The Mystery Ship: A Story of the 'Q' Ships During the Great War Read online

  CHAPTER II

  ON PATROL

  "BRIGHT sort of evening, Meredith," was Wakefield's greeting as hecame on board. "I see you've had the engines running. Any troubledown below?"

  Cedric Wakefield was a burly, pleasant-faced youth of twenty-four,upon whose broad shoulders rested the weight of responsibility ofM.L. 1071, her crew and equipment. In those far-off days beforepractically the whole civilised world was plunged into the throes ofwar Wakefield was farming in Canada. Had anyone suggested that withina few months he would be treading the deck of a diminutive warshipflying the White Ensign, Wakefield would have scouted the idea. Theperil of the German menace had hardly made itself felt as far asWestern Canada was concerned; while the young Englishman, comingstraight from a Public School to the thinly populated slopes of theRockies, little thought that the call of duty would bring him homehot-foot to fight for King and Country.

  But when war broke out with startling suddenness Cedric promptly"packed up," worked his passage from Quebec to Liverpool as afireman, and upon arrival in the Old Country promptly joined theR.N.V.R. as an ordinary seaman. In less than twelve months he wasgranted a commission, and after a brief course in gunnery andnavigation was given command of a motor launch.

  Quiet-spoken, he found that the fact of being in command was notwithout its disadvantages. At first he possessed hardly sufficientself-confidence to give an order loudly and peremptorily. But bydegrees the force of authority asserted itself, and when necessary hecould bellow like a bull and make himself heard in a gale of wind. Hewas daring, but at the same time cautious. He could make up his mindin an instant, and rarely was his judgment at fault, while hiscourageous bearing in many a tight corner had won the admiration andconfidence of his crew.

  Judging by their previous occupations, the crew of M.L. 1071 were a"scratch lot." There were two clerks, a butcher, a chauffeur, aninsurance agent, a London County Council schoolmaster, an hotelporter, a theological student and a poacher, although the latter wascamouflaged under the designation of farm labourer. And these men,volunteers all, had been banded together under the White Ensign to dotheir level best to make things mighty unpleasant for Fritz by meansof a quick-firer and an assortment of particularly obnoxiousdepth-charges. True, up to the present, opportunities for directaction had been denied them, but nevertheless it was not for want oftrying.

  It was certainly a beast of a night. The moon had risen, but herlight hardly penetrated the white eddying wreaths of vapour. Viewedfrom the deck of M.L. 1071, the hull of her parent ship appeared toterminate twenty yards away, while her steel masts and fighting-tops,grotesquely distorted by the erratic mists, were visible at onemoment like pillars of silver, while at another they appeared to becut off at less than fifteen feet above the deck. Already three ofthe six vessels detailed for the forty-eight hours' patrol had beenswallowed up in the mist, as with lights screened they groped theirway blindly towards the invisible mouth of the harbour and theseemingly boundless expanse of sea and fog beyond.

  With the air reverberating with the roar of the exhausts and the deckquivering under the pulsations of the throttled motors, Wakefield andMeredith made their way to the diminutive wheel-house, where thecoxwain (ex-theological student) was standing by the steering-wheeland peering with a studied professional manner into the dimlyilluminated compass-bowl.

  "All ready?" inquired the skipper in stentorian tones. "Let gofor'ard!... Let go aft!"

  The engine-room telegraph bells clanged as Wakefield thrust thestarboard indicator to easy ahead and the port one to half-speedastern. Literally spinning round on her heel, M.L. 1071 edged awayfrom the _Hesperus_, the towering hull of which was quickly swallowedup in the mist.

  "Good enough, Sub!" exclaimed Wakefield. "We're right in the wake ofthe next ahead. Now carry on. It's my watch below. Give me a shout ifanything's doing, and get them to call me at four bells."

  Left in charge, Meredith prepared to make the best of his four hours'"trick." Experience had long since taught him that warmth and drynesswere absolutely essential on night patrol. Clad in two thick woollensweaters, serge-trousers and pilot-coat, and wearing woollen gloves,sea-boots, muffler, oilskins and sou'wester, he was well equipped forthe work in hand. The three-sided erection known as the wheel-houseafforded little protection from the spray, as the windows had to bekept wide open otherwise the moisture settling on the glass paneswould render the mist still more baffling than it actually was.

  Right for'ard the dim outlines of the look-out could be discerned,as, crouching to dodge as far as possible the clouds of spray, theman peered through the darkening mist. It was his duty to see thatM.L. 1071 kept fairly in the bubbling wake of the boat next ahead.Fifty yards astern another M.L., unseen but plainly audible, waslikewise making use of the swirl of No. 1071's twin propellers as aguide through the fog-laden water.

  So well, so good. Provided the flotilla kept station in "singlecolumn line ahead," there was little cause for the science ofnavigation except on the part of the navigating officer of theleading M.L. It was a case of seamanship, a sort of marinefollow-my-leader work, until on arriving at a certain rendezvous theboats had to work independently; and No. 1071 had been detailed forthe Outer Patrol stunt.

  At a reduced speed of ten knots and an M.L. is a difficult craft tohandle at slow speed--the flotilla plugged seawards.

  The short steep tide rip at the harbour's mouth gave place to thelong sullen undulations of the North Sea. Although navigation wascarried on without steaming lights, the chances of collision werehardly worth taking into consideration, since the noise of theexhausts could be plainly audible for a distance of a couple ofmiles.

  For the best part of an hour the flotilla held on then just beforemidnight came an order from the leading M.L. for the boats to proceedindependently.

