The Mystery Ship 3

The Mystery Ship 3

At a reduced speed of ten knots and an M.L. is a difficult craft to

handle at slow speed--the flotilla plugged seawards.

 

The short steep tide rip at the harbour's mouth gave place to the

long sullen undulations of the North Sea. Although navigation was

carried on without steaming lights, the chances of collision were

hardly worth taking into consideration, since the noise of the

exhausts could be plainly audible for a distance of a couple of

miles.

 

For the best part of an hour the flotilla held on then just before

midnight came an order from the leading M.L. for the boats to proceed

independently.

 

Meredith, hitherto inactive, roused himself.

 

"Port fifteen!" he ordered. "Course east a half north!"

 

"East a half north it is, sir," repeated the coxwain.

 

In obedience to the Sub's order, a man made his way aft and paid out

the patent log-line. The mileage as recorded by this instrument and

the course as determined by the magnetic needle were the sole factors

used to take the M.L. to her appointed station, four miles from a

prominent headland and right in the steamer-track of vessels

proceeding northwards from the Firth of Forth. Kenneth felt no

particular enthusiasm for this kind of work. It was Duty, spelt with

a capital D. Whether the patrol were essential to safeguard shipping

had yet to be proved. For the best part of a twelvemonth M.L.'s were

constantly on duty off the headland, yet on no occasion had a U-boat

been definitely sighted. There had been false alarms. A boat-hook

stave floating perpendicularly and drifting with the tide had caused

the waste of a couple of depth-charges and incidentally the slaughter

of thousands of fish; a derelict fore-topmast had been responsible

for the expenditure of twenty rounds of six-pounder ammunition.

 

On the other hand, what might have happened had the Auldhaig M.L.

Patrol not been in existence can well be conjectured. The slow-moving

tramps chartered by the Admiralty to take naval stores to the Grand

Fleet at Scapa Flow would have afforded easy targets to U-boat

commanders but for the constant vigilance on the part of the M.L.'s.

In effect, the little patrol boats had frightened off the modern

pirates, thereby performing a useful though somewhat monotonous rôle

in the question of Sea Power.

 

"'Tany rate, I'm afloat," soliloquised Meredith. "Better than sitting

tight in a muddy trench and being strafed day and night by Boche

artillery; but I wish to goodness I'd been in the Dover Patrol.

There's no Zeebrugge this end of the North Sea to make things a bit

lively."

 

"Wireless message, sir."

 

Meredith turned abruptly to find an operator proffering a leaf from a

signal pad.

 

"Anything important?" he asked.

 

The lad--he was one of the two ex-bank clerks--smiled.

 

"Looks like business this time, sir," he replied. "A U-boat's been

shelling Aberspey. One of our blimps nearly got one home, and Fritz

sheered off and was lost in the mist."

 

Switching on an electric torch, Meredith read the message. It was

couched in matter-of-fact official terms and left much to the

imagination. Briefly, the U-boat was believed to be damaged and

incapable of submerging. It was last sighted at 22.30 (half-past

ten), steering eastward and apparently on fire aft.

 

"Very good; inform the skipper," said Kenneth. "Yes; we stand a

chance of seeing something this time."

 

In less than a couple of minutes Wakefield was on deck.

 

"Some wheeze, this, Meredith!" he exclaimed gleefully. "With luck we

may spot little Fritz. I don't think it's much use following the

directions given in this signal. There'll be a swarm of destroyers

and all that sort of fry buzzing around already, and if the skipper

of the U-boat is up to snuff he'll have altered course to the

south'ard. We'll just stand on and keep our wits on the alert. If

he's legging it to the south'ard he'll cut athwart our course. I'll

try what luck we can get with the hydrophone first."

 

The M.L.'s engines were stopped, and the boat rolled heavily in the

oily swell. Over her starboard side a weird contraption of wires

was lowered, the wires terminating in submerged metal plates, while

inboard they led to a complicated device known as a hydrophone. In

the wireless-room a man sat with receivers clipped to his ears. He

was not listening to wireless messages, but for the sound of a

U-boat's propellers.

