The Adventures of the U-202 Part 9

"It must be a coincidence," answered the unperturbed optimist.

We submerged once more, but came up again after another half hour.

The torpedo boat still came after us, steaming along in our wake at a distance of two hundred meters.

"If this is a coincidence, Mate, then it is a very, very peculiar one,"

I said to him.

When it was six o'clock we again took a look around. The Frenchman was still after us at the same distance.

"The devil! This is no coincidence! I'll be hanged if this is a coincidence. This is intentional. We are certainly pursued!"

There must be something the matter with us. The enemy must be able to follow us-there must be some sign that enables him to follow us even when submerged to a great depth. What could it be?

I was pondering this impossible problem. The only thing I could think of was that when the mine exploded, it had caused a leakage in one of our oil tanks and that the escaping oil left a plain trail that betrayed our presence. It was impossible at any rate on account of our slow speed under the water, against the current, that by a coincidence and without knowing about it, the Frenchman kept coming after us at the same precise distance. I had to find out about it. We submerged once more, changed our course, and proceeded at full speed. If the Frenchman had really been able to see anything of us, then he would also follow us now when we changed our course and were going four times as fast.

At half past six I looked astern through the periscope and again saw, just as at five, half past five, and six, the Frenchman who, at the same speed on a changed course, continued to follow us.

VII

A LIVELY CHASE

The fact that the French destroyer continually followed us at the same distance made me certain. There was no doubt about it. We had been discovered and were pursued. Soon the Frenchman would call for aid and would have all the bloodhounds of the sea on our scent and following us.

By this time our storage batteries had begun to be exhausted, and the water was a hundred meters deep so that it was impossible for us to lie on the bottom.

"Nice prospects," I thought to myself. To the mate and crew in the "Centrale," I called loudly so that all could hear me:

"Well, now we have gotten rid of him at last. Didn't I say it was only a coincidence?"

I wanted to relieve the tension on the nerves of the men, because I knew how they had gone on for days at a high pitch of excitement.

In my plans, I had counted on the darkness, which must come soon. We would be very economical of the power, so that it would take us to the point which I had selected after carefully studying the chart. We kept to the same course for half an hour. Then, when the darkness must have settled down, I turned off at an angle of ninety degrees, and headed straight for the coast, where I knew the depth would permit us to rest on the bottom, to wait until the enemy had given up his manhunt. This would be towards morning, I thought, especially if the storm coming up from the southwest should increase in violence so that the searching of the water with nets would become very difficult.

The point that I had selected for our resting place was far from comfortable. And it was marked on the chart, not with the rea.s.suring "Sd." which indicated a sand bottom, but with the dreaded "St." which meant the bottom was stony. But we had no choice. And when the devil is in a pinch, he will eat flies, although he is accustomed to better food.

We did not rise again, since we knew it was dark over the sea, but continued at a considerable depth without incident and slowly approached our goal.

About midnight, according to my calculations, we would be able to touch the bottom. And the storage batteries had to last up to that time.

Kruger figured and figured and came to the conclusion that they would hardly last long enough.

Until ten o'clock we had heard our friend's propellers over us several times. Thereafter all became quiet on the surface, and, relieved, I drew a deep breath. They had lost the scent. It became bearable again in the U-boat. I sat on the stairway leading to the "Centrale" and was eating sandwiches and drinking hot tea with the other officers and the rest of the crew. It was almost twelve o'clock and still we had not touched bottom. What would happen if the computation of our location was wrong?

This could easily have occurred, because of the strong current and our slow speed.

Half-past twelve! Still no bottom! Engineer Kruger was nervously stamping his feet and turned out one electric light after another in order to save power. For the same reason, the electric heating apparatus had been cut off for a long time, and we were very cold.

At five minutes to one we felt a slight sc.r.a.ping. The motors were stopped and then we reversed them in order to decrease our speed. A slight jolt! We filled the ballast tanks and were lying on the bottom where we could wait for morning at our ease. Who thought that? He who imagined that we would have any rest was disappointed. We were lying on a rock, and the tide turned about two o'clock, and the southwest wind swept the sea fiercely.

At the beginning, it seemed as if we would be all right, down there on the "St." bottom, but we soon discovered differently-when the rolling began. There was no chance of gentle resting, as on the soft sand of the North Sea, but, instead, we banged and racked from one rock to another, so it was a wonder the boat could stand it at all.