  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 outthe patent log-line. The mileage as recorded by this instrument andthe course as determined by the magnetic needle were the sole factorsused to take the M.L. to her appointed station, four miles from aprominent headland and right in the steamer-track of vesselsproceeding northwards from the Firth of Forth. Kenneth felt noparticular enthusiasm for this kind of work. It was Duty, spelt witha capital D. Whether the patrol were essential to safeguard shippinghad yet to be proved. For the best part of a twelvemonth M.L.'s wereconstantly on duty off the headland, yet on no occasion had a U-boatbeen definitely sighted. There had been false alarms. A boat-hookstave floating perpendicularly and drifting with the tide had causedthe waste of a couple of depth-charges and incidentally the slaughterof thousands of fish; a derelict fore-topmast had been responsiblefor 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-movingtramps chartered by the Admiralty to take naval stores to the GrandFleet at Scapa Flow would have afforded easy targets to U-boatcommanders but for the constant vigilance on the part of the M.L.'s.In effect, the little patrol boats had frightened off the modernpirates, thereby performing a useful though somewhat monotonous rôlein the question of Sea Power.

  "'Tany rate, I'm afloat," soliloquised Meredith. "Better than sittingtight in a muddy trench and being strafed day and night by Bocheartillery; 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 bitlively."

  "Wireless message, sir."

  Meredith turned abruptly to find an operator proffering a leaf from asignal 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 beenshelling Aberspey. One of our blimps nearly got one home, and Fritzsheered off and was lost in the
mist."

  Switching on an electric torch, Meredith read the message. It wascouched in matter-of-fact official terms and left much to theimagination. Briefly, the U-boat was believed to be damaged andincapable of submerging. It was last sighted at 22.30 (half-pastten), steering eastward and apparently on fire aft.

  "Very good; inform the skipper," said Kenneth. "Yes; we stand achance 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 wemay spot little Fritz. I don't think it's much use following thedirections given in this signal. There'll be a swarm of destroyersand all that sort of fry buzzing around already, and if the skipperof the U-boat is up to snuff he'll have altered course to thesouth'ard. We'll just stand on and keep our wits on the alert. Ifhe's legging it to the south'ard he'll cut athwart our course. I'lltry what luck we can get with the hydrophone first."

  The M.L.'s engines were stopped, and the boat rolled heavily in theoily swell. Over her starboard side a weird contraption of wireswas lowered, the wires terminating in submerged metal plates, whileinboard they led to a complicated device known as a hydrophone. Inthe wireless-room a man sat with receivers clipped to his ears. Hewas not listening to wireless messages, but for the sound of aU-boat's propellers.

  "Anything doing?" inquired Meredith for the twentieth time, as theminutes slowly passed.

  This time the listener did not shake his head.

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

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

  Slowly the man revolved a handle until the thudding sound reached amaximum intensity. A glance at the compass showed that thehydrophones were pointing east by south. Still turning the handle, henoted that the volume of sound gradually decreased until a certainpoint; then it began to increase again, reaching a state of maximumintensity in a bearing south by east. That was all the operatorrequired. Experience had taught him that the source of emission ofthe sound came from a direction midway between the two maxima, whilea further test revealed the fact that the U-boat was moving in asoutherly direction.

  "If only this blessed fog would lift!" exclaimed Wakefield when hisSub communicated the result of the hydrophone test.

  "Get the gear inboard, Meredith. See that the ammunition is broughtup and the gun cleared for action. Now for a game of blind man'sbuff."

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

  "Not within seventy miles," replied the skipper. "So if we do havethe luck to run across a submarine, we'll go for the brutebald-headed."

  "And if Fritz can't dive?"

  "Then, of course, we'll have to try our best to tickle his ribs witha shell while he's on the surface. Tricky work, but we'll keep himfully occupied with our little pea-shooter"; and Wakefield indicatedthe six-pounder, by the side of which the gun-layer was standingready and alert to train the weapon upon its objective.

  A quarter of an hour passed. Both officers realised that in this gameof hide-and-seek the U-boat stood a better chance, since she couldhear the noisy explosions of the M.L.'s exhausts, especially if shefloated motionless with her motors switched off. Again, if it came toa 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, andthat, if the U-boat were able to dive, she would submergeprecipitately. It was then that the depth-charges would play theirdeadly part.

  Conscious of a peculiar sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach,Meredith confessed to himself that "he had the wind up." Faced withthe possibility of going into action for the first time, he bothdreaded and welcomed the chance. Fervently he gave thanks for thefact that it was dark, and that none of his comrades could see hisface. For his own part, he felt that every vestige of colour hadvanished from his usually bronze features.

  Again M.L. 1071 was brought to a standstill and recourse made to thehydrophone. The result was disappointing. Except for a faint rumblingthat could only be ascribed to the surf lashing the distant cliffs,not a sound was recorded. Apparently the U-boat was again capable ofsubmerging, and was lying doggo on the bed of the North Sea, whilethe destroyers engaged in hunting her had passed beyond the range ofthe M.L.'s hydrophone.

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

  Overhead the moonlight was streaming down through a thin layer ofmist, while the range of visibility varied from fifty to five hundredyards as banks of dispersing vapour bore down before the lighteasterly wind.

  Wiping the moisture from the lenses of his powerful night glasses,Meredith raised the binoculars and scanned the limited expanse ofvisible sea. Even as he did so a weird greyish object swept acrosshis field of vision.

  "By Jove!" he ejaculated.

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

  He jerked the telegraph indicator to full speed ahead.

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