boy 
 born in Durban, who had more than a touch of the 
 ' tar brush,' and one a roly-poly young Scot, who 
 had made himself a pair of tawny braids from rope 
 ravellings looked like a cross between i Brunn- 
 hilde ' and ' The Viking's Daughter.' 
 
 " It was only during rehearsals, of course, that 
 these lads were < ladies of leisure.' The rest of the 
 time I kept them on brass polishing and deck-scrub- 
 bing, with the result that the little old < ' 
 
 regained, outwardly at least, much of her pristine 
 ship-shapiness. The ' gentlemen friends ' of the 
 ' ladies ' w r ere even more of a < make-ship ' product 
 than the latter. 
 
 " Indeed, they were really costumes rather than 
 individuals. I don't mean that we used dummies, 
 but only that there were eight or ten flannel jackets 
 and boater hats laid ready, and these were to be 
 worn more or less indiscriminately by any of the 
 regular crew not on watch. Their role was simply 
 to loll on the quarterdeck with the ' ladies ' while 
 the U-boat was sizing us up, then to join for a few 
 minutes in the ' panic' following the hoped-for 
 
SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 attack, and finally to beat it to their action sta- 
 tions. 
 
 " That a ' baby ' was by far the most effective 
 disguise for the first lance-bomb we hoped to chuck 
 home was obvious at the outset. Both of them 
 had heads, their general shapes (when dressed) 
 were not dissimilar, while the ' long clothes ' of 
 the infant was found to have a real steadying effect 
 on the missile, on the same principle that ' stream- 
 ers ' act to bring an air-bomb down nose-first. Of 
 course, a child in arms, like this one was to be, 
 wasn't just the kind of thing one would take pleas- 
 ure yachting; but I knew the Huns took their nurs- 
 lings to beer gardens, and thought that that might 
 make them think that the Englanders who were 
 incomprehensible folk anyhow might take this 
 strange way of accustoming their young to the 
 waves which they sang so loudly of ruling. 
 
 "The decisive consideration, however, was the 
 fact a baby was the only thing except a jewel-case 
 that a panicky woman in fear of being torpedoed 
 would stick to. As you can't get a lance-bomb 
 in a jewel-case, it was plainly ' baby ' or noth- 
 ing. 
 
 " In the end, because I was afraid that none of 
 the feminine make-ups was quite good enough not 
 to awaken suspicion at close range I decided that 
 the heaving over of the ' baby ' should be done by 
 a * gentleman ' instead of by a * lady.' As one of 
 the seamen put it, it was only < nateral that the 
 
Q " 223 
 
 nipper's daddy 'ud be lookin' arter 'im in time of 
 danger/ and I had read of sailors being entrusted 
 with children on sinking ships. The man I picked 
 for the job the ' father of the che-ild,' as he soon 
 came to be called was not the one who had proved 
 the best in distance throwing in the trials, but 
 rather one on whose cold-blooded nerve I knew I 
 could count in any extremity. 
 
 " He was a Seaman Gunner, named R , and 
 
 was lost a year ago when a rather desperate ' Q ' 
 stunt he had volunteered for miscarried. He had 
 just the touch of the histrionic desirable for the in- 
 timate little affair in question, and the way he 
 played his part fully justified my selecting him.'' 
 
 K leaned back in his chair and blew smoke 
 
 rings for a minute before resuming his story. 
 " There are some kind of stunts, like this one I've 
 been trying to bring off for the last two or three 
 months," he said, " that always seem to hang fire; 
 and there are others where, from first to last, every- 
 thing comes up to the scratch on time, just like a 
 film drama. That first one I'm telling you about 
 was like that, everybody even to the U-boat 
 coming on to its cue. Indeed, when I think of it 
 now, the whole show seems more like a big movie 
 than anything else. 
 
 " By the time we were letter perfect in our parts, 
 there came two or three days of just the kind of a 
 storm I wanted to make a good excuse for a dinky 
 little pleasure boat being out in the middle of the 
 North Sea. I took care, of course, to be * blown ' 
 
224 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 to the last position at which an enemy submarine 
 had been reported. 
 
 " Then, where a destroyer or a M.L. might have 
 cruised round for a month without sighting any- 
 thing but fog and the smoke of some of our own 
 ships on the horizon, we picked up a Fritz running 
 brazenly on the surface the first morning. That 
 was first blood for my harmless appearance right 
 there, for he must have seen us some time previously 
 of course, and had we looked in the least warlike, 
 would have submerged before even our lookout 
 spotted his conning-tower. 
 
 "As it was, he simply began closing us at full 
 speed, firing as he came. It was rotten shooting at 
 first, as shooting from the very poor platform a sub- 
 marine affords usually is, but, at about three thou- 
 sand yards, he put a shell through the fo'c'sl', 
 luckily above the water-line. The next minute or 
 two was the most anxious time I had, for, if he 
 made up his mind to do it that way, there was 
 nothing to prevent his sticking off there and putting 
 us down with shell-fire. 
 
 " Perhaps if the two or three shots which fol- 
 lowed had been hits, that is what he would have 
 done. It was probably his disgust at the fact that 
 they were all ( overs ' that determined him to close 
 in and finish the job with bombs. Possibly, also, 
 the fact that I appeared to be starting to abandon 
 ship at this juncture convinced him finally that the 
 yacht had no fight in her, and it may well be that 
 

 " Q " 225 
 
 the temptation to loot liad something to do with 
 his decision. I could never make quite sure on 
 those points, for Herr Skipper never confided what 
 was in his mind to the one officer who survived him. 
 At any rate, he came nosing nonchalantly in and 
 did just what I had been praying for the last month 
 he would do poked right up alongside. The heavy 
 sea that had been running for the last two or three 
 days had gone down during the night, so that he 
 was able to stand in pretty close without running 
 much danger of bumping. 
 
 " The extent of my abandoning ship had been to 
 follow the old sea rule of saving the women and 
 children first. Or rather, we put the women off in 
 our only boat; the baby, I won't need to tell you, 
 was somehow ' overlooked.' The boat was lowered 
 in full view of the Hun, who was about fifteen 
 hundred yards distant at the moment, and there 
 was a little unrehearsed incident in connection 
 with it that must have done its part in convincing 
 him that what he was witnessing was a genuine 
 piece of ' abandon/ One of the girls it was the 
 blonde ' Brunnhilde/ I believe not wanting to miss 
 any of the fun, started to hang back and tried to 
 bluff them into letting her stay by swearing that 
 she'd rather face the Hun than desert her child. 
 As a matter of fact, the ' Gainsborough ' had more 
 claim on the kid than ' Brunnhilde/ for she I 
 mean he had cadged its clothes from a sweetheart 
 who worked in a draper's shop. If I had been there 
 
226 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 personally, I'm afraid ' Brunnhilde's ' little bluff 
 would have won through, for a man whose wits are 
 keen enough to spring a joke at a crisis has always 
 made an especial appeal to me. To the bo'sun, 
 however, orders were orders, and his answer to 
 the recalcitrant blonde's insubordination was to 
 rush her to the rail by the slack of her middy 
 jacket, and to help her over it with the toe of his 
 boot. 
 
 " The < K 's ' low freeboard made the drop a 
 
 short one, and, luckily, ' Brunnhilde ' missed the 
 gun'nel ' of the whaler and landed gently in the 
 water, from where she was dragged by the ready 
 hands of her sisters a few moments later. They do 
 say, though, that she turned a complete flip-flop in 
 the air, and that there was a display of well, if a 
 Goerz prism binocular won't reveal the difference 
 between a pair of blue sailor's breeches and French 
 lingerie at under a mile, all I can say is that we've 
 much overrated German optical glass. As I learned 
 later, however, the Huns, observing only the fall 
 and missing the revealing details, merely con- 
 cluded that the Englanders were jumping over- 
 board in panic, and dismissed their last lingering 
 doubts and suspicions. 
 
 "The girls were already instructed that they 
 were to lie low and keep their peroxide curls out of 
 sight as long as they were within a mile or so of 
 the submarine, so as not to tempt the latter to fol- 
 low them up for a look-see at closer range. The 
 
"Q" 
 
 227 
 
 boat had orders to pull astern for a while, and then, 
 if the Hun was observed to come alongside the 
 
 ' ' as hoped, to turn eight or ten points to port 
 
 and head up in the direction from which he had 
 appeared. The reason for this manoeuvre, which 
 was carried out precisely as planned, you will 
 understand in a moment. 
 
 " On came Fritz, coolly contemptuous, and on 
 went the show, like the unrolling of a movie scen- 
 ario. For a while I was fearful that he might order 
 back my boat to use in boarding me with, but as 
 soon as he was close enough to be sure that I had 
 no gun he must have decided so much trouble was 
 superfluous. He had only one gun, it was evident 
 the gunners kept sweeping it back and forth to 
 cover from about the bridge to the engine-rooom as 
 they drew nearer and presently I saw men, armed 
 with short rifles, coming up through both fore and 
 after hatches. Far from exhibiting any signs of 
 belligerency, I still kept three or four of my * flan- 
 nelled fools ' mildly panicking. Or, rather, I 
 ordered them to panic mildly. As a matter of fact, 
 they did it rather violently a good deal more like 
 movie rough stuff than the real thing. 
 
 " Little difference it made to Fritz, though, who 
 seemed to take it quite as a matter of course that 
 the British yachtsman should show his terror like 
 a Wild West film drama heroine. On he stood, and 
 when he came within hailing distance, a burly 
 ruffian on the bridge doubtless the skipper 
 
228 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 shouted something in guttural German-EnglisH 
 which I never quite made out, but which was prob- 
 ably some kind of warning or other. I don't think 
 I saw any of my crew exactly ' Kamerading', but 
 I needn't tell you that every man in sight was doing 
 his best to register ' troubled passivity ', or some- 
 thing like that. I had anticipated that I might not 
 
 be in a position to signal his cue to R , and so 
 
 had arranged that he should keep watch from a 
 cabin port, and to use his own judgment about the 
 time of his ' entrance.' I was afraid to have him on 
 deck all the time for fear the < che-ild ' might be sub- 
 jected to too careful a scrutiny. R w r as just in 
 
 flannels, understand, so there was nothing sus- 
 picious in his own appearance. He did both his 
 play-acting and his real acting to perfection, neither 
 overdoing nor underdoing one or the other. 
 
 " The U-boat was close alongside, rapidly easing 
 down under reversed propellers, before R - ap- 
 peared, just as natural an anguished father with a 
 child as you could possibly ask for. Two or three 
 of the Huns covered him with their carbines as he 
 dashed out of the port door of the saloon that 
 one just behind you but lowered the muzzles 
 again when they saw it was apparently only a half- 
 distracted parent trying to signal for the boat to 
 come back for him and his babe. I have no doubt 
 that there were some very sarcastic remarks passed 
 on that U-boat at this juncture about the courage of 
 the English male. // there were, the next act of 
 
"Q" 
 
 229 
 
 the coolest and bravest boy I ever knew literally 
 forced the words down their throats. 
 
 " The whaler which, following its instructions, 
 had been pulling easterly for some minutes, now 
 bore about four points on the port quarter, so that 
 R , in his apparent endeavour to call its atten- 
 tion to the deserted babe, could not have seemed to 
 have been doing anything suspicious when he swung 
 the bundle above his head and rushed to the rail 
 almost opposite the U-boat's conning-tower. That 
 rotary upward and backward swing was absolutely 
 necessary for getting distance with, and without it 
 there was no way that forty or fifty pound infant 
 could have been hurled the fifteen feet or more 
 which still intervened. As it was, it landed, fair 
 and square, in the angle formed by the after end 
 of the conning-tower and the deck. At the same 
 instant our machine-guns opened up through sev- 
 eral of the port scuttles, which had been specially 
 enlarged and masked with that end in view, and in 
 a few seconds there was not an un wounded Hun 
 in sight. The gunners had been the first ones 
 sprayed, with the result that they were copped 
 before firing a shot. Their torpedoes, or course, 
 were too close, and not bearing properly enough 
 to launch. 
 
 " Immediately following the explosion of the 
 bomb and the opening of the machine-gun fire a 
 strange thing happened. I saw the U-boat's bow- 
 rudders begin to slant, saw her begin to gather way, 
 
230 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 heard the hum of motors as the rattle of the Max- 
 ims (their work completed) died out, and down 
 she went, and with three hatches open, and a ragged 
 hole abaft the conning-tower where the ' baby ' had 
 exploded in its final tantrum. I could never get 
 any sure explanation of this from any of the sur- 
 vivors we fished up out of the water, but everything 
 points to the probability that the skipper perhaps 
 inadvertently, as the up-kick of the bomb blew him 
 overboard pulled the diving klaxon, and the offi- 
 cer in the central control room, not knowing just 
 how things stood above, proceeded to submerge as 
 usual. Doubtless the men who should have been 
 standing by to close the hatches in such an emer- 
 gency had been caught by the machine-gun fire. 
 With every man below tied down with his duties in 
 connection with submerging her, it is quite conceiv- 
 able that nothing could be done, once she was below 
 the surface, to stop the inrush of water, and that 
 she was quickly beyond all hope of bringing up 
 again. I didn't have a fair chance to size up the 
 hole ripped open by the bomb, but rather think that 
 also was large enough to have admitted a good deal 
 of water. 
 
 " It was rather disappointing in a way, having 
 her go down like that, for as things had turned out, 
 it was a hundred to one we should otherwise have 
 captured her almost unharmed. There was a good 
 deal of solace, however, in the fact that none of the 
 Huns were getting back to tell what happened to 
 
Q 231 
 
 them, so that this identical stunt was left open for 
 use again. As a matter of fact, variations of it 
 were used a number of times, by one kind of craft 
 or another, before an unlucky slip-up the one 
 
 which finished poor R , by the way gave the 
 
 game away and started us veering off on other 
 tacks. I have had a number of successes since that 
 
 time," concluded K , pouring me a glass of the 
 
 yacht's 1835 Cognac as a night cap, " but never a 
 one which was quite so much like taking candy from 
 a child as that * opener/ " 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE WHACK AND THE SMACK 
 
 THERE was always a strange and distinctive 
 fascination to me in standing on the bridge 
 of one ship and watching other ships and 
 especially lines of ships push up and sharpen to 
 shape above the edge of the sea. 
 
 This feeling, strong enough in ordinary times 
 when it was but a peaceful merchantman one 
 watched from and but peaceful merchantmen that 
 one saw is intensified manifold when it is a war- 
 ship's bridge one paces, and only the silhouettes of 
 ships of war that notch the far horizon. Battleship, 
 battle cruiser, light cruiser, destroyer, sloop, traw- 
 ler, and all the other kinds and classes of patrol 
 craft each has its own distinctive smudge of 
 smoke, its own peculiar way of revealing its identity 
 by a blurred foretop, funnel, or superstructure long 
 before its hull has lifted its amorphous mass above 
 the sky-line. 
 
