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

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"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.

"Pois'nous as it was workin' on deck, that wasn't a circumstance to what it must have been carryin' on below. I didn't see nothin' o' that end o' the show, thank Gawd, but every man as came out o' it alive said it was just one livin' bloomin' hell, no less. There was a good number o' coves who did things off han' that saved the ship from blowin' up, or burnin' up, or sinkin', an' three o' the best o' 'em was a engine-room artif'cer, a stoker P.O., and a stoker that was in the fore stokehold when the bridge was pushed back an' carried away that funnel. They ducked into their resp'rators, stuck to their posts a' kept the fans goin' till the fumes was all cleared away. Nothin' else would have saved the foremost boiler--an' wi' it the ship herself--blowin' up right then an' there. Same way, gettin' on the jump in backin' up Number 3 bulkhead--the one that was holding back the whole North Sea--was all that kept it from bulgin' in an' floodin' right back into the stokeholds. It was the chief art'ficer engineer that took on that job, an' it was him, too, that stopped up the gaps left by the knocking down o' the first and second funnels.

"Even after it at last seemed like we was goin' to keep her from sinkin' or blowin' up, things still looked so bad to the captain that he ditched the box o' secret books for fear o' their fallin' into the hands o' the Hun. As we'd have been more hindrance than help to the Fleet, he did not try to rejoin the flotilla, but turned west an' headed for the coast o' England on the chance of makin' the nearest base while she still hung together. All night she went slap-bangin' along, wi' the engines shakin' out a few more rev'lushuns just as fast as it seemed the bulkhead was shored strong enough to stand the push o' the sea.

"Mornin' found her still goin', but what a sight she was! My first good look at what was left o' her give me the same kind o' a shock I got the first time I had a peep at my mug in a glass after havin' small-pox in Singapore. She wasn't a ship at all, any more'n my face was a face. She was just a mess, that's all, an' clinkin' an' clankin' an' wheezin' and sneezin' an' yawin' all over the sea. An' the sea was empty all the way roun', wi' no ship in sight to pass us a tow-line or pick us up if she chucked in her hand an' went down.

I emptied both pockets before I renewed my thanks to Melton and bade him a final good night. There are strange ingredients entering into the composition of the cement that is binding Britain and America together, and if there is any objection to chewing gum it certainly cannot be on the ground that it lacks adhesiveness.

"BACK FROM THE JAWS"

There is little in the small, neat compartment from which the oil fires of a modern destroyer are fed and controlled to suggest the picture which the name "stokehold" conjures up in the popular mind. There is no coal, no grime, no sweating shovellers, no clanging doors. Under ordinary conditions two leisurely moving men do all there is need of doing, and with time to spare, and there are occasions at sea, in the winter months, when the stokehold is a more comfortable refuge than the chill fireless ward room. It was my remarking upon the grateful warmth of the stokehold after the cold wet wind that was sweeping the deck, which finally turned the current of Prince's reminiscence in the direction I had been vainly endeavouring to deflect it for the last hour.

It didn't take much manoeuvring from that vantage to back him up to the beginning for a fresh start of the story of what is unquestionably one of the most remarkable, as it was one of the most successful, phases of the Jutland destroyer action. The fact that, during the daylight action between the battle cruisers, he had ample opportunity for observation makes him undoubtedly one of the most valuable witnesses of the opening phase of this the greatest of all naval battles. The story which I am setting down connectedly, he told me in the comfortable intervals of his leisurely fire-trimming, and, once he was warmed up to it, with little prompting or questioning from myself. Much of it was punctuated with frequent stabs and slashes with one of the short-handled pokers which perform for the stoker of an oil-burner a service similar to that rendered his brother of the coal-burner by his mighty "slice" of iron.

