The Mystery Ship 1

The Mystery Ship 1

The Mystery Ship

A Story of the 'Q' Ships During the Great War

 

Author: Percy F. Westerman

 

 

CHAPTER

I. THE TWO SUB-LIEUTENANTS

II. ON PATROL

III. SUNK IN ACTION

IV. THE SPY

V. THE PROWESS OF KAPITAN VON PREUGFELD

VI. PICKED UP

VII. A U-BOAT OF SORTS

VIII. VON PREUSSEN'S BLANK DAY

IX. HOW THE LIGHTERS FARED

X. THE SALVAGE SYNDICATE

XI. VON PREUGFELD'S RESOLVE

XII. PRISONERS OF WAR

XIII. A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE

XIV. A DOUBLE DECOY

XV. CONFIRMED SUSPICIONS

XVI. COVERING HIS TRACKS

XVII. MUTINY

XVIII. A BIG PROPOSITION

XlX. THE TABLES TURNED

XX. THE END OF U 247

XXI. BLUFFED

XXII. ON THE TRAIL

XXIII. "PREPARE FOR IMMEDIATE ACTION"

XXIV. IN THE HOUR OF HIS TRIUMPH

XXV. TRAPPED

XXVI. HER LAST BOLT

XXVII. BATTERED BUT UNDAUNTED

XXVIII. THE HOMECOMING

XXIX. WHO FIRED THAT TORPEDO?

XXX. A NIGHT OF COINCIDENCES

XXXI. THE GREAT SURRENDER

XXXII. A NAVY IMPOTENT

XXXIII. THE RELIEF VESSEL

XXXIV. THE SCUTTLING

XXXV. WHAT THEY FOUGHT FOR

 

 

 

 

THE MYSTERY SHIP

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER I

 

THE TWO SUB-LIEUTENANTS

 

 

"BELOW there! You in, George?"

 

George--otherwise Kenneth Meredith, sub-lieutenant R.N.V.R. and

second-in-command of H.M. Motor Launch 1071--deliberately blotted

five lines of his weekly epistle to the fond ones at home.

Unperturbed by a heavy fusillade upon the deck--the sound being

caused by a broken golf club vigorously manipulated by an as yet

invisible person--Meredith dexterously threw into envelopes and

blotting-pad into a conveniently placed rack, rammed the cork into

the glass ink-bottle, and thrust his fountain-pen, which either

"founted" like a miniature Niagara or else obstinately refused to

"fount" at all, into the breast pocket of his monkey-jacket.

 

Interruptions are many and varied on board the M.L.'s. At almost any

hour of the day and night when the little craft were lying alongside

the parent ship, casual visitors were apt to drop in, to say nothing

of callers on more or less urgent Service matters. An officer is

supposed to receive visitors with complete equanimity whether he be

in the midst of shaving, dressing, having a meal, or even a bath.

Privacy is practically non-existent. Almost the only exception is

when the lawful occupant of the cabin is engaged in private

correspondence.

 

Hence Meredith's hurried preliminaries before replying to the noisy

summons on deck.

 

"Come in," he shouted. "Visitors are requested to leave sticks and

umbrellas in charge of the hall porter--Oh, dash it all! That's my

toe!" he ejaculated, as the steel-shod end of the golf club was

dropped through the hatchway and fell with a dull thud upon the Sub's

foot.

 

Seizing the lethal weapon, Meredith stood up and prepared to take

summary vengeance upon the lower portions of its owner, who was

descending the vertical ladder leading to the diminutive ward-room of

M.L. 1071.

 

Instinctively the newcomer must have realised that reprisals were in

the air, for, grasping the rim of the coaming, he dropped lightly to

the floor and faced the second-in-command.

 

"Cheerio!" exclaimed the visitor. "Where's everybody? Where's

Wakefield this fine evening?"

 

Kenneth, without replying, opened the door leading into the

after-cabin and took a lengthy survey; he repeated the tactics in the

galley at the for'ard end of the ward-room. Then, going on his knees,

he lifted the blue baize table-cloth and peered under the swing

table.

 

"'Fraid he's not here, old man," he remarked. "Now I think of it, I

believe he went on the beach at seven bells. Have a cigarette?"