 And now to the sky-line riddles one was given to 
 read, and to be thrilled by as the puzzle revealed 
 itself, had been added the great troop convoy from 
 America, ray first sight of one of which was just un- 
 folding. H.M.S. Buzz, in which I chanced to be 
 
 232 
 
THE WHACK AND THE SMACK 233 
 
 nit at the time, was riot one of the escorting 
 destroyers, and it \vas only by accident that the 
 course she was steering to join up with a couple of 
 other ships of her flotilla on some kind of " hunt- 
 ing " stunt took her across that of the convoy, and 
 passed it in inspiring panoramic review before our 
 eyes. From dusky blurs of smoke trailing low along 
 the horizon, ship after ship from ex-floating 
 palaces with famous names to angular craft of 
 strange design which were evidently the latest 
 word in standardised construction they rose out 
 of the sea (as our quartering course brought us 
 nearer) until a wide angle of our seaward view was 
 blocked by an almost solid wall of steadily steam- 
 ing steel. 
 
 There was a lot to stir the imagination in that 
 sight aye, fairly to grip you by the throat as a 
 dawning sense of what it portended sank home. In 
 the abstract it was the living, breathing symbol of 
 the relentless progress of America's mighty effort, 
 a tangible sign of the fact that her aid to the Allies 
 w r ould not arrive too late. What it stood for con- 
 cretely is best expressed in the words of the young 
 R.N.R. sub-lieutenant who was officer of the watch 
 at the time. 
 
 " It looks to me," he said, with a pleased smile, 
 as he lowered his glass after a long scrutiny of the 
 advancing lines of ships, "as though there' d be 
 jolly near forty thousand new Yanks to be catered 
 for in Liverpool by to-morrow evening." 
 
234 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 " Yes," I said somewhat dubiously, my mind sud- 
 denly assailed by a misgiving awakened by the 
 thousands of yards of torpedo target presented by 
 the sides of those placidly ploughing ships, " that 
 is, assuming that they get there safely. But they're 
 only just entering the danger zone now, and there's 
 a lot of water got to stream under their keels before 
 they berth in the Mersey. 
 
 " I don't know anything about convoys, or the 
 ways of protecting them ; but all the same, it looks 
 to me as though that bunch of troopers would offer 
 a mark like the map of Ireland to a U-boat, and a 
 lot more vulnerable one." 
 
 Young P - laughed as he bent, squint-eyed, to 
 take a bearing on a destroyer zigzagging jauntily 
 with high-flung wake in the van of the approaching 
 fleet. 
 
 " That's what everyone even an old sailor 
 says the first time he sights one of the big trans- 
 atlantic convoys," he said ; " and if there are any 
 skippers new to the job in that lot there, that's just 
 what they're saying. It's all through failure to 
 appreciate indeed, no one who has not seen the ins 
 and outs of it would be in a position to appreciate 
 the effectiveness of the whole anti-submarine 
 scheme, and, especially, what almost complete pro- 
 tection thoroughly up-to-the-minute screening 
 with adequate destroyers and other light craft 
 really affords. As a matter of fact, every soldier in 
 that convoy is probably a good deal safer now 
 
THE WHACK AND THE SMACK 235 
 
 and right on in through this so-called danger zone 
 to harbour than he was marching down Broad- 
 way to the pier at least, if Broadway is like it 
 was when I used to put in to New York as a kid 
 in the Baltic." 
 
 " But will you tell me/' I protested, " how a 
 U-boat, firing two or three torpedoes from, say, just 
 about where we are now, could possibly miss a mark 
 like that? " 
 
 " Well, it would take a bit of missing from here- 
 abouts, I admit," was the reply; "only, if there is 
 any Fritz still in the game with the nerve to try it, 
 he would also be missing himself." 
 
 " What would happen to him? " I asked. 
 
 " One or all of two or three things might hap- 
 pen, P answered, after ordering a point or 
 
 two alteration in course to give safe berth to the 
 nearing destroyer. 
 
 " He might get his hide holed by gunfire, he 
 might get split open by a depth-charge, he might 
 get rammed, and he might get several other things. 
 With all the luck in his favour, he might even get 
 a transport. But there's one thing I can assure 
 you he wouldn't get and that's back to his base. 
 There may be two or three bearings from which 
 one of these big convoys appears to present a 
 mark as wide and unbroken as the map of Ireland; 
 but there's nothing in heaven or earth to save the 
 Fritz who hasn't learned by the sad example of no 
 
236 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 small number of his mates that it is quick suicide 
 for him to slip a mouldie down one of them." 
 
 "You mean that he doesn't try it? that he's 
 afraid to take the chance? " I asked somewhat in- 
 credulously, for I had somehow come to regard 
 Fritz, though a pirate, as a dashing and daring one 
 when the stake was high enough. 
 
 " Except under very favourable circumstances, 
 yes," was the reply ; " and now that, with the com- 
 ing of the American destroyers and patrol boats, 
 we are able to do the thing the way we want to, 
 what Fritz might reckon as 'very favourable cir- 
 cumstances ' are becoming increasingly fewer and 
 farther between. Now a few months ago, when 
 we were just getting the convoy system under weigh, 
 and when there was a shortage of every kind of 
 screening craft, things were different. Fritz's 
 moral was better then than it is now, and we didn't 
 have the means of shaking it that we have piled up 
 since. At our first convoys, straggling and little 
 schooled in looking after themselves, he used to 
 take a chance as often as not, if he happened to sight 
 them ; but even then he rarely got back to tell what 
 happened to him. There was the one that tried to 
 celebrate the advent of t Peace-on-Earth-Good-Will- 
 to-Men ' last Christmas Day by sinking the Amperi, 
 which was one of a convoy the Whack (in which I 
 was Number Two at the time) was helping to 
 escort. Well, I couldn't say much for his ' Good- 
 Will-toward-Men,' but he certainly found a short 
 
THE WHACK AND THE SMACK 237 
 
 I 
 
 cut to ' Peace-on-Earth,' r at least the bottom of 
 the sea. 
 
 " Now that chap took a real sporting chance, and 
 got his reward for it both ways. I mean to say, 
 that he sunk the ship he went after all right which 
 was his reward one way ; and that we then sunk him 
 which was his reward the other way. There was 
 a funny coincidence in connection with that little 
 episode which might amuse you. We were " 
 
 He paused for a moment while he spelled out for 
 himself the " Visual " which one of the escorting 
 destroyers was flashing to the convoy leader, but 
 presently, with a smile of pleased reminiscence, 
 took up the thread of his yarn. This is the story 
 
 that young Sub-Lieutenant P , R.N.R., told me 
 
 the while we leaned on the lee rail of the bridge 
 and watched the passing of those miles-long lines 
 of packed troopers as, silently sure of purpose, su- 
 perbly contemptuous of danger, they steamed stead- 
 ily on to deliver their cargoes of human freight one 
 step further towards the fulfilment of its destiny. 
 
 " It was Christmas Day, as I told you," he said, 
 bracing comfortable against the roll, " and a cold, 
 blustering, windy day it was. Several days pre- 
 viously we had picked up a small slow convoy off a 
 West African port, and were escorting it to a port 
 on the West Coast of England. The escort con- 
 sisted only of the Whack and the Smack, the skip- 
 per of the latter, as the senior officer, being in com- 
 jmand. None of the ships they were mostly slow 
 
238 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 freighters had had much convoy experience to 
 speak of at the time, and we were having our hands 
 full all the way keeping them in any kind of forma- 
 tion. They seemed to be getting worse rather than 
 better in this respect as we got into the waters 
 where U-boat attacks might be expected, but this 
 may have been largely due to the weather, which 
 was well, about the usual mid-winter brand in 
 those latitudes. In fact, we were just becoming 
 hopeful that the rising wind and sea, both were 
 about * Force 6,' might make it impossible for sub- 
 marines to operate during the day or so that still 
 must elapse before reaching port, when trouble 
 began. 
 
 "All the morning the Plato, which had been a 
 bad straggler throughout, had been falling astern, 
 and finally the Smack ordered "Whack back to prod 
 her on and do what could be done in the way of 
 screening her. She still continued to lose distance, 
 however, so that, at noon, we were nearly out of 
 sight of the main convoy, of which little more than 
 smoke and topmasts could be seen on the northern 
 horizon. 
 
 "At that hour the Smack, doubtless because 
 he had received some report of the presence of 
 U-boats in his vicinity, ordered us to rejoin the 
 convoy. We left an armed trawler to do what it 
 could for the loitering Plato, and started off at the 
 best rate the weather would allow to make up the 
 distance lost. It was at this juncture that the 
 
WHACK AND THE SMACK 239 
 
 amusing little coincidence I mentioned a while ago 
 occurred. 
 
 " A patrol-boat, of course, does not carry a padre, 
 any more than it does a number of the other com- 
 forts and luxuries provided in cruisers and battle- 
 ships, and for that reason we hadn't been able to 
 do very much in the way of a Christmas service. 
 Several of the ship's company were somewhat reli- 
 giously inclined, however, and these, in lieu of 
 anything better, had asked for and received per- 
 mission to hold a bit of a song service, in case there 
 was opportunity for it, during the day. As the 
 morning had been a rather full one, no suitable in- 
 terval offered until their rather poor apology 
 for a Christmas dinner was out of the way, and 
 we were headed back to join the convoy. Then they 
 went to it with a will, and for the next hour or 
 more fragments of Yuletide songs came drifting 
 back to my cabin to mingle with a number of other 
 things conspiring to disturb the forty winks I 
 was trying to snatch while the going was good. 
 After a while, it appears, having run through their 
 repertoire of Christmas songs, they started in on 
 Easter ones, ' Bein ' that they was mo' or less on 
 the same subject,' as one of them explained to me 
 later. They had just boomed the last line of a 
 chorus which concluded with l We shall seek our 
 risen Lord/ when a signal was received stating that 
 a periscope had been sighted by some ship of the 
 convoy, and, sure enough, off they had to go to 
 
240 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 seek well, I wouldn't take the Hun quite so near 
 his own valuation of himself to put it as the song 
 does, but all the same that quick new kick of the 
 screws told me as plain as any words, even before 
 I read the signal, that the old 'Whack w T as jumping 
 away to seek something that had risen. 
 
 " The convoy was dead ahead of us at a distance 
 of about seven miles when I reached the bridge, 
 and, the visibility being unusually good for that 
 time of year, I could see all of the ships distinctly, 
 as they steamed in two columns of three abreast. 
 I was even able to recognise the Amperi in the cen- 
 tre of the leading line. We were just comforting 
 each other with the assurance that it was getting 
 too rough for a U-boat to run a torpedo with any 
 chance of finding its mark, when a huge spout of 
 water jumped skyward right in the middle of the 
 convoy. When it subsided, the Amperi, with a 
 heavy list to port, could be seen heading westward, 
 evidently with her engines and steering gear dis- 
 abled, while the rest of the convoy, smoke rolling 
 from their funnels, were ' starring ' on northerly 
 courses. 
 
 " The alarm was rung, and as the men rushed to 
 action stations a signal was made to the Smack 
 asking what was wrong. She replied, f Amperi 
 torpedoed; join me with all dispatch.' This, of 
 course, we had already started to do, though the 
 wind and sea were knocking a good many knots off 
 our best speed. It was evident enough that the 
 
THE WHACK AND THE SMACK 241 
 
 Amperl had received a death-blow, so that we were 
 not surprised to find them abandoning ship as we 
 began to close her. 
 
 " Rotten as the weather was for it, this was 
 being conducted most coolly and skilfully, and three 
 boats had already left her before we came driving 
 down to her assistance. Smack had signalled us 
 to pick up survivors, and we had stood in, at re- 
 duced speed, to 250 yards of the now heavily heel- 
 ing ship, with the intention of proceeding on down, 
 to the leeward of her to the aid of two of her boats, 
 when we sighted three or four feet of periscope 
 sticking out of the water, one point on the star- 
 board bow and at a distance of about a couple of 
 hundred yards. To see anything at all in rough 
 water like that, you understand, a periscope has to 
 be poked well above the slap of the waves, and 
 that about equalizes the greater difficulty there is 
 in picking up the ( feather ' when it's choppy. 
 
 " I was at my action station with the 12-pounder 
 batteries at this juncture, but as it looked like a 
 better chance for the depth-charges than the guns, 
 no order to open fire was given just yet. The cap- 
 tain ordered the helm to be steadied, and rang up 
 ' Full speed ahead ' to the engine-room. We passed 
 the periscope ten yards on the port side, and when 
 the stern was just coming abreast it, two charges 
 were released together. As they were both set for 
 the same depth it is probable that the one stagger- 
 ingly powerful explosion we felt was caused by 
 
5 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 their detonating simultaneously. The shock was a 
 solid as though we had struck a rock, and I could 
 feel a distinct lift to the ship before the impact of 
 it. There was something so substantially satisfying 
 about that muffled jar that it seemed only in the 
 natural course of things that it effected what it w r as 
 intended to. The bow of the U-boat broke surface 
 almost immediately, the fact that it showed before 
 the conning-tower proving at once that she was 
 hard hit and heavily down by the stern. Indeed, the 
 deck of her from the conning-tower aft was fated 
 never again to feel the rush of sea air. 
 
 " She was now less than a hundred yards right 
 astern of us, and heading, in a wobbly sort of way, 
 like a half-stunned porpoise floundering away from 
 the * boil ' of a depth-charge, on just about the 
 course the Whack had been on when she kicked 
 loose her ' cans.' 
 
 " The skipper put the helm hard-a-starboard, 
 with the idea of turning to ram, at the same time 
 ordering me to open fire with the port twelv 
 pounder. That was what I had been waiting for. 
 The gun-crew was down to three through the 
 others having been detailed for boat work in con- 
 nection with picking up the survivors from the 
 Amperi but that didn't bother a good deal in a 
 short and sweet practice like this one. The ship 
 was bobbing like a cork from the seas, in addition to 
 her heavy heel from the short turn and the vibra- 
 tion from the grind of the helm. But neither did 
 
 
THE WHACK AND THE SMACK 243 
 
 any of these little things matter materially, for 
 we'd always made a point of carrying out our tar- 
 get practice under the worst conditions. 
 