"Big as the difference is between being on deck and in the stokehold at ordinary times," said Prince, turning round with glare-blinded eyes closed to narrow slits after cracking off the accumulating carbon from an oil-sprayer with his poker, "it is ten times more so when a fight is on, and I'll always be jolly thankful that it was my luck not to be caged up down here during the daylight part of the Jutland show. I had my turn of it at night, and it was bad enough then, even though I knew it was blacker'n the pit above; but, in daylight, with everything in full view outside, I'm not sure I wouldn't have gone off my chuck if I'd had to go 'squirrel-caging' on here with one eye on the fires and the other on the Kilroy. But I didn't. It was my luck to be off watch when the ball opened, so that my 'action station' was just loafing round the deck and keeping a stock of leak-stopping gear--mushroom-spreaders and wooden plugs--ready to use as soon as we got holed. Not having anything to do with navigating the ship, or signalling, or serving the guns or torpedo tubes--though I did get a bit of a chance with a mouldie as it turned out--I not only had time to see, but also to let the sights 'sink in' like. For that reason, when it was all over, I was probably able to give a more connected yarn of what happened than anyone else in the ship, not excepting the captain. They'll take a lot of forgetting, some of the things I saw that day."

Prince went over and settled down at ease on the steel steps of the ladder. "The worst grudge I had against Jutland--save for the way it whiffed out the lives of some of my friends in some of the other destroyers--" he continued with a grin, "was for making me miss my tea that afternoon. We left base the night before, and about daybreak joined up with the 'battlers,' which was our way of speaking of the First Battle Cruiser Squadron, to which the flotilla was attached. It was a fairly decent day, and we were able to make good weather of it with the light wind and easy swell. I had stood the forenoon watch, had a bit of a doss in my hammock in the early part of the afternoon one, and had just gone down to tea before going on for the 'First Dog.' There had been some buzz in the morning about the Huns being out; but that was so old a story that no one paid much attention to it. I was just getting my nose over the edge of a mug of tea when I heard the bos'un growling 'Hands exercise action stations,' and tumbled out on deck to go through the motions of getting ready for a fight that would never come off, or leastways that was how we felt about it. The 'battlers' were speeding up a bit, but there was not even a smudge of smoke on the horizon to hint of Huns. After rigging the fire-hoses and getting out my 'plugs,' I stood by for 'what next,' but nothing happened. At the end of half an hour the order 'Hands fall out' was passed, and, leaving everything rigged, down we went to tea again. The mugs we had left were stone cold by this time, and we were just raising a howl for a fresh lot when, 'Bing!' off goes the alarm bells, and up we rushes again, this time to find signs of what we had been looking and hoping for. A good many hours went by before we went below again, and all through the fight--when things would ease off a bit now and then--I would hear the 'matlos' grousing about missing their afternoon tea.

"This sort of a give-and-take fight had been going on for some time, when there was a sudden increase of the enemy's fire. From the way the fresh fall of shot came ranging up, it was very plain that new ships were coming into action, while the fact that the splashes were higher and heavier than those from the first salvoes seemed to make it likely that some of the Hun battleships had now arrived at the party. As it turned out, this was just what had happened, and, although we could not see them from the low decks of the destroyers, the first B.C.S. was soon under the fire of the whole Hun High Seas Fleet. It was to draw these on into action with our approaching Battle Fleet that Beatty now turned away to the north'ard.

"Right here was where the big moment of this part of the fight came. The Huns must have scented the chance of catching our battle cruisers on the 'windy corner' as they turned, for suddenly their fire slackened on the ships down the line and concentrated on the point where that line began to bend. It must have been something like the barrage they make at the Front, for at times the water thrown up by the bursting shell made a solid wall which completely cut off my view of the ships beyond it. The way it seemed to boil up and quiet down looked like there was some sort of general control over the bunched fire, though that sort of thing would be pretty hard to handle.

Prince stood up, and put a forty-five degree kink in his poker by slamming it over the steel rail of the ladder to emphasise his words, and then stopped talking for a minute or two while he worried it straight with a hammer.

"I am not quite sure what orders were made to the flotilla at this time, but I rather think that after the Hun attack had been stopped the signal was hoisted to return to the battle cruisers. I think that is what the other divisions did do, but for our division--or what remained of it--things were looking too promising just then to turn our backs on. I was standing by the foremost tubes at the time, and all of a sudden the Hun line began to turn away, and I saw that the leading ship was being heavily hit and that she was afire in two or three places. As she turned she presented us a fine broadside target at about three thousand yards, and the order came from the bridge to 'Stand by foremost tubes and fire when sights come on.'