 

"Thanks.... Wakefield wasn't on the links this afternoon.

Strange--very. What's his little game, Meredith? Don't tell me he

went ashore in his Number Ones, with his trousers creased an' all

that sort of thing! 'A wedding has been arranged and a

subscription-list will follow in due course,' eh?"

 

Jock McIntosh lit his cigarette and took stock of the ward-room,

looking for evidence to confirm his suspicions of the absent

Wakefield's mysterious visits "to the beach."

 

Sub-lieutenant McIntosh and Sub-lieutenant Meredith were widely

different in appearance. The former was a tall, raw-boned Scot with

fair features and close-cut sandy hair that even in its closeness

evinced a tendency to curl. Never cut out for a seafaring life, he

found himself much against his will in the uniform of an R.N.V.R.

officer, while his brother Angus, who simply loved the sea and was

part-owner of a yacht and knew how to handle almost every type of

small craft afloat, was given a commission in a line regiment.

 

Jock would have made an ideal platoon commander: Angus would have

shone as a skipper of an M.L.; but since from time immemorial the

powers-that-be who run the Admiralty and War Office delight in

putting square pegs in round holes, Jock McIntosh was manfully

sticking to a job that was obviously uncongenial, while his brother

was doing likewise; and each envied the other.

 

Meredith, on the other hand, was literally "made for the job."

Slightly above middle height, broad and square-shouldered,

heavy-browed and with a firm and somewhat prominent jaw, Kenneth

looked and was a sailor-man, every inch of him. At the age of twelve

he could handle a sailing dinghy with a skill that was the envy and

admiration of many so-called yachtsmen, who would be hopelessly at

sea in a double sense without the assistance of their paid hands.

Between the ages of twelve and fifteen he spent every available

holiday afloat in his father's ten-ton yacht, until he knew

intimately the art of fore and aft sailing, and incidentally gained

first-hand information of practically every harbour and creek on the

south coast of England.

 

Then came the outbreak of the Great War. Promptly the _Ripple_, Mr.

Meredith's cutter, was laid up, while her owner, exchanging a

yachting suit for a khaki uniform, went to India as second-in-command

of a Territorial battalion.

 

Kenneth went back to school, bitterly bewailing the fact that he had

not been born three years earlier. Fellows from the senior form--in

many cases physically inferior to him--donned khaki and disappeared

into the mists of Flanders. At intervals some turned up at the old

school, bronzed, aged and ballasted with a more than nodding

acquaintance with life and death: others never returned--their names

figured prominently in the School Roll of Honour as fingerposts to

the path of Higher Duty.

 

At length Meredith's chance came. He had to admit that it was

influence that did the trick. A certain retired Admiral whose name

Kenneth had never heard, but who knew Mr. Meredith years ago, worked

the oracle, and the lad found himself a full-fledged sub-lieutenant

of the R.N.V.R. The only fly in the ointment was the fact that

Meredith had been appointed to a northern M.L. flotilla, where, in

strange and remote waters, there appeared to be little chance of

seeing the "actual thing." He had hoped to be appointed to the Dover

Patrol, where his intimate knowledge of the Channel would be a

decided asset and where the prospects of smelling powder would be

almost certain to materialise.

 

M.L. 1071, one of the fifteen motor launches belonging to the

Auldhaig Patrol, was lying next but one alongside the parent ship

_Hesperus_, an obsolete second-class cruiser. It was early in May.

Already the northern evenings were drawing out and the nights

becoming shorter and shorter. In the land-locked firth the lofty

serrated hills were capped with fleecy mists that threatened with the

going down of the sun to steal lower and lower and envelop the placid

water in a pall of baffling fog.

 

"The main object of my visit this evening," remarked McIntosh

ponderously--he was rather prone to verbosity--"is to enlist your

assistance in the matter of this mashie."

 

"I thought it was a patent lead-swinging device," interposed Meredith

drily--"a sort of means of getting me on the sick-list with a

pulverised instep."

 

"Not at all, laddie," continued Jock, unruffled by the interruption.

"D'ye ken, I'm no hand at splicing, and I'm not giving myself away by

asking any of my merry wreckers to take on the job. Perhaps you'll be kind enough to do it to-morrow."