 " The first round, fired at three hundred yards, 
 was an l over ' by a narrow margin, but the second, 
 at two hundred yards, was a clean hit on the con- 
 ning-tower, carrying away the periscope and the 
 stays supporting it. The explosion of this shell 
 appeared to split the whole superstructure of the 
 conning-tower, from the bridge to the deck. I did 
 not see anyone on the bridge at this moment, and if 
 there had been he must certainly have been killed. 
 The fact that the submarine seemed to have been 
 blown to the surface by the force of our exploding 
 depth-charges rather than to have come up volun- 
 tarily, may account for the fact that no head was 
 poked above the bridge rail as she emerged. If 
 she had come up deliberately it would have been 
 the duty of the skipper and a signalman to pop out 
 on to the bridge at once to be ready for eventuali- 
 ties. Evidently they had no chance to do so on this 
 occasion, and as a consequence spun out their 
 thread o' life by anywhere from twenty to thirty 
 seconds whatever that was worth to them. 
 
 " My third shot plumped into her abaft the con- 
 ning-tower, and the explosion which followed it had 
 a good deal more behind it than the charge of a 
 twelve-pounder shell. Before I had a chance to see 
 what had blown up, however, we had rammed her, 
 and whatever damage that shot had caused dis- 
 
244 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 solved in the chaos of what proved the real coup de 
 grace. That ramming was undoubtedly one of the 
 prettiest little jobs of its kind, one of the most 
 neatly finessed, ever brought off. 
 
 " Since running over the submarine and dropping 
 the depth-charges the captain had turned the 
 Whack through thirty-two points, a complete cir- 
 cle. This brought her back to a course just at 
 right angles to the beam of the now helpless enemy, 
 toward which she was driven to the limit of the last 
 kick of the engines. Just before the moment of 
 impact the screws were stopped dead, so as to sink 
 the bow and reduce the chance of riding over the 
 U-boat and rolling it under her stem, as has occa- 
 sionally happened, instead of cutting it straight in 
 two. The jar, when it came, was terrific, throwing 
 from his feet every man not holding to something ; 
 yet there was that in the clean, sweet crunch of it 
 that told me that it had accomplished all the heart 
 could desire, even before the next second furnished 
 graphic ocular evidence of it. 
 
 " The sharp, fine bows of the Whack drove home 
 well abaft the conning-tower, and though the 
 staggering jar told of the resistance met for all 
 the eye could see, cut through like a knife in soft 
 butter. Indeed, the amazing cleanness of the cut 
 has always seemed to me the most remarkable fea- 
 ture of the whole show. The bow end of the U-boat, 
 with the conning-tower, w r as the section which was 
 cut off on my side port and the even cross-sec- 
 
THE WHACK AND THE SMACK 245 
 
 don of it that gaped up at me was very little differ- 
 ent from that I once saw when one of our own sub- 
 marines was being sawed through amidships in 
 connection with some repairs. Even the plating 
 did not appear to be bent or buckled. The impres- 
 sion that ring of shining clean-cloven steel left on 
 my mind was of a cut as true and even as could have 
 been done in dock with an acetylene flame. This 
 was largely imagination, of course; and yet how 
 photographic my mind-picture is you may judge 
 from the fact that I have distinct recollection of 
 seeing the thin circle of red lead where it showed all 
 the way round beneath the grey of the outer paint. 
 " The heavily tilted main deck of the interior of 
 this section of the U-boat did not appear to be 
 flooded at this juncture, though any water that had 
 been shipped, of course, would have been in the now 
 submerged bows. I have a jumbled recollection of 
 wheels and levers and switchboards, fittings of 
 brass and steel, and what I took to be three tor- 
 pedoes one on the port side, and two, one above 
 the other, on the starboard. The most arresting 
 thing of all, however, was the figure of a solitary 
 man, the only one, strange to say, that anybody 
 reports having seen. He was scrambling upward 
 toward the opening, and I have never been quite 
 sure whether he was ' Kainerad-ing ' with his up- 
 lifted hands, or whether they were raised prepara- 
 tory to the dive it is quite probable he intended to 
 make into the sea. 
 
SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 Whichever the attitude was, it had no chance 
 to serve its purpose. The stern section of the U- 
 boat the one most heavily damaged by the depth- 
 charges was seen to sink abreast the starboard 
 12-pounder battery by the crew of that gun, but the 
 forward part the one with the conning-tower, 
 which I had seen into the interior of buoyed up 
 by the water-tight compartments in the bows, con- 
 tinued to float. Observing this, the Captain or- 
 dered the helm put a-starboard, and as we turned, 
 the 4-inch gun and my 12-pounder opened up to- 
 gether. My very first round, fired over the port 
 quarter, hit and exploded fairly inside the gaping 
 end of the section, right where I had last seen the 
 man with upraised hands. That, and the two or 
 three smashing hits by the 4-inch gun, finished the 
 job. A whirlpool in the sea marked the rush of 
 water into the severed end, and this section for all 
 the world as though it had been a complete sub- 
 marine tossed its bows, with their elephant-ear- 
 like rudders, skyward, and planed off on an easy 
 angle toward the bottom. Its disappearance was 
 complete. There were no survivors, and practi- 
 cally no floating wreckage. Only a spreading film 
 of oil and a tangle of torn wakes slowly dissolving 
 in the wash of the driving seas marked the scene of 
 the action. It had lasted something over ten 
 minutes. 
 
 " The Whack suffered considerable damage from 
 the impact with the submarine, though not enough 
 
THE WHACK AND THE SMACK 247 
 
 give us serious worry, even in so heavy a sea. 
 The stem was bent over to port, like a broken nose, 
 and the buckling plates caused her to make quite a 
 bit of water. We had no trouble coping with this, 
 however, and made port, with the survivors of the 
 Amperi aboard, without difficulty. There we soon 
 had the well, not unmixedly unpleasant news 
 that the Whack's wounds were of a nature some- 
 what comparable to what the Tommy in France 
 calls a ' Blighty.' Without having any real per- 
 manent harm done her, she was still enough 
 banged up to need a special refit, the period of 
 which, of course, the most of us would be able to 
 spend at home on leave. Yes, indeed/' he con- 
 cluded, grinning pleasedly, " that was a ripping 
 piece of ramming in more ways than one." 
 
 p went over and bent above the shivering 
 
 " Gyro," for a moment, took a long look through his 
 glasses at the last of the now receding convoy, and 
 then came back and rejoined me by the rail. 
 
 " There was one little thing I neglected to tell 
 you about," he said presently, "and that was the 
 part the Smack played in that show. Although the 
 Whack got all the kudos for the sinking, there is a 
 decided possibility that a bit of a stunt the Smack 
 brought off before ever we came up may have been 
 largely if not entirely responsible for us getting the 
 chance we did. 
 
 " Smack, you see, was near at hand when the Am- 
 peri was torpedoed, and the instant her Captain 
 
248 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 saw the spout of water shoot up in the air, he 
 altered course and drove at full speed for the point 
 he reckoned the submarine would be most likely to 
 be encountered. He reports that he had the good 
 fortune to hit it, while it was still submerged, and 
 that the shock was severe enough to throw men off 
 their balance. Shortly after that a periscope ap- 
 peared, and it was this that gave the Whack her 
 chance to drop her depth-charges. 
 
 " Now, not unnaturally, the Captain of the 
 Smack had good reason to believe that his striking 
 the U-boat, even if he only grazed her, had some- 
 thing to do with her reappearance on the surface 
 at a moment when she must have known a stren- 
 uous hunt for her was in progress. Unluckily, for 
 his claim, however, the bows of the Smack, when 
 she came to be docked, did not show sufficient evi- 
 dences of having been in heavy collison to warrant 
 the conclusion that the U-boat had been enough 
 damaged to have gone to the surface from that 
 cause alone. Under the circumstances, therefore, 
 there wasn't anything else to do but give the credit 
 for bringing her up to Whack's depth-charges, 
 while of course, the fact that it was also the Whack 
 that rammed her was obvious enough. The conse- 
 quence was, as I said, that we got all the kudos/' 
 
 He gazed for a few moments at the back-curling 
 bow-wave, before resuming. " Yes, we got all the 
 kudos" he said slowly ; " but, all the same, I've 
 never been able to figure why Fritz didn't douse his 
 
THE WHACK AND THE SMACK 249 
 
 periscope and try to dive deeper when he saw the 
 Whack rounding toward him, if it wasn't because 
 there was something pretty radically wrong with 
 him already. I can't help thinking that the old 
 Smack had a lot to do with starting that Fritz on 
 his downward path, even if it was the Whack that 
 gave him the final shove/' 
 
 It was very characteristic, that last little expla- 
 nation of P 's. If there is one thing more than 
 
 another that has impressed me in hearing these 
 young British destroyer officers tell the " little 
 games they have played with Fritz," it is the fine 
 sporting spirit in which they invariably insist in 
 sharing the credit of an achievement with every 
 other officer, and man, and ship that has in any way 
 figured in the action. It was the fault of the Hun 
 that we could no longer treat the enemy as we 
 would an opponent in sport; but that only makes 
 it all the more inspiring to see the fellow-players 
 still keeping alive the old spirit among themselves. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 BOMBED! 
 
 IT was generally admitted by flying-men, even 
 before the failure of the attempts to destroy 
 the Goeben while ashore in the Dardanelles 
 early in '18, that the air-bomb was a most uncertain 
 and ineffective weapon against a large ship of any 
 class, but especially so against a warship with deck 
 armour. 
 
 The principal reason for this is that the blunt- 
 nosed air-bomb, no matter from how high it may be 
 dropped, has neither the velocity nor the structure 
 to penetrate the enclosed spaces of a ship where its 
 explosive charge would find something to exert 
 itself against. 
 
 This is why an 18-pounder shell, penetrating to a 
 casemate or engine-room, for instance, may easily 
 do more damage to a warship than an air-bomb of 
 ten times that weight expending its force more or 
 less harmlessly upon an upper deck. 
 
 Merchant ships, with their inflammable and com- 
 paratively flimsy upper works, are more vulnerable 
 to air-bombs than are warships, but even of these 
 
 250 
 
BOMBED! 
 
 251 
 
 
 very few indeed have been completely destroyed as 
 a consequence of aerial attack. Some of the gani- 
 est fights of the war on the sea have been those of 
 merchant skippers who, in the days before their 
 ships had guns of any description to keep aircraft 
 at a distance, brought their vessels through by the 
 exercise of the boundless resource which charac- 
 terises their kind, usually by sheer skill in man- 
 oauvring. A very remarkable instance of this char- 
 acter I heard of a few days ago from a Royal Naval 
 Reserve officer who figured in it. 
 
 " I was in a British ship temporarily in the Hol- 
 land-South American service at the time," he said, 
 " and we were outward bound from Rotterdam 
 after discharging a cargo of wheat from Monte- 
 video. It was before the Huns had raised any ob- 
 jection to ships bound for Dutch ports using the 
 direct route by the English Channel, and also be- 
 fore the U-boats had begun to sink neutrals on 
 that run. Except for the comparatively slight risk 
 of encountering a floating mine, we reckoned we 
 were just about as safe in the North Sea as in the 
 South Atlantic. Of course, we carried no gun of 
 any kind no heavy gun, I mean. We did have 
 a rifle or two, as I will tell you of presently. 
 
 "Why the attack was made we never had any 
 definite explanation. In fact, the Germans them- 
 selves probably never knew, for they tumbled over 
 themselves to assure the Holland Government that 
 there w r as some misunderstanding, and that they 
 
252 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 would undertake that nothing of the kind should 
 occur again. 
 
 " My personal opinion has always been that it 
 was a sheer case of running amuck on the part of 
 the Hun aviator responsible for the outrage; for, 
 as I have said, we were empty of cargo, our marks 
 were unmistakable, and we were steering a course 
 several points off the one usually followed by the 
 Dutch boats to England. Anyway, he paid the full 
 penalty for his descent to barbarism. 
 
 " It was a clear afternoon, with a light wind and 
 lighter sea, and we were steaming comfortably 
 along at about nine knots, heading for the Straits 
 of Dover, when the look-out at the mast-head re- 
 ported a squadron of 'planes approaching from the 
 south. 
 
 " Presently we sighted them from the bridge- 
 five seaplanes, three or four points off our star- 
 board bow. There had been reports of noonday 
 raids on Calais for several days, and I surmised 
 that those were Hun machines returning from some 
 such stunt. 
 
 " Holding to an even course, the squadron 
 passed over a mile or more to the starboard of us, 
 and it was already some distance astern when I 
 saw one of the machines I think it was the one 
 leading the ' V ' detach itself from the others and 
 head swiftly back in our direction. There was 
 nothing out of the way in this action at a time when 
 every ship was held in more or less suspicion by 
 
BOMBED! 
 
 253 
 
 
 both belligerents, and it seemed to me so right and 
 proper that the chap should come and have a look 
 at us, in case he had some doubts, that I did not 
 even think it necessary to call the ' Old Man ' to 
 the bridge, or even send him word of what I took 
 to be no more than a passing incident, 
 
 " Descending swiftly as he approached, the Hun 
 passed over the ship diagonally from port 
 quarter to starboard bow at a height of six or 
 eight hundred feet. 
 
 " < That'll end it,' I thought, t Our marks, and 
 the fact that we're in ballast, ought to satisfy him.' 
 
 " But no. Back he came. This time he was a 
 hundred feet or so lower, and flying on a line 
 directly down our course, passing over us from bow 
 to stern. Again he swung round and repeated the 
 manoeuvre in reverse, this time at a height of not 
 more than four hundred feet. He had done this 
 five or six times before it occurred to me that he 
 was taking practice sights for bombing; but not 
 even then, when I saw him with his eye glued to Ms 
 dropping-instrument, did it occur to me that he 
 was doing anything more than trying his sights. 
 It was at the next ' run ' or two that the thing began 
 to get on my nerves, and I called up the skipper on 
 the voice-pipe and told him I did not quite like the 
 look of the circus. 
 
 " The Old Man was in the middle of his after- 
 noon siesta, but he tumbled out and came puffing 
 up to the bridge at the double. He was no more 
 
254 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 inclined to take the thing seriously than I was, 
 but, on the offchance which your careful skipper 
 is always thinking of in the back of his brain-box 
 he rang up ' More steam ' on the engine-room tele- 
 graph, and ordered the quartermaster to start zig- 
 zagging, a stunt we had already practised a bit 
 in the event of a submarine attack. 
 
 " ' If he's just trying his eye,' said the Old Man, 
 i it'll give him all the better practice to follow us; 
 while, it he's up to mischief, it may fuss him a bit,' 
 
 " The Hun had just whirled about three or four 
 cables' length ahead of us, when the smoke rolling 
 up from the funnel and the swinging bow must 
 have told him that we were trying to give him a bit 
 more of a run for his money. Circling on a wider 
 turn, he came charging straight down the line of 
 our new course, flying at what I should say was 
 between two and three times the height of our 
 masts. We were looking at the machine at an angle 
 of about forty-five degrees so that he must have 
 been about as far ahead of us as he was high, say, 
 a hundred yards when I saw a small dark object 
 detach itself from under the fuselage and begin to 
 come directly towards us, almost as though shot 
 from a gun. 
 