"I lost track of our mouldie when I ducked--no, I don't mind admitting that's just what I did, though it missed me by a mile--and before I could get my eye on its wake again it had gone home. I think they must have spotted it coming on the cruiser, for I saw her begin to alter course away just about the time I figured it was due to arrive. If they were altering to avoid the mouldie, they turned the wrong way, for it only brought right abreast the funnels what'd 'a' been a hit somewhere about the bridge. I've got a picture in my mind of what happened that I'm dead certain is as true as a photograph, and the spout of water that went up must have been almost exactly amidships. If the hit had been anywhere for'rard it would never have broken her back the way it did, and she might have got away. The funny part of it was that it was not the 'midships section of her, where the mouldie hit, that seemed to be lifted by the explosion. That part of her seemed just to go to pieces and begin to sink all at once, while the bow and stern halves started to come up and close together like a jack-knife. She must have gone down inside of a minute or two, but things were happening so fast I don't think I was looking when she disappeared."

"I saw the captain waving encouragement from the bridge to the crew of the midships guns, and, when the noise died down for a moment, I heard him shout, 'You've got her! Give it to her!' Just then another salvo was plastered a-straddle of us, and I saw a fragment of shell knock the sight-setter of the midships gun out of his seat. He looked a little dazed as he climbed back, but his eye must have been as good as ever, for I saw his next shot make a hit square on a whaler they were lowering from the sinking Hun and blow it to bits. A minute or two more, and the destroyer itself blew up and disappeared under a column of steam and smoke.

"That," continued Prince, beginning to prod anew his neglected sprayers, "just about concluded our day's work. As there was no longer any prospect of getting in mouldie-range of any of the big Huns, and as none of the little Huns were in sight to fight with gun-fire, it must have occurred to the captain that it was time he was rejoining the flotilla. There was only some dark blurs on the north'ard skyline to steer for at first, and the Huns did all they knew to keep us from getting there, too. For a while we were doing nothing but playing 'hide-and-seek' among the salvoes they tried to stop us with, and I have heard since that the way the captain used his helm to avoid being hit at this stage of the show was rated as about the cleverest work of the kind in the whole battle.

HUNTING

"If it's destroyer work you want, there are five of them getting under weigh at four o'clock," said the "Senior Officer Present," looking at his watch. "You'll have just about time to pick up your luggage and connect if you want to go. I can't tell you what they're going to do--they won't know that themselves till they get to sea, and their orders may be changed from hour to hour, and things may happen to send them to the Channel, France, or to several other places, on and off the chart, before they put in here again. But there'll be work to do--plenty of it. That's the best part of this corner of the North Atlantic in which our Allies have done the American destroyers the honour of setting them on the U-boats. Whatever else you may suffer from, it won't be from ennui." It was luck indeed, on two hours' notice, to have the chance of getting out in just the way I had planned, where I had been quite prepared to stand-by for twice as many days, and I fell in with the arrangement at once.

There are several things that strike one as different on going to an American warship after a spell in a British ship of the same class, but the one which surges to meet you and goes to your head like wine is the all-pervading spirit of vibrant, sparkling, unquenchable youthfulness. Everything you see and hear seems to radiate it--every throb of the engines, every beat of the screws--and at first you may almost get the impression that it comes from the ship herself. But when you start to trace it down, you find it bubbles from a single fount, the men, or rather the boys--the lounging, laughing, devil-may-care boys. Theirs the alchemy to transform every one and everything that comes near them into the golden seeming of themselves.

This youthfulness of the American destroyers is in the crew rather than the officers, for the latter--especially the captain and executive--will average, if anything, a shade older than their "opposite numbers" in a British destroyer. There is a certain minimum of highly specialised work in navigating and fighting a destroyer which must be in the hands of officers and men who can have only attained the requisite training in long years of technical study and practical experience. Given these, and the remainder of the ship's company--provided only that they have digestive organs that will continue to function when tilted through a dozen different slants and angles in as many seconds--can be trained to perfection in an astonishingly short time. Here it is that America has scored, for there is no doubt that the youngsters that have rushed to enrol themselves for her destroyer service are better educated and quicker in mind and body than those available for any other navy in the war. It is the incomparable adaptability these advantages have conspired to give him that has made the Yankee destroyer rating a combination of keenness and efficiency that leaves little, if anything, to be desired on either score.

Here is the way a British naval officer who is familiar with the work of the American destroyer flotilla expressed himself in this connection: "The ship's company of any one of these American destroyers," he said, "will average a good five years younger than that of a British destroyer. Off hand, one would say that this would tell against them, but, as a matter of fact, quite the contrary is the case.

