The Secret Service Submarine: A Story of the Present War

"Right as rain. Now then, we've got to find those transports. I took their bearings before we sank. Meanwhile I think we'll get a little deeper, out of harm's way."

He told me what to do. I pulled the necessary lever and spoke orders to Bosustow at the engines. The needle on the manometer quivered and rose. We went down to thirty feet. Immediately, it seemed as if the world above, the noise of battle, everything, faded away. We were buzzing along in the depths of the sea, just as we had been, intact, unhurt, until I looked at Bernard's hand. He was rather pale, but as pleased in face as if he was just tumbling into the "Sawdust Club" at Portsmouth.

"I say," he said, "won't the daily papers spread themselves over this!"

Somehow or other, a beastly little fly must have got into the conning-tower. It settled on me. I put up my hand to brush it away. My hand came back – pink, and I stared stupidly at it.

"You silly blighter!" my brother said, "didn't you know you'd lost half your ear?"

I suppose we ran, deep under water, at the top speed of which the motors were capable for at least another ten minutes. Adams was called up to the wheel and Bernard went down. I stood where I was until the man below shouted up. "Captain calling for you, sir!"

I tumbled down into the centre of the submarine, looking first aft to where the huge Cornishman, Bosustow, was quietly moving about his engines.

"Forrard, sir," said Bosustow, and I hastened round the gangway towards the bows. Scarlett, the Dicksons, and Bernard were standing by the torpedo tubes. Bernard turned to me.

"That concussion has snookered our tubes a bit," he said. "You see we aren't quite accustomed to this new German mechanism. Scarlett says, and I quite agree, that it's a toss up if we can make correct aim under water. I think we shall have to go for that transport on the surface."

He looked at me with quick interrogation. I knew what he meant. Already we had done more than anyone in the world would have thought possible. It was no time for sentimentalism or heroic thoughts, and we knew that, whatever happened, we had earned imperishable fame. We were safe now. Should we run another risk? That was what my brother was asking me. Even his iron nerve doubted itself for an instant.

"The only thing I can see to do," I answered, "is to let 'em have it in the open – out of the trenches, bayonet attack, what?"

"My own opinion entirely, sir," said Scarlett. "Damn it, begging your pardon, sir, we've not 'alf give 'em it yet!"

For a moment my brother's glance rested on the two eager boys. Was he justified in flinging them to death after they had done so much, behaved so splendidly?

They knew it. By some intuition, the young devils saw it at once.

"Oh, let's have another smack at them, sir!" they said in chorus.

Without another word, Bernard limped along the gratings and I helped him up into the conning-tower again. We rose to the surface.

The stars in their courses fought for Sisera! When we went out on deck, the first transport was scarcely a mile away from us on the starboard quarter. We had judged it to a tick.

But she was no longer heading west. She had turned tail. She was a Hamburg-Amerika liner converted to a transport, and thick black smoke poured out of her four funnels as she raced back towards Heligoland and safety.

"She's got nearly three thousand troops on board, I'll bet you a manhattan," Bernard said. "We must get her, we simply must!"

Turning to the west, we saw at least five destroyers rushing for us like express trains. Whether they had seen us come up or not I cannot tell, but they knew well enough what our manœuvre would be, and they were not a mile and a half away.

"Get down. Tell Bosustow to cram it all on. Increase the spark. We've got to do twenty knots if we scrap the whole thing."

I was there in a moment, I told Bosustow what the skipper had said. The big man was quietly chewing tobacco, and he spat down on the accumulators as he made a motion to salute. He moved like a slug over his roaring engines, but even as he did so, the angry hum, the muffled explosions, rose into a steel symphony like Tchaikovsky's "1812"! I felt the ship leap forward like a whippet out of leash. When I stumbled up on deck again, the wind was whistling all round the conning-tower. It blew my cap off into the sea.

We gained, we gained enormously, but so did the pursuing destroyers.

We soon knew that. There were sounds behind us like a little street-boy whistling to a friend. They were firing their bow machine guns, taking no careful aim, at the fearful pace they were going, but all around us fountains of foam rose in the sea as we plunged onwards.

"You know, John," said my brother, "it's a difficult thing for any gunners at all to fire their bow chasers at a little bobbing thing like a submarine. Of course, they may get us with a lucky shot, but I don't think they will."

They didn't.

The great liner saw us coming and slanted off obliquely to the north. It wasn't any use at all. We had the heels of her, though we knew that at any moment our engines might give out, owing to the fearful strain we were putting on them.

It was Scarlett who fired the torpedo – "must let the old blighter have his chance!" my brother said – and it went straight and true to the Princessin Amalia, as we afterwards learned she was.

I think that was the worst of all. We torpedoed her from six hundred yards. There was no explosion, as there was in the case of the battleship. We could see everything far more distinctly. She simply broke in two and sank in three minutes, defenceless, impotent.

"Poor chaps!" I said, as we watched.

"Fortune of war!" Bernard answered – "Yes, poor chaps! At the same time, remember that they're the same sort of fellows who have been crucifying flappers in Belgium and taking out the whole male population of harmless villages and shooting them before breakfast. They would have been doing that all over Norfolk in thirty hours, if" – he paused – "if you hadn't been rejected by the R.N.F.C. and also been the right hand of the late lamented Doctor Upjelly. We must get down quickly, or else …"

He had turned and was holding his binoculars to his eyes.

"Good heavens!" he said, "what's that?"

I turned, and I saw that the five destroyers were sweeping away in a great curve to the north. They were pursuing us no longer.

"What is it?" I cried.

The answer didn't come from my brother, though I heard it plainly enough. It was like thunder many miles away – a huge, dull boom such as I had never heard before.

"Why, they're running!"

"I should rather think so, old soul!"

"Are they afraid of us? What is that noise?"

"That, my dear young friend, unless I am very much mistaken, is one of the twelve-inch guns of His Majesty's ship, Vengeance. Cruiser-battleship, young John. I happen to know she's been lying off Harwich for the last week, waiting orders. Our friend, Lieutenant Murphy, has sent my wires to good purpose, and 'now we shan't be long!'"

Again the great, menacing boom, but this time we saw something.

From the deck of a submarine the range of vision is only two miles. The last destroyer was almost disappearing on the horizon, when she suddenly jumped out of the sea and fell to pieces like a pack of cards.

"That's old Snorty Bethune-Ranger!" my brother said, wagging his head gravely. "Best gunner commander in the fleet, and I know he's on board the Vengeance. Now don't you think we'll have the boys up and let 'em chortle a bit?"

"I'll go and call them."

I was just going in when I was gripped by the arm so hard that I winced.

"Look there!" said my brother.

I followed his pointing right arm and saw something far up in the sky, something like a crow, which grew larger every second.

"One of their hydroplanes, off the deck of the second transport. She's going to try and drop bombs on us."

"Will she do it?"

"Can a duck bark?" Bernard answered contemptuously. "Of course, she may be lucky, but it's never happened yet. The worst of it is that they can see us thirty feet below the surface. Still, old sport, she can't do much – hear her coming?"