 " It was the only bomb I ever saw fall while I 
 was in a sufficiently detached state of mind to 
 mark what it looked like. ' Fall ' hardly conveys 
 a true picture of the way the thing seemed to ap- 
 proach, for the swift machine, speeding at perhaps 
 
BOMBED! 255 
 
 a hundred miles an hour, must have imparted, at 
 the instant of releasing, a good deal of lateral 
 velocity. 
 
 " At first it was coming almost head on to the 
 way I was looking at it, and, greatly foreshort- 
 ened, it had so much the appearance of a round 
 sand-bag that it is not surprising that the skipper 
 took it for some kind of practice dummy. ' Prob- 
 ably a dud,' I remember him saying; ' but don't let 
 it hit you. Stand by to duck! ' 
 
 " My next recollection is of the thing beginning 
 to wobble a bit, probably as the nose began to tilt 
 downward; but still it seemed to be coming 
 straight toward us rather than simply falling. I 
 seem to recall that the seaplane passed overhead 
 an appreciable space before the bomb, but I must 
 have heard it rather than seen it, for I never took 
 my eye off the speeding missile. 
 
 " The latter seemed at the least from fifty to a 
 hundred feet above my head as it hurtled over the 
 starboard end of the bridge, and I saw it with 
 startling distinctness silhouetted against a cloud 
 that was bright with the light of the sun it had 
 just obscured. It was still wobbling, but appar- 
 ently tending to steady under the combined influ- 
 ence of the downward pull of the heavy head and 
 the backward drag of the winged tail. It appeared 
 to be revolving. 
 
 " I have since thought, however, that I may have 
 got the latter impression from a ' spinner ' that is 
 
256 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 often attached to this type of bomb to unwind, 
 with the resistance of the air, and expose the de- 
 tonator. 
 
 " Down it came until it whanged against some of 
 the standing rigging of the foremast seeming to 
 deflect inboard and downward slightly as a con- 
 sequence missed the mainmast by a few feet, and 
 struck squarely against the side of the deckhouse 
 on the poop. 
 
 " The scene immediately after the explosion of 
 the bomb is photographed indelibly on my memory ; 
 the events which followed are more of a jumble. 
 The detonation was a good deal less sharp than I 
 had expected, and so was the shock from it. The 
 latter was not nearly so heavy as that from many 
 a wave that had crashed over her bows, but, coining 
 from aft rather than forward, the jolt had a dis- 
 tinctly different feel, and by a man 'tween decks 
 would hardly have been mistaken for that from a 
 sea. 
 
 " It was the flash of the explosion a huge spurt 
 of hot, red flame that was the really astonishing 
 thing. It seemed to embrace the whole afterpart 
 of the ship, and everything one of the forked 
 tongues of fire was projected against burst into 
 flame itself. 
 
 " The ramshackle deckhouse, which had been re- 
 duced to kindling wood by the explosion, roared 
 like a furnace in the middle of the poop. Even the 
 deck itself was blazing. I had once been near an 
 
BOMBED! 257 
 
 incendiary bomb in a London air raid, and knew 
 that nothing else could have produced so sudden 
 and so fierce a fire. 
 
 " But I also knew that the first burst of flame 
 is the worst in such a case, and that most of the 
 fire came from the inflammable stuff in the bomb 
 itself. 
 
 "As I had always heard that sand was better 
 than water in putting out a fire of this kind, and 
 knowing we carried several barrels of it for scrub- 
 bing the decks, I ordered it to be brought up and 
 thrown on the flames, but stood by on the bridge 
 myself in case the skipper, who was bawling down 
 the engine-room voice-pipe for more steam, needed 
 me for anything else. 
 
 " Luckily the sand was close at hand, and they 
 were scattering it from buckets over the blazing 
 deck within a minute or two. Except for the 
 debris of the deckhouse, the fire was put out al- 
 most as quickly as it was started, and, between 
 sand and water, even that was being rapidly got 
 under control, when suddenly the Hun, whom I 
 had almost forgotten in the rush of undoing his 
 dirty work, flashed into sight again. 
 
 " The skipper had our ship zigzagging so short 
 and sharp by this time that her wake looked like 
 the teeth of a big, crazy saw, and this the Hun was 
 unable to follow closely enough to get a fore- 
 and-aft sight down her as he had done the first 
 time. 
 
258 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 " Coining up astern, be kicked out a bomb just 
 before be was over ber port quarter, but it only 
 sbot across ber diagonally, and struck tbe water 
 on ber starboard side, about a bundred feet away. 
 It went off witb, if anytbing, a sbarper crack tban 
 the one wbicb bad struck tbe poop, and tbe foam 
 geyser tbe explosion sbot up flasbed a bloody red 
 for tbe instant tbe water took to cbill tbe glow of 
 tbe molten thermit. 
 
 " Vanishing even more quickly was a ragged red 
 star wbicb fluttered for a moment beneath tbe sur- 
 face of the water itself as the flame stabs shot out 
 in all directions from the central core of the ex- 
 plosion. 
 
 " No water was thrown aboard us, and, near as I 
 was to the explosion on the bridge, the rush of air 
 could hardly be felt. Something that came tinkling 
 down after striking the side of the chartbouse, 
 however I picked it up when the show was over- 
 turned out to be a thin fragment of the steel casing 
 of the bomb. 
 
 "A similar fragment, twisted into a peculiar 
 shape, struck the chest of a man leaning over the 
 rail in the waist of the ship, inflicting a slight flesh 
 wound t"he exact shape of a ragged capital ' C.' 
 
 " That any kind of a living man could really be 
 trying to destroy a mere merchant ship in cold 
 blood seemed to me so monstrous, so utterly im- 
 possible, that, until the second bomb was dropped, 
 I was almost ready to believe that the first had been 
 
BOMBED! 259 
 
 launched by accident. From then on we knew it 
 was a fight for life. 
 
 " The Hun took a broader swerve in bringing his 
 machine round for the next charge, and, ten times 
 quicker on his helm than we were, anticipated our 
 next shift of course, and came darting down on an 
 almost straight fore-and-aft line again. The sud- 
 den cloud of our foreblown smoke there was a 
 following wind on the ' leg ' they had put her on 
 at the moment which engulfed him at the instant 
 his third bomb was released was the one thing in 
 the world that could have made him miss so easy a- 
 ' sitter.' The quick < side-flip ' the sharply-banked 
 'plane gave to the dropped missile threw it wide 
 by twice the distance the second had missed us. 
 Though the detonation rang sharp and clear, and 
 though a vicious spout of foam shot up, I could 
 note no effect of the thing whatever on the ship. 
 Whether that was his last bomb or not we could 
 never be quite sure. At any rate, it was the last 
 he tried to drop upon us, or upon any other ship 
 for that matter. 
 
 " Just why he returned to the attack with his 
 machine-gun we could only guess. It may have 
 been, as is probable, that he was at the end of the 
 small supply of bombs left from the raid he was 
 doubtless returning from. 
 
 " Again, however, it is just possible that the 
 fact that the fire was being got under control on 
 the poop impelled him to adopt an attack calcu- 
 
260 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 la ted to drive the plucky chaps who were fightinj 
 it to cover. 
 
 " Anyhow, flying just high enough to clear the 
 tops of the masts, he came swooping back, and it 
 was upon the men trying to put out the fire now 
 confined to the wreckage of the deckhouse that 
 he seemed to concentrate his attack. Two or three 
 of these I saw fall under the rain of bullets, and 
 among them was our freight clerk, who had also 
 been knocked down by the explosion of the first 
 bomb, but who, being hardly stunned by the shock, 
 was soon on his feet again and leading the fire- 
 fighters. 
 
 " He was a good deal of a character, this freight 
 clerk. Although well educated, he had led a free 
 and easy existence in various parts of the world. 
 For a year previous to the war he had been a cow- 
 boy, and some queer trait in his character made 
 him still cling to the poncho, or shoulder blanket, 
 and baggy trousers, which are the main features of 
 the Argentine cow-puncher's rigout. It was the 
 Wild West rig that made me notice him when he 
 was knocked down by the bomb and later by the 
 machine-gun fire. 
 
 " He was scarcely more hurt the second time than 
 the first, but the bullet which had grooved the outer 
 covering of his brain-box seemed also to have put 
 a new idea inside it. I saw him pull himself to- 
 gether in a dazed sort of way after the seaplane 
 had passed, and then shake off the hand of a man 
 
BOMBED! 
 
 who tried to help him, and dash off down the ladder, 
 tumbling to cover, I thought. 
 
 " It must have been a minute or two later that I 
 saw him, legs wide apart to keep his balance, pump- 
 ing back at the Hun (who had swung close again 
 in the interim) with a rifle a weapon which I 
 later learned was an old Winchester, which had 
 been rusting on the wall of the freight clerk's 
 cabin. He appeared to have had the worst of the 
 exchange, for when I looked again he was sitting, 
 with one leg crumpled crookedly under him, 
 propped up against a bitt. 
 
 "He looked still full of fight, though, and 
 seemed to be replenishing the magazine of the rifle 
 from his bandoliers. 
 
 " The skipper sent me below to stir things up a 
 bit in the engine-room at this juncture, and I did 
 not see my cowboy friend until he had fought two 
 or three more unequal rounds and was squaring 
 away, groggy, but still unbeaten, for what proved 
 the final one. 
 
 " I don't know whether he ever got credit for it 
 or not, but the Old Man's plan of action at this 
 juncture must pretty nearly have marked a mile- 
 post in merchant ship defence against aerial at- 
 tack. We had been instructed in, and had practised 
 the zigzag before this, but that was about the limit 
 of our resources in this line. ( Squid ' tactics 
 smoke screening had hardly been more than 
 thought of for anything but destroyers. Yet the 
 
262 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 wily old skipper, literally on a moment's notice, 
 brought off a stunt that could not have been im- 
 proved upon if it had been the result of a year's 
 thought and experience. 
 
 " The instant the Hun ' stumbled ' when he 
 struck the cloud of smoke that was pouring ahead 
 of us, the skipper's ready mind began evolving a 
 plan still further to besmudge the atmosphere. To- 
 day, with special instructions and special stuff 
 ready to hand, a merchant captain, if he needed it, 
 would simply tell the chief engineer to ' make 
 smoke screen.' 
 
 " On this occasion the Old Man meant the same 
 thing when I heard him yelling down the engine- 
 room voice-pipe to ' Smoke up like hell ! ' 
 
 " About all the chief could do under the circum- 
 stances was to stoke faster and cut down the 
 draught. This he did to the best of his ability, but 
 the screen did not bear much resemblance to one of 
 those almost solid streams of soot a modern de- 
 stroyer can turn out by spraying oil freely and 
 shutting off the air. 
 
 " Such as it was, however, the Old Man made 
 the most of, and by steaming down the wind ac- 
 complished the double purpose of cutting down the 
 draught fanning the fire on the poop and keeping a 
 maximum of smoke floating above the ship. 
 
 " The smudge bothered the Hun, but by no means 
 put an end to his machine-gun practice. Except 
 for the freight clerk, who was still pumping back 
 
BOMBED! 
 
 263 
 
 the seaplane every time it swooped over, every 
 one on the poop had been killed, wounded, or 
 driven to cover, and, with no one to fight it, the 
 fire was beginning to gain new headway. 
 
 " ' Not good 'nuf by a mile/ I heard the Old Man 
 muttering to himself as he eyed the quickly thin- 
 ning trail of smoke from the funnels. * Must do 
 better'n that or 'taint no good.' Then I saw his 
 bronzed old face light up. 
 
 " ' X ! ' he shouted, beckoning me to his side, 
 
 * duck below, clean out all the stuff in the paint 
 lockers and chuck it in the furnaces, 'specially the 
 oils and turps. Jump lively ! ' 
 
 " This was the job I went on when I said I saw 
 the cowboy crumpled up against a bitt, but still 
 full of fight. 
 
 " Linseed oil, turpentine, and some tins of fine 
 lubricants I had them all turned out of the fore- 
 peak and carried, rolled, dragged, or tossed down to 
 the stokehold. 
 
 " Most of the stuff was in kegs or cans small 
 enough to go through a furnace door, and these 
 we threw in without broaching them. The Old Man 
 called me up twice the first time to say that there 
 was no increase in smoke, and wanting to know 
 why I was so slow ; and the second time to say that 
 he had just got a bullet through his shoulder, and 
 ordering me to come up and take over, as he was 
 beginning to feel groggy. 
 
 " There was an ominous crackling and sputtering 
 
264 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 
 in the furnaces as I sprang for the ladder, and be- 
 fore my foot was on the lowermost rung, one of 
 the doors jumped violently up on its top-swing 
 hinges from the kick of an exploding tin or keg of 
 oil. As it fell back with a clang the swish of sud- 
 den flame smote my ears, and then a regular salvo 
 of muffled detonations. The last picture I had of 
 the boiler-room was of the stokers trying to con- 
 fine the infernos they had created by wedging shut 
 the doors with their scoops. 
 
 " The whole ship was a-shiver with the roaring 
 conflagration in her furnaces as I reached the upper 
 deck, and, above a tufty, white frizzle of escaping 
 steam, rolled a greasy jet of smoke that looked 
 thick enough for a man to dance a hornpipe on it 
 without sinking above his ankles. I found the Old 
 Man, with a dazed sort of look in his eyes, and his 
 jaw set like grim death, hanging on to the binnacle 
 when I gained the bridge, and all he had the 
 strength to say, before slithering down in a heap, 
 was, ' Damn good smoke ! Carry on zigzag down 
 wind! Think blighter has finished. Look to fire.' 
 
 " The fact that the Hun was now circling the ship 
 at considerable distance had evidently made the 
 skipper believe that he had come to the end of his 
 cartridges, and in this I am inclined to think the 
 Old Man was right. 
 
 " Which fire, however, he referred to I was not 
 quite sure about, but, in my own mind, I was rather 
 more concerned about the one I had started with 
 
 
BOMBED! 265 
 
 the ship's paint than the one the Hun's incendiary 
 bomb had set going. Indeed, the ' fire brigade,' 
 which had taken advantage of the lull to get a hose 
 playing on the conflagration on the poop, was rap- 
 idly reducing the latter to a black mass of steaming 
 embers. The cowboy was still snuggled up aginst 
 the bitt, which he used to rest his right elbow on 
 in the occasional shots he was lobbing over at the 
 now distantly circling enemy. When I learned 
 later what a crack shot the chap really was, I can- 
 not say that I blamed the Hun for his discretion. 
 
 "What tempted him to make that fatal final 
 swoop we never knew. It may have been sheer 
 bravado, or he may have been trying to frighten 
 off the fire-fighters again. Anyhow, back he came, 
 allowing plenty of leeway to miss my smoke screen, 
 and only high enough to clear the masts by forty 
 or fifty feet. 
 
 " The cowboy saw him coming, and I can picture 
 him yet as he lay there waiting, with his cheek 
 against the stock of that old Winchester, and fol- 
 lowing the neariug 'plane through its sights. With' 
 the rare good sense of your real hunter, he didn't 
 run any risk of frightening off his quarry with any 
 premature shots. He just laid doggo, and held his 
 fire. 
 
 " If the Hun had been content to sit tight and 
 keep his head out of sight, the chances are nothing 
 would have happened to him ; but the temptation to 
 have a closer look at his handiwork and to jeer at 
 
J66 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 Ms ' beaten enemy ' was too much for him. Banking 
 as sharply as his big 'plane would stand, he leaned 
 out head and shoulders above the wrecked poop, 
 gave a jaunty wave of the hand, and opened his 
 mouth to shout what was probably some sort of 
 Hunnish pleasantry. 
 
 " The crack of the old Winchester reached my 
 ears above the roar of the seaplane's engine, and 
 the next thing I was clearly conscious of was the 
 machine's swerving sidewise and downward and 
 plunging straight into the trailing column of black 
 smoke. The tip of its left wing fouled the main 
 truck, but it still kept enough balance and headway 
 to carry past and clear of the ship. 
 
 " It then slammed down into the water two or 
 three hundred feet off our starboard bow, and it 
 only took a point or two of alteration to bring it 
 under our forefoot. 
 
 " The old ship struck the mark so fair that she 
 cut the wreckage into two parts, and I saw frag- 
 ments of wings and fuselage boiling up on both 
 sides of our wake astern. I gave the order in hot 
 blood, but I would do the same thing again if I had 
 a week to think it over in, just as I would go out 
 of my way to kill a poisonous snake. 
 
 " Of course we never knew definitely who was 
 responsible for polishing off the Hun. For a while 
 I thought it probable that the cowboy had only 
 wounded him, and that his swerve into the smoke 
 had been responsible for the dive into the sea, where 
 
 
 
BOMBED! 
 
 267 
 
 ie ship put the finishing touches on the job. But 
 from the day that the cowboy showed me that he 
 could hit tossed-up shillings with a target-rifle 
 four times out of five I have been inclined to believe 
 his assestion that he ' plunked the blooinin' 
 blighter straight through the nut/ and that I and 
 my smoke had nothing to do with it. 
 
 " Neither the skipper nor the cowboy were much 
 hurt, and as for the ship, she probably suffered, in 
 the long run, more from the loss of her paint and oil 
 supply than from the Hun's bomb and the fire it 
 started." 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 AGAINST ODDS 
 
 THE news from all the Fronts had been dis- 
 couraging for several days, and it only 
 needed that staggering announcement of the 
 destruction of practically a whole convoy and its 
 escort, in the North Sea, to cap the climax of gloom. 
 This is what I had read in the fog-hastened autumn 
 twilight, by the feeble glow of a paint-masked 
 street lamp, in the Stop Press column of the eve- 
 ning paper a Strand newsboy had shoved into my 
 hand. 
 
 " Two very fast and heavily-armed German 
 raiders attacked a convoy in the North Sea, about 
 midway between the Shetland Islands and the Nor- 
 wegian coast, on October 17th. Two British de- 
 stroyers H.M. ships Mary Rose (Lieutenant- 
 Commander Charles L. Fox) and Strongbow 
 Lieutenant-Commander Edward Brooke) which 
 formed the anti -submarine escort, at once engaged 
 the enemy vessels, and fought until sunk after a 
 short and unequal engagement. Their gallant 
 action held the German raiders sufficiently long to 
 enable three of the merchant vessels to effect their 
 escape. It is regretted, however, that five Nor- 
 268 
 
AGAINST ODDS 269 
 
 wegian, one Danish, and three Swedish vessels 
 all unarmed were thereafter sunk by gunfire 
 without examination or warning of any kind and 
 regardless of the lives of their crew or passengers. 
 . . . Anxious to make good their escape before 
 British forces could intercept them, no effort was 
 made to rescue the crews of the sunk British de- 
 stroyers or the doomed merchant ships, but British 
 patrol craft which arrived shortly afterward res- 
 cued some thirty Norwegians and others of whom 
 details are not yet known. . . . The enemy raiders 
 succeeded in evading the British watching squad- 
 rons on the long dark nights, both in their hurried 
 outward dash and homeward flight. 
 
 " It is regretted that all the eighty-eight officers 
 and men of H.M.S. Mary Rose and forty-seven 
 officers and men of H.M.S. Strongbow were lost. 
 All the next-of-kin have been informed." 
 
 A few days later a second Admiralty report an- 
 nounced that ten survivors of the Mary Rose had 
 reached Norway in an open boat, and also gave a 
 few further particulars of the action in which she 
 had been lost. From this it appeared that she had 
 been many miles ahead of the main convoy when the 
 latter was attacked, and that, possessed of the 
 speed, with many knots to spare, to have avoided 
 an action in which the odds were a thousand to one 
 against her, she had yet deliberately steamed back 
 and thrown down the gage of battle to the heavily 
 armed German cruisers. Just why her captain 
 chose the course he did was not, and never will be, 
 fully explained. He went down with his ship, and 
 
270 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 to none of those who survived had he disclosed what 
 was in his mind. It was certainly not " war," the 
 critics said, but they also agreed that it was " mag- 
 nificent " enough to furnish the one ray of bright- 
 ness striking athwart the sombre gloom of the 
 whole disheartening tragedy. " He held on un- 
 flinchingly," concluded an all-too-brief story of the 
 action issued to the public through the Admiralty, 
 some time later, " and he died, leaving to the annals 
 of his service an episode not less glorious than that 
 in which Sir Richard Grenville perished." 
 
 From the time I read these Admiralty announce- 
 ments I had the feeling that some, if not all, of 
 those ten survivors of the Mary Rose would surely 
 be able to offer more of an explanation of why her 
 captain took her into battle against such hopeless 
 odds than any that had yet been suggested to the 
 public, and in the months w r hich followed I made 
 what endeavour I could to locate and have a talk 
 with one of them. It was not long before the ten 
 were scattered in as many different ships, however, 
 and though I had the names and official numbers 
 of two or three, almost a year went by before I 
 chanced upon the first of them. Indeed, it was but 
 a day or two previous to the first anniversary of the 
 loss of the Mary Rose and Strongbow and the de- 
 struction of the Norwegian convoy that, in the 
 course of a visit to a Submarine Depot Ship at one 
 of the East Coast bases, I sauntered forward one 
 evening and fell into conversation with a sturdily 
 
AGAINST ODDS 
 
 271 
 
 built, steady-eyed young seaman some kind of 
 torpedo rating, evidently, by the red worsted 
 " mouldie " on his sleeve who had just clambered 
 up to the forecastle from the deck of a hulking " L " 
 moored alongside. 
 
 " How do you like submarin-ing? " I had asked 
 him, by way of getting acquainted. 
 
 " Not so bad, sir," he replied with a smile, 
 " though it's a bit stuffy and rather slow after de- 
 stroyers. With them there's something doing all 
 the time. I was in one of the ' M ' class before I 
 volunteered for submarines. P'raps you've heard 
 of her the Mary Rose, sunk a year this month, 
 in " 
 
 " Wait a moment," I cut in, as the ribbon he was 
 wearing caught my eye ; " you're one of the men 
 I've been looking for for a number of months. Ten, 
 to one you're Able Seaman Bailey, who received 
 the D.S.M. for his part in the action, and who is 
 specially mentioned in the Admiralty story-' (re- 
 freshing my memory from a note-book) " for hav- 
 ing, < despite severe shrapnel wounds in the leg, 
 persisted in taking his turn at an oar ' of the Nor- 
 wegian lifeboat which picked up the Mary Rose 
 survivors, and for his ' invincible light-heartedness 
 throughout.- " 
 
 A flush spread under his " submarine pallor " at 
 that broadside, but he admitted, with an embar- 
 rassed grin, that his name was Bailey, and that his 
 decoration was awarded for something or other in 
 
272 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 connection with the last fight of the Mary Rose, 
 though for just what he had never quite been able 
 to figure out. In the hour we leaned over the fore- 
 castle rail and watched the North Sea fog-bank roll 
 up the estuary with the incoming tide, this is the 
 account he gave me of the things which he himself 
 saw of what is perhaps the most gallantly tragic 
 of all the naval actions of the war. 
 
 " They hadn't got convoying at that time down 
 to the system it is carried on under now," he began, 
 by way of explanation, " and the only fighting ships 
 with this one were the Mary Rose and Stronyboiv. 
 The Mary was of the same class as the ' M . . .' 
 over there, very large and fast and well armed for 
 a destroyer, but never, of course, built for any- 
 thing like a give-and-take fight with any kind of 
 a cruiser. 
 
 " There was also an armed trawler somewhere 
 about, but it had no chance to do anything but pick 
 up survivors. We were an anti-submarine escort, 
 nothing more, and were not intended to stand off 
 surface raiders. Of course provision was made 
 against these, too, but well, when you consider the 
 size of the North Sea and the length and black- 
 ness of the winter nights, the only wonder is that 
 the Huns can't buck up their nerve to trying for a 
 convoy twice a week instead of twice a year. 
 
 " We had escorted the north-bound convoy across 
 to Bergen, and, on the afternoon of the 16th of 
 
AGAINST ODDS 
 
 273 
 
 October, had picked up the south-bound and headed 
 back for one of the home ports. Escorting even a 
 squadron of warships which know how to keep sta- 
 tion is no picnic for destroyers, but with merchant- 
 men it is a dozen times worse. It is bad enough 
 even now, but a year ago, before these little packets 
 had had much experience, it was enough to drive a 
 man crazy. Between the faster ships trying to 
 push on, and the slower ones falling astern, and 
 breakdowns, and the chance of trickery, it was one 
 continual round of worry from the time we left 
 Base to our return. 
 
 " This time was no exception to the rule, even 
 before the big smash. One of the Swedes there 
 were Norwegian and Danish as well as Swedish 
 ships in the convoy, but we called them all 
 ' Swedes/ probably because it was shorter and 
 easier to say than Scandinavian well, one of the 
 Swedes shifted cargo along about dark of the 16th, 
 with the result that the slower ships, and this in- 
 cluded most of the convoy, lagged back, while sev- 
 eral of the faster ones kept on. 
 
 " I don't know whether this was done by order, 
 or whether it just happened. Anyhow, the Strong- 
 ~bow remained behind with the slower section, while 
 the Mary Rose pushed on as an escort for the 
 faster. It was the first lot the main convoy 
 that the raiders attacked first, but just what hap- 
 pened I did not see, for we had drawn a long way 
 ahead of them in the course of the night. 
 
274 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 "When I came up to stand my watch as anti- 
 submarine lookout, on the after searchlight plat- 
 form, at four in the morning of the 17th, I remem- 
 ber that it was cloudy and thick overhead, but with 
 very fair visibility on the water. We were steaming 
 along comfortably with two boilers, which gave us 
 a big margin of speed over everything needed to cut 
 our zigzags round the comparatively slow packets 
 we were escorting. The sea was rough but almost 
 dead astern, so that it made little trouble for 
 the moment, that is. We had enough of it a little 
 later. 
 
 " Along toward six o'clock the visibility began 
 to extend as it grew lighter, but there was no sign 
 of the main convoy when, at exactly five-fifty, I 
 sighted flashes of light fluttering along the northern 
 horizon. Although my ears caught no sound but 
 the throb of the engines and the churning of the 
 screws, I had no doubt they were from gun-fire, and 
 reported them at once by voice-pipe to the Officer of 
 the Watch it was Gunner T., if I remember right 
 on the bridge. The captain was called, and must 
 have concluded the same, for he at once ordered her 
 put about and sounded 'Action Stations. 1 That 
 took me to the foremost torpedo tubes, where my 
 station was on the seat between the tubes, with the 
 voice-pipe gear fitted to my ears. Most of what 
 followed I saw from there. 
 
 " In some of the published accounts of the action 
 it was stated that the captain of the Mary Rose 
 
AGAINST ODDS 
 
 ;hought that the flashes he saw were from the gun 
 of a submarine shelling the convoy, so that when 
 he turned back it was with the expectation of meet- 
 ing a U-boat rather than powerful raiding cruisers. 
 I don't know anything definite on this score, of 
 course, as I only heard the captain speak once or 
 twice (and then to give orders) before he went 
 down with his ship, but I don't think it could pos- 
 sibly have been true. There is a sort of fluttering 
 ripple to the flash of a salvo that you can't pos- 
 sibly mistake for that of the discharge of a single 
 gun, and the flashes which we continued to see for 
 some time were plainly those of salvo answering 
 salvo. The flashes from the mingled salvoes of the 
 heavy guns of the Hun raiders could not have been 
 confused with those from the few light guns of the 
 S 'trough ow any more than these could have been 
 taken to come from the single gun of a U-boat. 
 Everything pointed to just what we learned had 
 taken place a cruiser raid on the convoy. There 
 was nothing in the flashes to suggest a submarine 
 was firing, and I can't see how the captain could 
 have had any such impression. It was enough for 
 him yes, and for all of us to know that our con- 
 sort was in trouble, and I shall always think that 
 he turned back to help the Strongboic with the full 
 knowledge that he would have to face hopeless 
 odds. He was a proper gentleman, was Captain 
 Fox, and so there was nothing else that he could 
 have done; and, what's more, there's nothing else 
 
276 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 that we men in the Mary Rose or any other 
 British sailors, for that matter would have had 
 him do. It would have been against all the tradi- 
 tions of the Navy to have done anything else but 
 stick by a consort to the last." 
 
 Able Seaman Bailey smote resoundingly the hol- 
 low palm of his left hand with the fist of his right as 
 he spoke those last words, and then, in a quieter 
 voice, took up the thread of the story again. 
 
 " That turn through sixteen points brought the 
 seas, which we had been running before all night, 
 right ahead, and all in a minute she was being 
 swept fore-and-aft by every second or third of them. 
 Anxious as the captain was to drive her full speed 
 (which would have been a pretty terrific gait, let 
 me tell you, for the ' Ms ' are very fast), it was no 
 use. 
 
 " Plates and rivets simply wouldn't stand the 
 strain of the green water that anything like full 
 speed would have bored her into, and she was 
 finally slowed down to about twenty knots as the 
 best she could do without flooding the decks and 
 making it impossible to serve the guns and torpedo 
 tubes. As she was good for a lot more than this 
 with two boilers, I doubt very much if the third 
 was ever ' flashed up.' 
 