"Given that the command and the technical operations are in the hands of highly trained and fairly serious-minded officers, you can't have too much slapbang, hell-for-leather, devil-take-the-consequences spirit in the ship's company. And where will you find that save in the youngsters--tireless, fearless, careless boys. They've found that out in the air services, and we're finding it out in the destroyers. And right there--in these quick-headed, quick-footed super-boys of theirs--is where the Yankee destroyers have the best of us. It is they--working under consummately clever officers--that enabled the American destroyer flotilla to reach in a stride a working efficiency which we had been straining up to for three years."

These boys told me a number of stories in connection with the survivors they had rescued, or failed to rescue, from ships sunk by U-boats. Most of them were the usual accounts of firing on open boats in an attempt to sink without a trace, but there was one piquant recital which revealed the always diverting Hun sense of humour at a new slant. This was displayed, as it chanced, on the occasion of the sinking of "Ole's" ship, the Norwegian barque. After this unlucky craft had been put down by shell-fire and bombs, the U-boat ran alongside the whaler containing the captain and mate, and they were ordered aboard to be interrogated. Under the pretence of preventing any attempt to escape on the part of the remainder of those in this boat, the Germans made them clamber up and stand on the narrow steel run-way which serves as the upper deck of a submarine. No sooner were they here, however, than the Hun humorist on the bridge began slowly submerging. When the water was lapping round the necks of the unfortunate Norwegians, and just threatening to engulf them, the nose of the U-boat was slanted up again, this finely finessed operation being repeated during all of the time that the captain and mate were being pumped below by the commander of the submarine. No great harm--save that one of the sailors, losing his nerve when the U-boat started down the first time, dived over, struck his head on one of the bow-rudders and was drowned--was done by this little pleasantry, but it is so illuminative of what the Hun is in his lightsome moods that I have thought it worth setting down.

Joining another group bunched in the lee of a tier of meat-safes, I chanced upon a debate which threw an illuminative beam on the feelings of what might once have been classified as hyphenated Americans. At first the whole six or eight of them, in all harmony and unanimity, had been engaged in cursing Sinn Feiners, with whom it appeared they had been having considerable contact--physical and otherwise--in the course of the last few months. Then one of the more rabid of them on this particular subject--he and one of his mates had been waylaid and beaten by a dozen hulking young Irishmen who resented the attentions the Yankees were receiving from the local girls--threw a bone of dissension into the ring by declaring that a Sinn Feiner was as bad as a Hun and ought to be treated the same way.

The most of them could hardly bring themselves to agree to this, but in the rather mixed argument which followed it transpired that the lad who had led the attack on Sinn Fein was named Morarity and had been born in Cork, and that the one who maintained that nothing on two legs, not even a Sinn Feiner, was as "ornery as a Hun," was named Steinholz, and had been born in St. Louis of German parents.

A very domestic little party I found cuddled up aft among the depth-charges. One lad--he had been a freshman at Cornell, I learned later, and would not wait to train for a commission, so keen had he been to get into the war--was just back from a week's leave in London, and was telling about it with much circumstance. There were many things that had interested and amused him, but the great experience had been three days spent as a guest in an English home at Wimbledon. The head of the family, it appeared, was some kind of a City man, and, encountering the doubtless aimlessly wandering Yank at Waterloo, had forthwith carried him home. Everything had bristled with interest for the young visitor, from the marmalade at breakfast and the port at dinner to croquet on the lawn and a punt on the Thames at Richmond. But the best of it all had been that he had brought a standing invitation from the same family to any of his mates who might be coming up to London while the war was on. During the refit, which was supposed to be imminent, two of these, who had plumped for the great London adventure, had screwed up their courage to following up the invitation to the hospitable home in question. Out of his broader experience, their worldly mate was tipping them off against possible breakers. This is the only one I remember: "You'll find," he said, gesturing with an admonitory finger that could just be dimly guessed against the phosphorescence of the tossing wake, "that they don't seem to have any great grudge 'gainst us for licking them and going on our own in '76; but go easy on rubbing it in just the same, 'cause you're a guest in the house. Best forget the Revolution while you're over here. That scrap was more'n a hundred years ago, and we've got another on now. Half the people you meet here never heard of it, anyhow, and when you mention it to them they think you refer to another Revolution in France which came off about the same time."

