The Long Trick Part 17

"Granted," said the Lieutenant-Commander. "The first bomb was rather wide of the mark, but it woke me, and I saw the Sub's eyelids flicker.

After that I watched him. The Hun bombed us steadily for a quarter of an hour (missing every time, of course), and the Sub never raised his eyes from his book."

"I was interested," said the First Lieutenant shortly; his eyes, in one swift glance captain-wards, said more.

"Quite. I was only trying to prove you were a book-worm."

"What was the book?" enquired Sir William.

"Oh, Meredith, sir. Richard something-or-another. Topping yarn."

The guest steered the conversation out of literary channels.

"Were you over the other side much?" he asked blandly.

"Pretty well all the war, till we came up North," was the Lieutenant-Commander's reply. "You'll have to use the same knife for the b.u.t.ter; hope you don't mind. We get into piggish ways here, I'm afraid.... Amusin' work at times, but nothing to the Dardanelles; we never got out there, though; spent all our time nuzzling sandbanks off the Ems and thereabouts. Of course, one sees more of Fritz in that way, but I can't say it exactly heightens one's opinion of him. We used to think at the beginning of the war that Fritz was a sportsman--for a German, you know. But he's really just a dirty dog taking very kindly to the teaching of bigger and dirtier dogs than himself."

Sir William pondered this intelligence. "That's the generally accepted theory," he said.

"They may have had some white men in their submarines at one time, but we've either downed them or they've got Prussianised. They've disgraced the very word submarine to all eternity." The speaker shook his head over the besmirched escutcheon of his young profession.

"They're cowards, all right," added the Lieutenant. "'Member that Fritz we chased all the way to Heligoland on the surface?"

"Yep. Signalled to him with a flas.h.i.+ng lamp to stop and fight: called him every dirty name we could lay our tongues on. Think he'd turn and have it out? Not much! ... Yet he had the bigger gun and the higher speed. Signalled back, 'Not to-day, thank you!' and legged it inside gun-range of the forts. Phew! That made us pretty hot, didn't it, Sub?"

"Nerves," said the Lieutenant. "Their nerves are just putrid. There was another night once----" he talked quickly between spoonfuls of rice pudding. "In a fog ... we were making a lights.h.i.+p off the Dutch coast to verify our position.... Approached submerged, steering by sound of their submarine bell, and then came to the surface to get a bearing.

There must have been half a dozen Fritzes round that light, all lost and fluttering like moths round a candle. We bagged one, sitting, and blew him to h.e.l.l.... The rest plopped under like a lot of seals and simply scattered. Fight? 'Not to-day, thank you.' They're only good for tackling unarmed merchantmen and leaving women in open boats." The speaker wiped his mouth with his napkin. "By G.o.d! I wouldn't be a Hun when the war's over. They're having a nice little drop of leave now to what they'll get if they ever dare put their noses outside their own filthy country."

"Amen," said Sir William.

The Captain of the boat rose from his seat, glancing at his watch.

"Now then," he said to the Scientist, "Come to the periscope and let's have a look round. Gedge ought to be over the horizon by now."

The men moved quietly to their stations and the tanks were blown.

Slowly the gauge needles crept back on their appointed paths. The Submarine Commander motioned his guest to the periscope and gave him a glimpse of flying spray and sun-kissed wave tops. A mile or so away lay the group of islands they had seen before lunch, and close insh.o.r.e a ma.s.s of floating debris bobbed among the waves.

"Baskets, I think--jettison of sorts. I'm going to get amongst it and go down with the tide, keeping the periscope hidden: it's an old dodge.

You can just see the smoke of Gedge's bus coming over the horizon.

We'll give him a little game of Peep-bo!"

Sir William drew his watch from his pocket and walked over to the compa.s.s. "In four minutes' time," he said, "I shall start making observations: according to our arrangements Gedge should start the experiment then."

"That's right," said the Lieutenant-Commander with his eyes pressed against the eye-piece of the periscope. "Oh, good! It's bales of hay floating, not baskets. Better still: no chance of damaging the periscope. There's Gedge----!"

"Ha! Ha! Ha! Hee! Hee! Hee!

I see you, but you can't see me!"

He slewed the periscope through a few points and back to the original position. "Hullo!" he said presently, "what's he up to? He's altered course.... Thinks he sees something, I suppose. You're wrong, my lad.

We're not in that direction."

The minutes pa.s.sed in silence. Forward in the bow compartment a man was softly whistling a tune to himself. The feet of the figure at the periscope moved with a shuffle on the steel plating.

"How's the time?" he asked presently.

"He ought to have started the apparatus," said Sir William, standing, watch in hand, by the compa.s.s. "What's he doing?"

"Legging it to the Northward at the rate of knots--eight points off his course, if he thinks he's going to get anywhere near us ... Ah! Now he's coming round.... Humph! You're getting warm, my lad!" Another prolonged silence followed, and suddenly the Lieutenant-Commander spoke again.

"Sub," he said in a curiously restrained tone, "just come here a minute."

The Lieutenant moved obediently to his side and applied his eye to the periscope.

"Well?" said the Captain after a pause. "Well, Sister Anne?"

The Lieutenant turned his head swiftly for an instant and looked at his Commanding Officer. "Have we got any boat out on this patrol to-day?"

he asked.

The other shook his head. "Not within thirty miles of this. 'Sides, he wouldn't come through here submerged, with only his periscope dipping."

"It's a Fritz, then," said the Lieutenant, an ominous calm in his voice. He stepped aside and relinquished the eye-piece.

"It is," said the other. "It's a naughty, disobedient Fritz. He's coming through in broad daylight, which he's been told not to do. He hasn't seen us yet--he's watching old man Gedge. Gedge thinks it's us and is pretending he hasn't seen him.... Lord! It's like a French musical comedy."

Sir William put his watch back in his pocket and stood looking from one speaker to the other. Finally he removed his eye-gla.s.s and began to polish it with scrupulous care.

"Do I understand----" he began.

The voice of the Lieutenant-Commander at the periscope cut him short.

"Stand by the tubes!" he shouted.

There was a swift bustle of men's footsteps down the electric-lit perspective of glistening machinery.

"Fritz must be in a tearing hurry to get home," commented the First Lieutenant. "P'raps they've all got plague or running short of food ... or just tired of life?"

"P'raps," conceded the Lieutenant-Commander. "Anyhow, that's as may be.... The beam torpedo tube will just bear nicely in a minute." The white teeth beneath the rubber eye-piece of the periscope showed for an instant in a broad grin. "Won't old man Gedge jump!"

"Starboard beam tube ready!"

Sir William replaced his eye-gla.s.s. A sudden bead of perspiration ran down and vanished into his left eyebrow.

"The Lord," said the Lieutenant in a low voice, "has placed the enemy upon our lee bow, Sir William."

"Has he?" said Sir William dryly. "Then I hope He'll have mercy on their souls."

The motionless figure at the periscope gave a couple of low-voiced orders, and in the ensuing silence Sir William felt the artery in his throat quicken and beat like a piston. Then--

"Fire!"

The boat rolled to port, and all her framework shook like the body of a man shaken by a sudden sob. Back she came to her original trim, and the Lieutenant, standing by the beam tube, raised his wrist watch and studied it intently. The seconds pa.s.sed, throbbing, intolerable, and merged into Eternity. A sudden concussion seemed to strike the boat from bow to stern, and as she steadied the motionless figures, standing expressionless at their stations, suddenly sprang into life and action.