 " The first I saw of the ships which turned out to 
 be the enemy was some masts and funnels to the 
 northward and about a couple of points on the star- 
 board bow. They were making very little smoke, 
 
AGAINST ODDS 
 
 277 
 
 probably because they were oil-burners. As we 
 were steering on practically opposite courses, we 
 closed each other very quickly, and they must have 
 been about four miles off when the captain, evi- 
 dently becoming suspicious of their appearance, 
 challenged. As there was no reply, fire was opened 
 immediately afterward by the foremost gun, the 
 course at the same time being altered a point or 
 two to starboard, so that the other two guns would 
 bear. The rest of our firing was, I think, by 
 salvoes, or rather, it was until all but the after 
 gun were knocked out by the Hun's shells. 
 
 " Our first shots, fired at about 7,000 yards, were 
 short; but as the salvoes which followed began to 
 fall closer to their targets, I saw the Huns alter 
 to a course more or less parallel to ours, but plainly 
 veering away so as to open out the range. This 
 gave me the first silhouette view I had, and I did 
 not need a glass to recognize them at once as Ger- 
 man, the three straight funnels and the t swan ' 
 bows being quite unmistakable. Some of our 
 shots fell close, but I saw nothing I could be cer- 
 tain of calling a hit. 
 
 " However, I knew that it was not the guns the 
 captain was counting on, but that he was trying 
 to close to a range and bearing that might offer a 
 chance to get home with a torpedo. 
 
 " Why the Huns did not open fire before they did 
 I have never quite been able to figure out, unless it 
 was that they hoped to avoid an action and so be 
 
278 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 free to pursue and sink the leading ships of the 
 convoy the faster ones the Mary Rose had been 
 escorting without interference. If that is so, 
 Captain Fox's sacrifice was not in vain, for all of 
 these ships escaped destruction and reached port in 
 safety. Even as it was, they had no stomach for 
 an action at any range close enough to give us any 
 chance to damage them either with gun-fire or tor- 
 pedoes. Their plan proper enough in its way, I 
 suppose was simply to pound us to pieces with the 
 shells of their powerful long-range guns, and not 
 to close to finish us off until all our guns and tor- 
 pedo tubes were out of action. As one good salvo 
 from either of them was more than enough to do the 
 job, there wasn't much hope of our getting in close 
 enough to do them serious harm. It was a bold 
 bid the captain made for it, though. 
 
 " The course we were now T on brought the seas 
 more abeam than ahead, so that we had been able 
 to shake out several more knots of speed, and this 
 the captain tried to use to shorten the range. We 
 were actually closing them at a good rate (though 
 I wouldn't go so far as to say they were putting on 
 all their speed to avoid it), when the Huns began 
 firing their ranging shots. By this time we had 
 reached a position from which there was a very fair 
 bearing to launch a mouldie, and we were busy get- 
 ting one ready to slip while the fall of shot came 
 bounding nearer and nearer to us. I remember, in 
 a vague sort of way, that the first salvo was short by 
 
AGAINST ODDS 279 
 
 a long way, tliat the second was much nearer, and 
 that the third, closely bunched and exploding 
 loudly on striking the sea, threw up smoke-stained 
 spouts which fell back into each other to form a 
 wall of water which completely blotted out the 
 enemy for a second or two. Then we turned loose 
 the torpedo, and at almost the same instant two or 
 three shells from a ' straddling ' salvo hit fair and 
 square and just about lifted the poor little Mary 
 out of the water. 
 
 " All in a second the ship seemed to disappear in 
 clouds of smoke and escaping steam, and it is only 
 natural that my recollections of the order in which 
 things happened after that are a good deal con- 
 fused. 
 
 " I seem to have some memory of receiving from 
 the bridge the order to fire that torpedo, but if that 
 was so, it was the last order I did receive from 
 there, for the explosion of one of the shells carried 
 the voice-pipe away (though I did not twig it at 
 the time), and from then on it was mostly the siz- 
 zle of spurting steam that came to my ears. 
 
 " There are two reasons why I know that first 
 salvo hit us after the torpedo was launched, though 
 there could not have been more than a fraction of a 
 second between one and the other. The first is that 
 one of the shells carried away the lip of the tube 
 before penetrating the deck and cutting a steam- 
 pipe. If the mouldie had been in the tube it could 
 not have missed being exploded ; or, if by a miracle 
 
280 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 that had not happened, the tube was so much 
 buckled that it could not have been operated. The 
 second reason was that fragments from that shell, 
 besides wounding me in the leg, even killed or blew 
 overboard the rest of the crew, so that there would 
 have been no one to get a mouldie away even if the 
 tubes had been in working order. I remember dis- 
 tinctly seeing the torpedo hit the water, but I have 
 no recollection of seeing it steady to depth and be- 
 gin to run. As that is the main thing you always 
 watch for, I can only account for the fact I did not 
 see it by supposing that first hit came before the 
 torpedo began to run. 
 
 " The shock of the explosion did not knock me off 
 my seat, and a wound from a jagged piece of shell 
 casing, though it was serious enough to put me out 
 of commission for five months, felt only like a sharp 
 prick on my leg. My pal, Able Seaman French, 
 collapsed in a limp heap under the tubes, and 
 though I saw no blood or signs of a wound, and 
 though I never saw a man killed before, I knew he 
 was done for. I don't know to this day where he 
 was hit. The man whose station was at the breech- 
 blocks I never saw again, living or dead, so I think 
 he must have caught the unbroken force of the ex- 
 plosion and been blown back right over the star- 
 board side. 
 
 " This shell, in bursting the main steam-pipe, 
 probably had the most to do with bringing us to 
 stop, though another (I think of the same salvo) 
 
AGAINST ODDS 
 
 281 
 
 exploded in Number Three boiler-room and started 
 a big fire, probably from the oil. The clouds of 
 black smoke and steam rising 'midships made it im- 
 possible to see what was going on there. I saw 
 some of the crew of the 'midships gun struggling 
 in the water, and took it that they must have been 
 blown there. 
 
 " That gun was out of action, anyway, and, be- 
 cause I did not hear it firing, I assumed that the 
 foremost one had also gone wrong. The after gun 
 was firing for all it was worth, though, and con- 
 tinued to do so right up to the end. 
 
 " That one salvo pretty well finished the Mary 
 Rose as a fighting ship, and as soon as the Huns 
 saw the shape we were in, they began to close, firing 
 as they came. But even then they were careful to 
 choose a direction of approach on which the after 
 gun could not be brought to bear. With the fore- 
 most tubes out of action, and no crew to serve them 
 in any case, there was nothing for me to do but sit 
 tight and wait for orders. So I just chucked my 
 head-gear, which was no longer of use with the 
 voice-pipes gone, and settled back in my seat to 
 watch the show and wait till I was wanted. There 
 was really nothing to stay there for, but it was my 
 * Action Station,' and I knew it was the place I 
 would be looked for if I was needed. On the score 
 of cover, one place is as good an another in a de- 
 stroyer, anyhow. 
 
 " It must have been the fact that the after gun 
 
282 
 
 was the only one still in action that brought the 
 captain back from the bridge. There was really 
 nothing to keep him on the bridge, anyway. He 
 seemed to be making a sort of general round, try- 
 ing to see what shape things were in and bucking 
 everybody up. He was as cool and cheery as if it 
 was an ordinary target practice, with no Hun 
 cruisers closing in to blow us out of the water. I 
 saw him clapping some of the after gun's crew on 
 the back, and when he came along to the foremost 
 tubes, not noticing probably that I was the only one 
 left there, he sung out: * Stick it, lads; we're not 
 done yet.' Those were his exact words. I remem- 
 ber grinning to myself at being called ' lads/ 
 
 " But we were done, even then. The Huns were 
 inside of a mile by now, and firing for the water- 
 line, evidently trying to put us down just as 
 quickly as they could. 
 
 " All their misses were * shorts.' I don't remem- 
 ber a single ' over/ They were still taking no un- 
 necessary chances. As soon as they were close 
 enough to see that our torpedo tubes were probably 
 jammed to port, they altered course and crossed 
 our bows and steamed past the other side, where 
 there was no chance of our slipping over a mouldie 
 at them. 
 
 " We were already settling rapidly, with a heavy 
 list to port, and as soon as the captain saw she was 
 finished, he gave the order : ' Abandon ship. Every 
 man for himself ! ' Those were the last words I 
 
AGAINST ODDS 
 
 283 
 
 Heard him speak. He went below just after that to 
 see about ditching the secret books, I believe, and 
 when I saw him again it was just before she sank, 
 and he was pacing the quarterdeck and talking 
 quietly with the First Lieutenant, 
 
 " As our only boat had been smashed to kindling- 
 wood, there was nothing to it but to take to the 
 Carley Floats, and the first thing I did after hear- 
 ing the order to abandon ship was to see to cutting 
 one of these loose. On account of our oilskins and 
 life-preservers, neither myself nor any of the three 
 or four lads from the after gun's crew that ran to 
 the float with me could get at our clasp-knives. 
 Luckily, one of the Ward Koorn stewards came to 
 the rescue with three silver-plated butter-knives 
 from the pantry, and with these we finally managed 
 to worry our way through the lashings. Then we 
 pitched the little webbed ' dough-nut ' (as the 
 Carley Floats are called) over the settling stern 
 and jumped after it. Four or five minutes later, 
 after heeling slowly to port through fifty or sixty 
 degrees, she gave a sudden lurch and went down, 
 turning completely over as she sank, so that her 
 bottom showed for a few seconds. The captain, 
 who could have followed us just as well as not, 
 seemed to make no effort to save himself, and must 
 have gone down with her. I can't help believing 
 that was the way he wanted it to happen. 
 
 " We had clambered into the float as fast as we 
 could, and I think some one must have said some- 
 
284 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 thing about the danger of being caught over an 
 exploding depth-charge, for we were paddling (all 
 of these floats have short-handled paddles lashed to 
 their webbing) away from the ship as fast as we 
 could when she went down. Someone remembered 
 that one of the ' ash cans ' had been set on the 
 ' ready - when we went to ' Action Stations,' and 
 no one recalled seeing it thrown back to ' safe ' be- 
 fore we went overboard. It was an anxious 
 moment, waiting after she ducked under the sea, 
 for we had not been able to paddle more than a 
 hundred yards, and the detonation of a depth- 
 charge had been known to paralyse men swimming 
 in the water at twice that distance. Luckily, this 
 particular charge must have been set for a con- 
 siderable depth, and it is also possible that the hull 
 of the ship absorbed or deflected some of its force. 
 At any rate, the shock of it, when it came, though it 
 knocked us violently against each other and left 
 ,a tingling sensation on the skin of all the sub- 
 merged part of one's body, did not do anyone 
 serious injury. 
 
 " When we came to count noses, there turned out 
 to be eight of us on the float two sub-lieutenants, 
 the captain's steward, myself, and the remnants of 
 the crew of the after gun. A few minutes later we 
 sighted a couple of men who looked to be struggling 
 in the water, but turned out to be supporting them- 
 selves on a fragment of < dough-nut/ which had 
 broken loose when the ship sank. That, strange 
 
AGAINST ODDS 
 
 285 
 
 to say, was the only bit of wreckage that came to 
 the surface. We took these men aboard, and the 
 ten of us weighted the overloaded float so that is 
 submerged till the water reached our armpits. We 
 were a good deal better off than it would seem, 
 though, for the most of us were heavily dressed, and 
 the animal heat of a man keeps him warm for a long 
 time under oilskins and wool. The only ones that 
 suffered much were a couple of lads who didn't have 
 any more sense than to ditch most of their togs 
 before they went over the side. They said it was 
 so as not to be hampered in swimming as if they 
 expected to do the ' Australian crawl ' to Nor- 
 way or the Shetlands ! These two did begin to get 
 a bit down-hearted and ' shivery ' when the cold 
 struck into the marrow of their bones, and it was 
 with the idea of bucking them up a peg or two that 
 we started singing. No, I don't just remember all 
 that we did warble, except, I'm glad to say, that 
 'Tipperary' wasn't on the programme, and that 
 this did include two or three hymns. You're quite 
 right. There's nothing very warming to a chilled 
 man in hymns, and I'm not trying to account for 
 why we sang them. The fact remains that we did, 
 just the same, and that we all, including the chaps 
 in their underclothes, lived to sing again. 
 
 " There was a bit of a disappointment when an 
 armed trawler, which was evidently searching for 
 survivors, passed within a mile without sighting us 
 or hearing our shouts, but with the life-boat of one 
 
of the sunk Norwegian steamers we bad better 
 luck. She came bowling along under sail about ten 
 o'clock in the morning, and, on sighting the black 
 silk handkerchief we hoisted at the end of a paddle- 
 blade, eased olT her sheet and stood over to pick us 
 up. As there were only six men in her, we were not 
 badly ofl' for room, while the store of biscuit and 
 polled stulT- to say nothing of smokes they had 
 managed to throw aboard before their ship sunk 
 was more than enough for the two days that it took 
 us to row and sail to Bergen." 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 ROUNDING UP FRITZ 
 
 THERE are only two or three conditions under 
 which a destroyer can hope to surprise a U- 
 boat on the surface, and none of these is ap- 
 proximated at the end of a clear North Sea summer 
 afternoon with the stalking craft trying to 
 approach from a direction which silhouettes its 
 leanlv purposeful profile against the golden glim- 
 mer of the sunset clouds. This particular cap- 
 sule of Kultur, rising with typical Hunnish 
 effrontery for his evening constitutional in an 
 especially well-watched area while it was yet broad 
 daylight, still had the advantage of visibility suffi- 
 ciently on his side to make the thing a good deal 
 less risky than it looked. The skipper, doubtless 
 coolly puffing his pipe as he lounged over the rail 
 of the bridge and filled his lungs with fresh air, 
 must have seen the masts and funnels of the speed- 
 ing Flash for a good half hour before the latter's 
 look-out sang out that he had picked up the con- 
 ning-tower of what looked to be a U-boat two 
 points off the starboard bow; so that all that was 
 needed was the change of course which followed 
 that report to give Fritz fair warning that it was 
 
 287 
 
288 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 time to hide his head for a while. Indeed, he must 
 have been going down even as he was sighted, for 
 it was the matter of but a very few seconds more 
 before the Flash found herself tearing at upwards 
 of a thousand yards a minute into an empty sea. 
 
 Under the circumstances, it is probable we gave 
 that Fritz a fairly good run for his money in 
 showering the spot where he had disappeared with 
 what depth-charges we could spare, and then, like 
 a fox-terrier after a rat, standing by and " watch- 
 ing the hole." Unluckily, we had used a good part 
 of our stock of " cans " the day before, when a 
 rather more promising opportunity for attack had 
 offered itself, while as for " watching the hole," 
 this particular patch of the North Sea chanced to 
 be one in which that way of playing the game was 
 fraught with special difficulties because it was suffi- 
 ciently shallow for a submarine to lie doggo on 
 the bottom without danger of having its shell 
 crushed in by the pressure of the water. This 
 defeated the uncannily sure way of tracking the 
 U-boat down by " listening," and demanded another 
 form of special treatment, which we were not, 
 however, at the moment prepared to administer. 
 
 Slim as the chance was, the captain was reluc- 
 tant to leave while any hope remained, and it was 
 only a signal ordering the Flash to join in some 
 other work that had turned up (a destroyer is 
 subject to as many kinds of summons as a country 
 doctor) that took him off in the end. Mooring a 
 
ROUNDING UP FRITZ 
 
 289 
 
 buoy to mark the spot for " future reference,'' the 
 captain saw her headed off on the course she was 
 to hold till daybreak, and then took me down to the 
 Chart House for a bowl of ship's cocoa before turn- 
 ing in. It was some question I asked about the 
 practice of placing buoys over possible U-boat 
 graveyards, to make it easy to resume investiga- 
 tions if desired, that started him on a train of anti- 
 submarine reminiscence that led back to one of the 
 smartest achievements of its kind in the whole 
 course of the sea war. 
 
 " There are times," he said, leaning back on the 
 narrow couch that served as his " sea-bed," and 
 bracing with outstretched legs against the twisting 
 roll, " that a Fritz will do things that would lead a 
 superficial observer to think that he had a sense of 
 humour. Of course, we know that he hasn't any- 
 thing of the kind (any more than he has honour, 
 sportsmanship, decency, or any other of the attri- 
 butes of a normal civilised human being). But the 
 illusion is there just the same, especially when he 
 tries on such little stunts as the one he incubated 
 a couple of months ago in connection with a buoy 
 I dropped to mark the spot where there was a 
 chance that my depth-charges might have sent him 
 to the bottom. 
 
 " It was just about such an ' indeterminate ' sort 
 of a strafe as the one we've just had no chance for 
 gun-fire, not much to go by for planting depth- 
 charges, and, in the end, nothing definite to indicate 
 
290 
 
 SA-HOUNDS 
 
 that any good lias been done. So, in case it was 
 decided that my report was of a nature to justify 
 further looking into, I left a securely moored buoy 
 to furnish a guide as to where to begin, quite as 
 we have to-night. Well, it chanced that the S.N.O. 
 at Base reckoned that there was just enough of a 
 hope to warrant following up. Indeed, you may 
 be sure there isn't much that isn't followed up 
 these days, now that w r e've got our whole compre- 
 hensive plan into operation and adequate craft to 
 support it with. So he sent out quite a little fleet 
 of us craft fitted to do all the various little odds 
 and ends of things that help to make sure one way 
 or the other what has really happened to Fritz. 
 Luckily, Flash was able to return with them. If 
 she had not if someone who had not seen the lay 
 of things after the strafe the night before had not 
 been along to ' draw comparisons ' Fritz's little 
 joke might have turned out a good deal more 
 pointed than it did. 
 
 " We picked up the buoy without any difficulty, 
 as the day was fine and the sea fairly smooth just 
 the weather one wanted for that kind of work. 
 While we were still a mile or more distant, the look- 
 out reported a broad patch of oil spreading out from 
 the buoy for several hundred yards on all sides. 
 This became visible from the bridge presently, and 
 at almost the same time my glass showed fragments 
 of what appeared to be wreckage floating both in 
 and beyond the ' sleek ' of oil. Now if there had 
 
ROUNDING UP FRITZ 
 
 291 
 
 been any evidence whatever of either oil or wreck- 
 age the night before I should not have failed to 
 hail this morning's exhibit with a glad whoop and 
 nose right in to investigate. But as, when I gave 
 up the fight, I had dropped that buoy into an ex- 
 tremely clean patch of water even after the stir- 
 ring my depth-charges had given it the plenitude 
 of flotsam did not fail to arouse a certain amount 
 of suspicion. 
 
 " Ordering the sloops and trawlers to stand-off- 
 and-on at a safe distance, I went with the Flash to 
 have a look at a number of fragments that were 
 floating a couple of cables' lengths away from the 
 buoy. A piece of box evidently a preserved fruit 
 or condensed milk case with German letters sten- 
 cilled across one end was undoubtedly of eflemy 
 origin, as was also a biscuit tin with patches of its 
 gaudy paper still adhering to it. I did not like the 
 careful way the cover of the latter had been put on, 
 however, and, besides, tins and cases are quite the 
 sort of thing any submarine throws over just as 
 fast as it is through with them. It was some real 
 wreckage I was looking for, and this it presently 
 appeared that I had found when the bow wave 
 threw aside a deeply floating fragment of what 
 even before we picked it up I recognised as newly 
 split teak. Closer inspection revealed the fact that 
 it was newly split all right, but also the fact that 
 an axe or hatchet had had a good deal to do with 
 the splitting. What had probably been a part of a 
 
292 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 bunk or locker had apparently been prised off with 
 a bar and then chopped up into jagged strips. At- 
 tempts to obliterate the marks of bar and axe by 
 pounding them against some rough metal surface 
 had been too hasty and crude to effect their 
 purpose. 
 
 " * That settles it/ I said to myself. ' Fritz is try- 
 ing to play a little joke on us by making us think 
 he is lying blown-up on the bottom, while, in fact, 
 he is probably lying off somewhere waiting to slip 
 a slug into one of the most likely looking of the 
 salvage ships. Now that we've twigged the game, 
 however, we'll have to do what we can to defeat 
 it.' As senior officer, I ordered the three destroyers 
 present to start screening in widening circles, while 
 on the off-chance that there really was a wreck 
 on the bottom a pair of trawlers were sent to drag 
 about the bottom under the messy patch with an 
 1 explosive sweep.' 
 
 " My diagnosis was quite correct as far as it 
 went, but it did not go quite far enough ; still by 
 the special intervention of the sweet little cherubim 
 who sits up aloft to keep watch o'er the life of poor 
 Jack my plan of operation was quite as sound as 
 if I had all the facts of the case spread out before 
 me. Had the U-boat really been lurking round 
 waiting for a pot at some of the ships trying to save 
 his supposed remains something that we never 
 gathered any definite evidence on our screening 
 tactics would probably have prevented his success; 
 
ROUNDING UP FRITZ 
 
 293 
 
 while the trawlers, with their sweep, furnished the 
 best antidote for the little surprise party that he 
 already had prepared for us. 
 
 " Scarcely had the trawlers entered the oily area 
 than the jar of a heavy under-sea explosion jolted 
 against the bottom of the Flash, which, a thousand 
 yards distant, was just beginning to work up to 
 full speed. Almost immediately three or four other 
 explosions followed, coming so close together as to 
 make one rippling detonation of tremendous vio- 
 lence. An instant later I saw several columns of 
 grimy foam shoot skyward, two or three of them so 
 close together that they seemed to ' boil ' into each 
 other as they spilled and spread in falling. Al- 
 though neither of the trawlers appeared to be 
 immediately over any of the explosions, both of 
 them received terrific shocks. One of them I dis- 
 tinctly saw rear up till it seemed almost to be 
 balanced on its rudder-post as a round hump of 
 green water drove under it, while the scuppers of 
 the other spurted white as they cleared the flood 
 that a spreading foam geyser had thrown upon the 
 deck. It seemed impossible that either of them 
 could survive such shocks as I knew they must have 
 received, and I fully expected to see nothing better 
 than two foundering wrecks emerge from the 
 smother which hovered above the scene of the explo- 
 sions. Imagine my surprise, then, when two junk- 
 like profiles (they were both of the marvellously 
 sea-worthy < Iceland trawler > type) came bobbing 
 
294 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 serenely into sight again, and I noted with my glass 
 that neither appeared to have suffered serious dam- 
 age. On the score of lives, a tom-cat has nothing 
 the best of a trawler. If it had been otherwise our 
 whole fleet of them and they, with the drifters, 
 form the main strands of the finer meshes of our 
 anti-U-boat net would have been wiped out many 
 times over. 
 
 " At the instant the jar of the first explosion 
 made itself felt, the thought flashed through my 
 mind that there actually was a U-boat lying on the 
 bottom, and that the explosive charge on the sweep 
 had been detonated against its hull. The 
 1 bunched ' explosions immediately following also 
 lent themselves to this theory, and it was not till 
 the distinct columns of blown water began rising 
 in the air that I surmised the real cause of them 
 mines, probably laid so close together that the 
 explosion of the first had set off the others. This 
 fact we were shortly able to establish beyond a 
 doubt. 
 
 " What had happened, as nearly as we could 
 reconstruct it, was this: The U-boat had been a 
 mine-layer, probably interrupted on its way to lay 
 its eggs off one of our main fleet bases. The 
 chances are that it had been sufficiently injured 
 by my depth-charges to make it more of a risk than 
 its skipper cared to take to proceed farther from his 
 base; quite likely, indeed, he had to put back at 
 once. Then the chance of preparing a little sur- 
 
ROUNDING UP FRITZ 295 
 
 prise party for the ship responsible for his trouble 
 must have occurred to him, and the result was that 
 a snug little nest of mines was laid all the way 
 around the marking buoy. Having more mines 
 than he needed to barrage the buoy, he had scuttled 
 several of those remaining after the first job was 
 completed, and these had been the ones set off by 
 the explosive charge on the trawlers' sweep. The 
 spreading of wreckage as bait around the trap was 
 probably an afterthought, for it was so hurriedly 
 done that it really defeated the end it was intended 
 to accomplish. I am inclined to think, in fact, that, 
 if the mines had laid round the buoy, with no 
 spread of oil or wreckage left to decoy us into them, 
 they might have had a victim or two to their credit. 
 They were laid shallow enough to have bumped 
 both sloops and destroyers, and the exploding of 
 a mine against the bows of one or the other of 
 these may well have been the first warning we had 
 of Fritz's little joke. As it was, that part of the 
 show was so crudely done that it gave away that 
 something was wrong. 
 
 " Yes, I have always thought of that as ' Fritz's 
 little joke/ " continued the captain, bracing himself 
 at a new angle to meet a rollicking cork-screw 
 action that was working into the ship's wallowings. 
 " It was just the sort of a plant I would like to 
 have left for Fritz, if our roles had been reversed, 
 and for a while I felt rather more kindly toward 
 all Fritzes on account of having knocked up 
 
296 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 against it. That feeling persisted until three or 
 four months later, when the fortunes of war in 
 the shape of a luckily-planted depth-charge paved 
 the way for an opportunity for me to tell the story 
 to a certain Hun Unterseeboot officer during the 
 hour or two he was my guest on the way to base. 
 He spoke English fairly, and understood it well; 
 so that I was able to run through the yarn just 
 about as I have told it to you. He gave vent to his 
 approval in guttural ' Ya's ' and grunts of satis- 
 faction until I ended by asking him if he didn't 
 think it was a jolly clever little joke. And what do 
 you think he said to that? 
 
 " ' Choke/ he boomed explosively ; ' choke, vy, 
 mein frent, dot vos not ein choke ad all. He vos 
 dryin to zink your destroy'r. Dot ist no choke.' ' 
 
 The captain stretched himself with a whimsical 
 smile. " How unpleasant it would be to be ship- 
 mates with a chap like that who couldn't see the 
 funny side of being blown up," he observed 
 presently. 
 
 " Just as unpleasant," I replied, " as it is pleas- 
 ant to be shipmates with a man who could." 
 
 After thus rising to the occasion, I was em- 
 boldened to ask the captain to tell me a little more 
 about that " luckily-planted depth-charge " he had 
 referred to so casually, and its train of conse- 
 quences. 
 
 " Here is the result," he said with a smile, hand- 
 ing me several small kodak prints from his pocket- 
 
ROUNDING UP FRITZ 
 
 297 
 
 book. " What little yarn there is to tell I'll rattle 
 off for you with pleasure after I've been up to the 
 bridge for a bit of a * look-see.' Seems as if she is 
 banging into it harder than she ought for this 
 course and speed." 
 
 The light went out as the automatic switch cut 
 off the current with the opening of the door, and 
 when it flashed on again, as the door was 
 slammed shut, I found myself alone, with the prints 
 lying in the middle of the chart of the North Sea. 
 Two of these showed a thin sliver of a submarine 
 that might have been of almost any type. A third, 
 however, showed an unmistakable U-boat, heeling 
 slightly, and with a whaler alongside, evidently in 
 the act of taking off some of the men crowded upon 
 the narrow forward deck. And in the background 
 of this print was lying a long slender four-funneled 
 destroyer that I recognised at once as either the 
 Flash or another of the same class. On the back 
 of this print was written " Quarter view of U.C. 
 at 14.10. Flash's whaler transferring prisoners; 
 Splash's whaler's crew clearing decks of wounded." 
 
 A fourth print, similar to the third but much 
 covered with arrows and writing, appeared to be a 
 kind of key to the latter. An angling sort of bar, 
 which appeared as a black line above the bows in 
 the photograph, was labelled " Nut Cutter," and 
 several other characteristic U-boat devices were 
 similarly indicated. These all established points of 
 great technical value, doubtless, but a keener 
 
298 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 human interest attached to the legends penciled at 
 the feather ends of arrows pointing to two figures 
 on the deck of the submarine, just abaft the con- 
 ning-tower. Opposite the one that appeared to be 
 leaning over a light rail, with one arm extended as 
 though he was in the act of giving a command, 
 was written, " Deceased captain of submarine." 
 Against the other, a sprawling inert heap huddled 
 up against the conning-tower, appeared, " Man 
 with both legs shot off (alive)." 
 
 There was a lot of history crowded into that 
 scrawled-over print, and I was still gazing at it 
 with awed fascination when the opening door 
 winked off the light, and then closed again to reveal 
 the captain, dripping with the blown brine of the 
 wave that the Flash had put her nose into at the 
 moment he was coming down the ladder. 
 
 " Rather more of a sea than I expected to-night," 
 he said as he pulled his duffel-coat over his head 
 and sat down to kick off his sea-boots ; " so I've 
 slowed her down a few knots and we'll jog along 
 easy till daylight." Then, as he recognised the 
 photo in my hand, " Rather a grim story that little 
 kodak tells, isn't it? You'll find just about all of 
 the yarn you were asking for down there in black 
 and white." 
 
 " Not quite," I replied hastily, recognising from 
 long experience the forerunning signs of a modest 
 man trying to side-step going into details respect- 
 ing some episode in which he happens to have 
 
ROUNDING UP FRITZ 
 
 299 
 
 played a leading part. " Not quite. It chances 
 that I've heard something of the bagging of U.C. 
 
 from Admiral not long after it occurred, and 
 
 he said it was one of the cleverest bits of work of 
 the kind that anyone has pulled off. I didn't con- 
 nect you and the Flash with it, though. But now 
 that you're caught with the goods, the chance to 
 hear several of the details the Admiral had failed 
 to learn is too good to miss. How did you manage 
 to slip up on her in the first place, and did you 
 
 wing her skipper at the outset, and ? " 
 
 Evidently figuring it would be best not to let me 
 pile up too big a lead of questions for him to an- 
 swer, the captain sat down resignedly and took up 
 the thread of the story at somewhere near the be- 
 ginning. 
 
 " How did we manage to slip up on her? " he 
 repeated. " Well, principally, I should say, be- 
 cause she was ' preoccupied.' I told you last night 
 that I used to get away for a bit of tiger shooting 
 while I was on Eastern stations, and you mentioned 
 that you'd had a go at it yourself now and then. 
 So we both have probably picked up a smattering 
 of the ways of tigers. Now I've always maintained 
 that the fact that I had given a bit of study to the 
 ways of man-eaters was a big help to me in under- 
 standing the ways of Huns. A hungry tiger, on 
 the prowl for something to devour, is about the 
 hardest brute in the world to stalk successfully; 
 while, on the other hand, one that has made its 
 
300 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 kill and is sating its bloody lust upon it is jusi 
 about the easiest. It's just the same with a U-boat. 
 The one best chance we have of surprising one on 
 the surface is while it is in the act of sinking a 
 merchantman by bombs or shell-fire, or just after 
 the victim has been torpedoed and the pirate is 
 standing-by to fire on the boats and pick up any 
 officers it may think worth while to take prisoner. 
 That was what was responsible for the luck that 
 befell me in the instance in question. The U.C. 
 a day or two previously to the one on which she 
 was slated to meet her finish, had sunk the British 
 merchantman Hilda Bronson, and carried off as 
 prisoners the captain and mate. These men, after 
 we rescued them, were able to give us some account 
 of how their hosts spent the morning of the day on 
 which they encountered the Flash. Their general 
 practice, of course, was to submerge in the daytime 
 and run on the surface, charging batteries, during 
 the night. Emboldened by two or three recent suc- 
 cesses in sinking small merchantmen by gun-fire 
 and bombs, they appeared to have become very con- 
 temptuous of our anti-submarine measures, and 
 declared that they were just as safe on the surface 
 in the daytime as at night. Bearing out the prob- 
 ability that these words were by no means spoken 
 in jest, is the fact that they did not dive at day- 
 break, but continued to cruise on the surface on 
 the look out for unarmed ships which could be 
 safely sunk without risking the loss of a torpedo or 
 
ROUNDING UP FRITZ 
 
 301 
 
 damage to themselves by gun-fire. This class of 
 ships fortunately, there are few of them left save 
 under neutral flags was the U-boat's favourite 
 prey. 
 
 " About eight o'clock their search was rewarded. 
 The two British sailors heard a number of shots, 
 and presently understood the U-boat skipper to de- 
 clare that he had just put down a small Norwegian 
 steamer with shell-fire. As they were still full up 
 with the stores looted from the Hilda Bronson, no 
 attempt was made to take off anything from the 
 sinking Norwegian. All morning the pirate con- 
 tinued cruising on the surface, diving only once. 
 Great attention was given to surroundings, stops 
 being made about once an hour to heave the lead. 
 In this they displayed good sense beyond a doubt, 
 for it is worth a lot to a submarine to know whether 
 it can dive straight on to the bottom without en- 
 countering a pressure strong enough to crush it in. 
 
 " About noon another helpless victim this time 
 a British merchant steamer was sighted, and the 
 imprisoned sailors counted nine shots before tre- 
 mendous consternation and confusion spread 
 through the submarine as fire was opened on her 
 by some ship coming up from the same direction as 
 the merchantman bore, and she dived with all pos- 
 sible dispatch. This was where the Flash began to 
 take a hand in the game. 
 
 " Now the fact that this particular Fritz ought 
 easily to have sighted us at twice the distance at 
 
302 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 which we opened with our foremost 12-pounder 
 bears out exactly what I said about the traits the 
 Hun and the tiger have in common. They are both 
 ' foul-feeders/ and begin to see so red, once the 
 blood-lust of prospective satiation is upon them, 
 that they are half blinded to everything else. If 
 this fellow hadn't been so absorbed in doing that 
 little steamer to death he need never have let us 
 get within a range that would have permitted more 
 than a swift shot or two at his disappearing con- 
 ning-tower. It was his sheer ' blood-drunkenness ' 
 that gave us our chance. 
 
 "It was a day of very low visibility not over a 
 mile and a half, or two miles at the outside and I 
 was out on a bit of an escort stunt of small impor- 
 tance. The first intimation I had that anything 
 out of the usual run was afoot came in the form of 
 sharp gun-fire on my starboard beam. It sounded 
 fairly close at hand, and though no ship was vis- 
 ible, there was just a hint of luminosity in the mist- 
 curtain to indicate the direction of the gun-flashes. 
 The helm was immediately put hard-a-port and the 
 telegraphs at Full Speed, and off went the Flash to 
 investigate. Scarcely had I turned than a wire- 
 less signal was brought to me on the bridge repeat- 
 ing the calls of assistance of a steamer that was 
 being shelled by an enemy submarine. That little 
 ' flying start ' of mine, which involved leaving the 
 ship I was escorting and jumping out without 
 waiting for orders, gave me the minute or so to 
 
ROUNDING UP FEITZ 
 
 303 
 
 tlie good which probably made all the difference 
 between success and failure. But that is quite 
 characteristic of destroyer work ; more than in any 
 other class of ship, you are called on to decide for 
 yourself, to jump out on your own. 
 
 " The first thing I saw was the dim blur of a 
 small merchantman taking shape in the mist, and 
 as the image sharpened, the splash of falling pro- 
 jectiles became visible. She was throwing out a 
 cloud of smoke and zigzagging in a panicky sort of 
 way in an endeavour to avoid the shells which were 
 exploding nearer and nearer at every shot. As she 
 caught sight of the Flash she altered course and 
 headed straight up for us, and, busy as my mind 
 was at the moment, I could not help thinking how 
 like her action was to that of an Aberdeen pup I 
 used to own when he saw me coming to extricate 
 him from his daily scrap with a neighbour's fox 
 terrier. 
 
 " It was just at the moment that the merchant- 
 man turned up to get under our wing that the 
 sharpening gun-flashes began revealing the con- 
 ning-tower of a submarine. We had gone to Action 
 Stations at once, of course, and I am practically 
 certain that the opening shot of the fo'c'sl' gun was 
 the first warning Fritz had that his little kultur 
 course was about to be interrupted. Under the 
 circumstances, the fact that he effected his disap- 
 pearing act in from thirty to forty seconds indi- 
 cates very smart handling; too smart, indeed, to 
 
304 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 give us a fair chance to get in a hit with a shell, 
 although the gunners made a very keen bid for it. 
 Their turn came a few moments later, however. 
 
 " Once Fritz had passed from sight there was 
 only one thing to do, the thing we tried to do to- 
 night depth-charge him. And there really was 
 no difference in what we did on the one occasion 
 and what we did on the other nothing, I mean to 
 say, except the result. Estimating his course from 
 the point of submergence, I steered directly over 
 where I judged he would be and let go one of those 
 very useful type < ' charges. Well," the cap- 
 tain smiled in a deprecatory sort of way " the 
 depth-charge isn't exactly what you'd call a 
 ' weapon of precision,' and so it follows that when 
 you hit what you are after with one it must be 
 largely a matter of luck. Judgment? Oh, yes, a 
 certain amount of it, but I'd rather have luck than 
 judgment any day. At any rate, this was my lucky 
 day. Within fifteen seconds from the moment I 
 felt the jolt of the detonating charge Fritz's con- 
 ning-tower was breaking surface on my starboard 
 beam. Helm had been put hard-a-port as the charge 
 was dropped, so that all the starboard guns were 
 bearing on the conning-tower the instant it bobbed 
 up. This was right on the outer rim of the ' boil ' 
 of the explosion just where it would be expected 
 and, of course, it presented an easy target. To say 
 it was riddled would be putting it mildly. One 
 shot alone from the foremost six-pounder would 
 
ROUNDING UP FRITZ 
 
 305 
 
 have made it out of the question for it to dive again, 
 even had other complications which had already 
 set in left it in shape to face submergence. 
 
 " A second or two more, and the whole length of 
 our bag was showing, riding fairly level fore-and- 
 aft, but with a slight list to starboard. We had now 
 turned, and from our position on the submarine's 
 port quarter could plainly see the crew come bob- 
 bing out of the hatch on to the deck. Each of 
 them had his hands lifted in the approved ( Kam- 
 erad ' fashion, and took good care to keep them 
 there as long as they noticed any active movement 
 around the business ends of our guns. As a matter 
 of fact, as there had been no colours flying to 
 strike, those lifted hands were the only tangible 
 tokens of surrender we received. As we had her at 
 our mercy, however, they looked conclusive enough 
 for me, and I sent a boat away as quickly as it 
 could be lowered and manned. 
 
 " It was not until this boat returned that I 
 learned of the two British merchant marine 
 officers who had been aboard her through it all. 
 The Huns had crowded them out in their stampede 
 for the hatches, so that they had been the very last 
 
 to reach the deck. Mr. X , who was in charge 
 
 of the whaler, compensated as fully as he could for 
 this by taking them off first. The experiences they 
 had been through had been just about as terrible 
 as men could ever be called upon to face ; and yet, 
 when they clambered aboard Flashy they were smil- 
 
306 
 
 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 ing, clear of head and eye, and altogether quite un- 
 shaken. You've certainly got to take off your hat 
 to these merchant marine chaps; they've fought 
 half the battle for the Navy. 
 
 " The story they had to tell of what they had 
 seen and heard during their enforced cruise in the 
 U-boat was an interesting one, but on the final act 
 largely because the curtain had been rung down 
 so quickly there was little they could add to what 
 had passed before my own eye. The shock from the 
 depth-charge which appears to have detonated 
 just about right to have the maximum effect was 
 terrific. The whole submarine seemed to have been 
 forced sideways through the water by the jolt, and 
 just as all the lights went out one of them said that 
 he saw the starboard side of the compartment he 
 was in it was what would correspond to the Ward 
 Room, I believe, a space more or less reserved for 
 the officers bending inward before the pressure. 
 Instantly the spurt of water was heard flooding in 
 both fore and aft, and that alone was sufficient to 
 make it imperative for her to rise at once. As it 
 was only a minute or two since she submerged, 
 everyone was at station for bringing her to the 
 surface again, so that not a second was lost in 
 spite of the inevitable confusion following the sud- 
 den dive and the explosion of the depth-charge. 
 
 " There had been a mad lot of rushes for the 
 ladders and hatches, but the skipper, it appears, got 
 up first, through the conning-tower to the bridge, 
 
ROUNDING UP FRITZ 
 
 307 
 
 is the official leader of the ' Kamerad Parade.' He 
 was just in time to connect with the first shell from 
 our foremost six-pounder, and that, or one of the 
 succeeding projectiles which were fired before it 
 was evident they were trying to surrender, ac- 
 counted for several others in the van of the opening 
 rush. The officer in charge of the whaler reported 
 seeing several dead bodies lying on the deck and 
 floating in the water, among these being that of 
 the captain, which was taken back to Base and 
 given a naval funeral. There were also two or 
 three wounded. Of unwounded there were fifteen 
 men and two officers, out of something like twenty- 
 four in the original crew. One of the officers 
 claimed to be a relation of Prince Henry of Prussia, 
 but why he didn't claim the Kaiser himself, who is 
 full brother to Prince Henry, I could never quite 
 make out. As this was the same officer I told you 
 of as not being able to see a joke, I didn't think 
 it worth while to try to follow the ramifications of 
 his family tree any farther. The engineer asserted 
 that he had already been in eight warships which 
 had been destroyed, these including a battleship 
 and two or three cruisers and motor launches. I 
 did the best I could to comfort him by telling him 
 that, in case the Flash wasn't put down by a U-boat 
 in the three or four hours which would elapse be- 
 fore we made Base, he need have no further worries 
 on the sinking score for some time to come. Just 
 the same," he concluded, with a shake of the head, 
 
308 SEA-HOUNDS 
 
 " I was glad to see that chap safely over the side. 
 No sailor likes to be shipmates with a < Jonah,' 
 especially in times like these. 
 
 " By the time we had finished transferring the 
 prisoners the Splash had joined us, and her captain, 
 being my senior, took charge of the rest of the 
 show. On my reporting that I had several severely 
 wounded Huns aboard, he ordered me to return to 
 Base with them. 
 
 " I think that's about all there is to the yarn," 
 said the captain, rising and starting to pull on his 
 sea-togs preparatory to going up for another 
 " look-see " before turning In. Then something 
 flashed to his mind as an afterthought, and he re- 
 laxed for a moment, red of face and breathless, from 
 a struggle with a refractory boot. 
 
 " There was one thing I shall always be glad 
 about in connection with that little affair," he said 
 thoughtfully, a really serious look in his eyes for 
 almost the first time since I had seen him directing 
 the dropping of the depth-charges early in the eve- 
 ning; "and that is that I didn't know in advance 
 that those two British merchant marine officers 
 
 were imprisoned in the U.C. ' ' with the Huns 
 
 when we came driving down to drop a ' can ' on her. 
 My duty would have been quite clear, of course, 
 and, as you doubtless know, some of our chaps have 
 faced harder alternatives than that without flinch- 
 ing or deviating an iota from the one thing that it 
 was up to them to do; but, just the same, I'm not 
 
ROUNDING UP FEITZ 
 
 309 
 
 half certain that the instinct, or whatever you 
 want to call it, which seemed to jog my elbow at 
 the psychological moment that charge had to be let 
 go to do its best work I'm not at all sure that in- 
 stinct would have served me so well had I known 
 that success might have to be purchased by sending 
 two of my own countrymen yes, more than that, 
 two sailors like myself to eternity with the 
 pirates who held them as hostages. Yes, it was a 
 mercy that I didn't have that on my mind at the 
 moment when I needed all the wits and nerve I had 
 to get that ' can ' off in the right place." 
 
 Visibly embarrassed at having allowed his feel- 
 ings to betray him a British naval officer into a 
 display of something almost akin to emotion, the 
 captain stamped noisily into the stuck sea-boot and 
 disappeared, behind a slammed door, into the night. 
 
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