There was an amusing little incident I chanced to see which illustrates the keenness of the spirit animating the men even in the moments of waiting. A favourable course had left the deck unswept by water for an hour, and a half-dozen boys, off watch, but too restless to turn in, were trying to kill time by helping the cook peel potatoes. It was one of these whom I saw stand up, take several swift strides forward across the reeling deck, draw a rag from the pocket of his "jeans," and then, with great care and deliberation, begin to polish a patch of steel plate that was exposed in the angle of two strips of coco-matting. "Wha' cher holystoning deck yetawhile fer, Pete?" one of his mates shouted. "Can'cher wait till we gets back to port? We may have to foul your pretty work with greasy Huns any minnit." Unperturbed, Pete went right on rubbing, testing the footing every now and then with the sole of his boot. Only when the job, whatever it was, was done to suit his fastidious taste did he return to his seat on the reversed water-bucket and start peeling potatoes again. Not till a full dozen or more neatly skinned Murphies had passed under his knife did he vouchsafe to reply to the half-curious, half-pitying looks and remarks his mates had continued to direct at him. Then his explanation was as crushing as complete.

Two or three times in the course of the morning the look-out's shout of "Sail!" bearing this way or that, brought those in sound of it to their feet in the expectation that it would be followed by the welcome clanging of the alarm bell; and once or twice the wireless picked up the S.O.S.--they do not send it out that way now, but these letters are still the common term in use to describe the call of a ship in distress--of a steamer that had been torpedoed. But the sails turned out to be friends in every case, while both of the ships reported sinking were too far away for us to be of any use to them. Early in the afternoon a suspiciously cruising craft, which proved presently to be a friend, got a high-explosive shell under her nose as a consequence of her deliberation in revealing that fact. The smartness with which the men tumbled to quarters, and the almost uncanny speed with which the forecastle gun was served, boded well for developments in case the real thing turned up.

"Do you always fire a blank across their bows when you don't quite like the look of 'em?" I asked the captain innocently, as he gazed dejectedly through his glass at certain unmistakable evidences proving that he had been cheated of his quarry. "Blank!" indignation and half the look that sits on the face of a terrier who discovers that he has cornered his own family's "Tabby" instead of the neighbour's "Tom"; "blank!--did you ever see a blank 'X-point-X' that threw up a spout as high as a masthead, and all black with smoke? That was the worst punisher we have in our lockers; and, what's more, it was meant to be a hit. And the next one would have been," he added. "You can't afford to waste any time where five or ten seconds may make all the difference between bagging and losing a Hun."

"The burden of proof is up to the craft under suspicion," cut in the captain, "and they ought to have no trouble in supplying it if they have their wits about them." Then, with a grin, "But if you're really going out on submarine patrol next week, why--I'll promise to look twice before turning loose one of those--those 'blanks.'" How he kept his word is another story.

Many a so-called express train has travelled slower than any one of those three destroyers was ploughing its way through solid green water. For a few seconds after "Full speed!" had been rung down to their engine-rooms, swift-spinning smoke rings had shot up from their funnels and gone reeling off down to leeward; then, with perfect synchronisation of draught and oil, the duskiness above the mouths of the stumpy stacks had cleared, and only the mirage on the horizon astern betrayed the up-spouting jets of hot gases. Only the vibrant throb of the speeding engines--so pervading that it seemed to pulse like heart-beats through the very steel itself--gave hint of the mightiness of the effort that speed was costing. With that throb stilled--and the mounting wake quenched--the progress of that thousand tons or so of steam-driven steel would have seemed scarcely less effortless than that of an aeroplane.

"What is it?" asked back the captain.

"Looks like subm'rine," came the reply; and with one quick movement the captain had started the alarm-bell sounding "General quarters!" in every part of the ship. With every man knowing precisely what he had to do, and how to do it, there was incredible speed without confusion. Tumbling to their stations like hounds on a hot scent, they yet managed to avoid getting in each other's way, even in the narrow passages and on the ladders. The loom of the conning-tower was plain to the naked eye, now that one knew where to look for it, but only for a few minutes. Even as a swiftly passed shell was thrown into the open breech of the forecastle gun, came the look-out's whine through the voice-pipe, "She's going down, sir; she's gone!" The breech of the gun spun shut, but the eye of the sightsetter groped along an empty horizon.