Sometimes it sounded as if large stones were rolling on deck and, again, our boat would fall three or four meters deeper with a jolt, so that the manometer was never at rest, and we had to stand this continued rising and falling between twenty-two and thirty-eight meters.

At last, towards four o'clock, we gave it up. At some of the joints in the s.h.i.+p, there were small leakages, and none of us had any thought of sleeping. We, therefore, went up to the surface.

I opened the conning tower hatch and let the fresh air rush against me.

I had a queer sensation. It seemed to me as if we had been buried in the deep for an eternity and had had a long, bad dream.

But we had no time to dream. The storm had not calmed, but continued in its fury, and it was not long before we in the tower were soaking wet.

However, to our satisfaction, the water was much warmer than in the North Sea. We noticed that the last hours had brought us much closer to our object.

It was the Gulf Stream that was flowing by us and which, in this section, is really warm, running between two sh.o.r.es close together.

The night was coal black. At a great distance astern, two light-houses flashed, one white and the other red. It was easy for us to know our position. No enemy was in sight, so he must have abandoned his search as useless. Can any one understand with what relief we realized this fact?

Confidently we began to look ahead to success now that, at last, the dangers of the mine fields, which had been greater than we had expected, were behind us.

The exhausted batteries were quickly re-charged, in order to be ready for other emergencies, and then, with our Diesel engines running, we went out into the open ocean, away from the unfriendly sh.o.r.es, to get some fresh air and to rest our nerves.

When the day began to break, we were twenty sea miles out and had already re-charged the batteries with so much power that, if necessary, we could proceed for several hours under water. In the dusk of the dawn, we had a new surprise.

Groning, who, by chance, had looked toward the bow where the outlines of our boat were becoming visible, suddenly against all rules, grabbed my arm. With mouth open, eyes staring, and an arm outstretched, he pointed toward the bow.

"What is that?"

I ran up, bent forward, and followed with my eyes in the direction in which he was pointing.

"What is that?" I asked him.

I hurried toward the bow, so as to be able to see better. The boat's whole deck, from the conning tower to the prow, looked as if it had been divided into regular squares, between which dark, indistinguishable objects were moving in snakelike lines. Near me there was such a square.

I stooped down and picked up a steel cord about as thick as my finger. A net, I thought, certainly a net.

"We have the remnants of the net all over us," I shouted through the noise of the storm to Groning. "Get the nippers, hammer, and chisel ready. As soon as it is light enough, we must go to work to cut it free."

And the thick, dark snake-what was that? It came up to starboard, slipped across the deck, and disappeared to port into the darkness. It did not take us long to find out what kind of a snake it was, and I comprehended everything fully. That persistent, mysterious pursuit by the Frenchman was at once plain. Now I understood clearly what had happened on the surface after the explosion of the mine. My heart froze when I thought how readily the enemy had been able to follow our course.

We could easily trace the snake with all its curves, as it became lighter, because it was a long cork hawser, made for the purpose of sustaining the net. This was of light cork of about the thickness of a forearm and was light brown in color.

About two hundred meters of this easily perceptible hawser were floating on the water, and gave us a tail with many curves in it. This tail, which we had been dragging after us, gave us the solution of the puzzling pursuit.

When we had torn the net, with our engines at their highest speed, a large piece of it to which the hawser was fastened had clung to our U-boat and, after we had submerged, the hawser was still floating on the surface and continued to drag along behind us, still floating when we had submerged to a great depth. The Frenchman, who had discovered us on account of the explosion, had observed this, and, in spite of all our twistings and turnings, could follow us easily.

It was a master work of our able sea crew to cut clear that heavy steel net. The sea became still higher and washed furiously over the deck, angered by the resistance of our little nutsh.e.l.l. The men were standing up to their stomachs in the white, foaming waves, and had to use all their strength to stand against their force. Full of anxiety, I sat in the conning tower with a life-saving buoy ready and followed closely with worried eyes every move of my men during their dangerous work.

All went well, and, after a half hour's hard work, we were rid of the troublesome net. The nippers, hammer, and chisel and six drenched sailors disappeared down the conning tower. Each of the six held in his numbed, wet fist a rusty piece of the net as a souvenir of the fourteenth day of April.

The sun arose as if nothing had happened. From the eastern horizon it shone over the French coast as if to say: