Read Ebook: Sea-Hounds by Freeman Lewis R Lewis Ransome

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Ebook has 1595 lines and 162369 words, and 32 pages

I THE MEN WHO CHANGED SHIPS 1

II "FIREBRAND" 35

V THE CONVOY GAME 112

PAGE

German Shells Striking the Water at the Battle of Jutland 12

A Broadside at Night at the Battle of Jutland 12

"Kamerading" with Uplifted Paws 90

Helping the Cook to Peel Potatoes 90

Where the Great Liner Plowed Along 128

We Had Collided with the "Brick Wall" 128

Now She Was Back at Base 128

A Limit to the Number of "Cans" a Destroyer 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

THE MEN WHO CHANGED SHIPS

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 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 beginning to prick into vivid whiteness the tents of the great hospital areas, several sea-planes were circling 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 soaring tumble bug. The hounds of the sea and air had begun to stalk their quarry.

The captain broke off suddenly and set the alarm bell going as a lynx-eyed lookout cut in with "Connin' 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 revealed the fact that the "enemy" was a friend, doubtless a "co-huntress."

The captain gazed down with a smile of affectionate 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.

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 personality, one of the type to whom the broadened opportunities for quick promotion offered the Lower 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.

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 distinction of fighting the Hun from two different ships within the hour.

The humorous twinkle in the corner of the man's eye, which had persisted during all of his recital up 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.

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.

"I went sprawling over the poor devil I was trying 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.

"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 something 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.

"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 collecting together, but it wasn't till later that it suddenly came to me that he was the one I had seen by firelight when he stood up and looked at himself where he'd been shot in two.

Our alteration of course, the captain told me, was the consequence of an order received by wireless 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 something to make them think another has slipped further along and is lying in ambush for the convoy about off Volo. They're evidently keeping the rest of the division heading in to meet the convoy itself."

"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 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 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 something of the same character which had befallen him on a certain memorable occasion, and I was not disappointed.

"Ah was at ma action station at the port foremost 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 wi' their serchlichts lichten us up oor position wasna that Ah wad ca' verra pleasant. Up gaed a Hun cru'ser in a spoort o' flame and reek, hit, Ah thocht, by a mouldie launched by oor next astern. Ah was fair jumpin' wi' joy at the sicht, when a hale salvo o' screechin' projes cam bang inta the fo'c'sl. 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, wi' aboot half a meenit atween. Ye ken that the licht o' a shell-burst is ower afore ye can even think, and a' the furst ane showed me was just the gun crews, standin', and bracin' themsel's 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.

"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 fo'c'sl' 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 mind much save that I was lyin' on ma back in a sort o' narrow way atween twa high wa's, wi' 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, wi' water souchin' aboot the bottom o't. 'Twas like wakin' oot o' a bad dream and findin' that the warst o' it was true.

"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. hoose, 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 masel', 'she's awfu' little shot up' , 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' , 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 side--it micht hae 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 masel'--for the second time in ane night--hangin' ower the raggit edge o' a black hole listenin' to the swish o' ragin' waters.

"FIREBRAND"

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 to put back to open sea and take no further chances among the treacherous currents and rocky islands that beset the approaches to the Northern Base.

Melton, A.B., whistling over and over the opening 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.

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 develop, is quite as sweet of tooth as his brother Yank. Because I could hardly take him to the captain's cabin, which I was occupying for the 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.

I suspected, from the sounds he made, that Melton 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.

Melton paused for a moment as if engrossed in 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 squirrel's nut, to melt away in its own good time.

"I don't remember that either she or us switched 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' 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.

"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 engine-room. 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' 'nother go at us.

"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 runnin' for his life, an' had no time to more than try to run us down in passin'.

"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 company was fit for work. The bulkheads had to be shored, for, wi' the fo'c'sl' crumpled up like a concertina 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 for'ard. 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 navigated, 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 otherways--an' began carryin' on just as if it was '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 to burn on a 'stroyer if the cordite ain't started, we were not long gettin' the fires in hand, even wi' havin'--cause the hoses an' the fire-mains was knocked out--to dip up water in buckets throwed over the side. Wi' the wreckage, the most we could do was to dig out the dead an' wounded an' rig up for connin' ship from aft.

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