"Never mind," muttered the captain grimly. "Couldn't have croaked him with one shot anyhow. Got something better'n shells for him. Now for it," and his hand went back to pull the wire of a gong which gave certain orders to the men standing-by with the depth-charges. That, a word down the engine-room voice-pipe, and a fraction of a point's alteration in the course--and there was only one thing left to be done. The time for that had not quite arrived.

Three, four seconds passed, and then, simultaneously with a heavy knocking thud, a round patch of water a hundred yards or so astern quivered and fizzed up sharply like the surface of a glass of whisky-and-soda after the siphon has ceased to play on it. Following that by a second or two, a smooth rounded geyser of foam boiled up a dozen feet or so, and then gradually subsided. That one, plainly, was a deep-set charge, whose force was expended far beneath the surface. A second one threw a geyser twice as high as the first, and a third, which fizzed and spouted almost simultaneously, blotted out a great patch of sternward sky with its smoke-shot eruption.

Perhaps the lad whom I later overheard describing that bombardment by saying that "'tween the three of us, we was scattering 'cans' like rice at a wedding" was guilty of some exaggeration; but it is a fact that they were spilling over very fast and, there is little doubt, with telling effect. The savageness of the bolts of wrath released by the exploding charges was strikingly disclosed when two of them chanced to be dropped at nearly the same time by destroyers a mile or more apart, when the under-sea "jolts" would meet half-way and form weird evanescent "rips" of dancing froth strongly suggestive of chain-lightning. The way in which even the most distant of the detonations made a destroyer "bump the bumps," quite as though it was striking a series of solid obstructions, gave some hints of the bolts that were descending upon the lurking pirate.

At the end of a minute or two a quick order from the captain sent the wheel spinning over, and, with raucous grinding of helm, round we swung through sixteen points to head back in reverse over the path of destruction we had just traversed. Just as the steel runners of a racing skater throw ice when he makes a sudden turn, so the screws of a speeding destroyer hurl water. The stern sank deep into the propeller-scooped void, so that the high-tossed side-slipping wake buried it beneath a frothing flood. Through several long seconds I saw the water boiling above the waists of the men at the depth-charges, without appearing to disturb them in the least; then the wheel was spun back 'midships--and a spoke or two beyond to meet and steady her--the bow wave resumed its curled symmetry and the wake began trailing off astern again.

Another "can" or two was let go as we dashed through that iridescent "fount of promise"; and when we turned back to it again the wounded shark had ceased to wriggle and now floated inertly among his hapless brothers. But of Fritz--save for a glad new gush of oil--no sign. Prisoners or wreckage are rated as the only indubitable evidence of the destruction of a U-boat, and neither of these were we able to woo to the surface in that busy hour which elapsed before the descending pall of darkness put a period to our well-meant efforts. During that time not the most delicate instrument devised by science for that purpose revealed any indication of life or movement in the depths below. As the water at this point was far too deep to allow a submarine to descend and lie on the bottom without being crushed, this fact appeared morally conclusive. It was this I had in mind when I tried to draw the captain out on the subject. "Of course there's no doubt we bagged him?" I hazarded, in a quiet interval when we were watchfully waiting for something to turn up, or rather come up. He smiled a rather tired smile. "Oh, very likely we have," he replied. "But, unluckily, there's nothing we can lay our hands on to carry away and prove it. In case this particular Fritz doesn't come to life and sink another ship in the course of the next few days, there is just a chance that we may be credited with a 'Possible.' They never err on the optimistic side in sizing up a little brush of this kind, and perhaps it's just as well. Anyhow, a game like this is worth playing on its own account, whether you come in with a scalp at your belt every time or not."

THE CONVOY GAME

There was something almost awesome in the emptiness of the great ship, in the lifelessness of the decks, in the miles of blinded ports. The heads of a few sailors "snugging down" on the forecastle, a knot of officers at the end of the bridge, and two stewardesses in white uniforms leaning over the rail of one of the upper decks--that was all there was visible of human life on a ship which a few days before had been packed to the funnels with its thousands of American soldiers. A lanky destroyer gunner lounging by a ladder, described her exactly when he said to one of his mates: "Gee, but ain't she the lonesome one!"