 

"Anything doing?" inquired Meredith for the twentieth time, as the

minutes slowly passed.

 

This time the listener did not shake his head.

 

"Fancy I hear something, sir," he reported. "Would you like to

listen?"

 

Kenneth took the proffered ear-pieces and clipped them to his head.

Very faintly he could hear the characteristic thud of a marine motor.

 

"Evidently she's knocking around," he observed, as he handed the

apparatus to the operator. "All right; carry on."

 

Slowly the man revolved a handle until the thudding sound reached a

maximum intensity. A glance at the compass showed that the

hydrophones were pointing east by south. Still turning the handle, he

noted that the volume of sound gradually decreased until a certain

point; then it began to increase again, reaching a state of maximum

intensity in a bearing south by east. That was all the operator

required. Experience had taught him that the source of emission of

the sound came from a direction midway between the two maxima, while

a further test revealed the fact that the U-boat was moving in a

southerly direction.

 

"If only this blessed fog would lift!" exclaimed Wakefield when his

Sub communicated the result of the hydrophone test.

 

"Get the gear inboard, Meredith. See that the ammunition is brought

up and the gun cleared for action. Now for a game of blind man's

buff."

 

"None of our submarines are about here, I suppose?" asked Meredith.

 

"Not within seventy miles," replied the skipper. "So if we do have

the luck to run across a submarine, we'll go for the brute

bald-headed."

 

"And if Fritz can't dive?"

 

"Then, of course, we'll have to try our best to tickle his ribs with

a shell while he's on the surface. Tricky work, but we'll keep him

fully occupied with our little pea-shooter"; and Wakefield indicated

the six-pounder, by the side of which the gun-layer was standing

ready and alert to train the weapon upon its objective.

 

A quarter of an hour passed. Both officers realised that in this game

of hide-and-seek the U-boat stood a better chance, since she could

hear the noisy explosions of the M.L.'s exhausts, especially if she

floated motionless with her motors switched off. Again, if it came to

a trial of gunnery, the odds were tremendously in favour of the Hun,

since the U-boat mounted a couple of 4.7-inch or even 6-inch weapons.

 

Wakefield was counting on the chance of catching his foe napping, and

that, if the U-boat were able to dive, she would submerge

precipitately. It was then that the depth-charges would play their

deadly part.

 

Conscious of a peculiar sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach,

Meredith confessed to himself that "he had the wind up." Faced with

the possibility of going into action for the first time, he both

dreaded and welcomed the chance. Fervently he gave thanks for the

fact that it was dark, and that none of his comrades could see his

face. For his own part, he felt that every vestige of colour had

vanished from his usually bronze features.

 

Again M.L. 1071 was brought to a standstill and recourse made to the

hydrophone. The result was disappointing. Except for a faint rumbling

that could only be ascribed to the surf lashing the distant cliffs,

not a sound was recorded. Apparently the U-boat was again capable of

submerging, and was lying doggo on the bed of the North Sea, while

the destroyers engaged in hunting her had passed beyond the range of

the M.L.'s hydrophone.

 

"We'll just carry on," decided Wakefield. "The fog looks like

lifting."

 

Overhead the moonlight was streaming down through a thin layer of

mist, while the range of visibility varied from fifty to five hundred

yards as banks of dispersing vapour bore down before the light

easterly wind.

 

Wiping the moisture from the lenses of his powerful night glasses,

Meredith raised the binoculars and scanned the limited expanse of

visible sea. Even as he did so a weird greyish object swept across

his field of vision.

 

"By Jove!" he ejaculated.

 

"By Jove, what?" asked Wakefield sharply. "Good heavens! Yes, there

she is!"

 

He jerked the telegraph indicator to full speed ahead.

 

"See her, Clarkson?" he shouted to the gun-layer. "Two points on your starboard bow. Let her have it."