"Now the escorting of any steamer that makes over twenty knots an hour is a lively piece of business, no matter what the weather, for destroyers, to screen most effectively, should zigzag a good deal more sharply than their convoy, and that, of course, calls for several knots more speed. This can be managed all right in fair weather, or even in rough, where there is only a following or a beam sea; but where the seas come banging down from more than a point or two for'ard of the beam it is quite a different matter. In that event, the speed of the whole procession depends entirely on how much the destroyers can stand without being reduced to scrap-iron. Naturally, the ship under escort endeavours to make her speed conform to the best the destroyers can do under the circumstances; but since an extra knot or two an hour might well make all the difference in avoiding a submarine attack, the tendency always is to keep the escorting craft extended to just about their limit of endurance.

Those were prophetic words.

Whatever there was ahead, it was ideal destroyer weather for the moment, and all hands came swarming out on the dry sun-warmed deck to make the most of it while it lasted. An importunate whine from a nest of arms and legs sprawling abreast the midships torpedo-tubes attracted my attention for a moment as I sauntered aft to see what was afoot, and presently the rattle of dice on the deck and an imploring "Come on, you Seven!" told me they were "shooting Craps," with, I shortly discovered, bars of milk chocolate and sticks of chewing-gum for stakes. Several others were playing "High, Low, Jack," and here and there--using elbows and knees to keep the bellying pages from blowing away--were little knots clustered about the latest Sunday Supplement from New York.

But quite the best thing of all was two brown-armed youngsters going through a proper battery warming-up with a real baseball. I had seen enthusiasts on two or three of the American units with the Grand Fleet playing catch right up to the moment "General Quarters" was sounded for target practice; but that was on the broad decks of battleships, with some chance of saving a ball that chanced to be muffed. But here the pitcher had to wind-up with a sort of a corkscrew stoop to keep from hitting his hand against a stay, while the catcher braced himself with one foot against a depth-charge and the other against the mounting of the after-gun. There were four or five things that the ball had to clear by less than a foot in its flight from one to the other, but the only ones of these I recall now are a searchlight diaphragm and a gong which sounded from the bridge a standby signal to the men at the depth-charges. I actually saw that skilfully directed spheroid make two complete round-trips, from the pitcher to the catcher and back, before it struck the gong a resonant bing! caromed against the side of an out-slung boat and disappeared into the froth of the wake.

The pitcher and catcher were in a hot argument as to whether that was the twenty-sixth or the twenty-seventh ball they had lost overboard since the first of the month, but they fell quiet and turned sympathetic ears to my description of a net I had seen rigged on one of the American battleships to prevent that very trouble.

"Nifty enough," was the pitcher's comment when I had finished describing how the net was drawn taut right under the stern to prevent all leakage. "Only thing is, the captain might rule it off on the score that it'd catch the 'cans' we was trying to drop on Fritz as well as the 'wild pitches.' Might do for harbour use, though. Lost balls is a considerable drain even there."

The forty winks I managed to snatch as a result of following up the sleeping part of that recommendation stood me in good stead in the times ahead. It took no little composing to doze off even as it was, and it was the sharp bang my head got from the siderail of my bunk that put a period to the nap I did get. The rolling had increased enormously, and though it was apparent we were not yet bucking into it, the swishing of the water on the forecastle overhead indicated that there had been enough alteration of course to bring the seas--on one leg of the zigzags at least--well forward of the beam. I climbed out, pulled on my weather-proof suit and sea-boots, and clambered up to the bridge.

There were still a couple of hours to go before dark, and in the diffused light of a bright bank of sunset clouds the gay dazzle colours of all the ships showed up brilliantly as they ploughed the whitecap-plumed surface of a sea which now stretched unbrokenly to the westward horizon. There was a world of power behind the belligerent bulk of swells which had been gathering force under the urge of a west-nor'-west wind that had chased them all the way from Labrador, and the destroyers, teetering quarteringly along their foam-crested tops, were rolling drunkenly and yawing viciously ahead of jagged wakes.

"But what's the matter with this?" I protested. "We're still hitting the high places for speed, and, while I wouldn't call this exactly comfortable, we still seem to be making pretty good weather of it."

Languid and uncertain of movement, like a dazed prize-fighter, she was just steadying herself from the jolt a bustling brute of a comber had dealt her in passing, when the skyline ahead was blotted out by the imminent green-black loom of a running wall of water which, from its height and steepness, might well have been kicked up by a Valparaiso "Norther" or a South Sea hurricane.

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