The Long Trick Part 27

The Oberleutnant made no answer, but reached out a hand to the wheel that adjusted the height of the periscope above the water and twisted it rapidly. For twenty minutes he remained thus, motionless save for the arm that controlled the periscope. Once or twice he gave a low-voiced direction to the helmsman, but his Second-in-Command he ignored completely.

That officer moved restlessly about the Submarine, glancing from dial to dial and from one gauge to another; for a few minutes he stopped to talk to the torpedo-man standing by the closed tube. Finally he returned to his Captain's elbow, moistening his marred lip with the tip of his tongue; his face wore an unhealthy pallor and glistened in the glow of the electric lights.

"Is it an English s.h.i.+p, Herr Kapitan?" he asked again in his high, unnatural voice.

"Yes," snapped von Sperrgebiet. "Why?"

"I have a request to make," replied the Second-in-Command. "A favour, Herr Kapitan. It concerns a promise"--he lowered his voice till it was barely audible above the noise of the machinery--"to my betrothed."

For the first time von Sperrgebiet turned his face from the rubber eye-piece and regarded the youth with a little mocking smile that showed only a sharp dog-tooth.

"Don't say you promised to introduce her to me, Ludwig!" he sneered.

"No, no," said the other hastily. "But she made me promise not to return to her unless I had sunk with my own hands a merchant s.h.i.+p flying the cursed English flag."

"She is easily pleased, your betrothed," retorted the Oberleutnant, and moved back from the periscope. "Your request is granted. But remember I shall demand an introduction when we return.... It is a long shot.

Fire when the foremast comes on, and do not show the periscope more than a few seconds at a time. I will give the orders after you have fired."

The Second-in-Command took up his position in the spot vacated by the Oberleutnant. His tongue worked ceaselessly about his lips and his hand trembled on the elevating wheel.

"There is smoke astern," he said presently. And a moment later. "The approaching s.h.i.+p looks like a liner, Herr Kapitan!"

"What of that?" said von Sperrgebiet gruffly.

The Second-in-Command looked back over his shoulder at his Commanding Officer: his face was livid with excitement. "It means women, Herr Kapitan," he said. "Children perhaps...."

Von Sperrgebiet shrugged his shoulders. "They are English," he replied. "Swine, sow or sucking-pig--what is the difference? They learn their lessons slowly, these English. We will drive yet another nail into their wooden heads.... You will drive it, Ludwig," he added thoughtfully: and then, as an afterthought, "for the honour of the Fatherland."

"Thank you, Herr Kapitan," replied the youth, and turned again to the periscope mirror. Silence fell upon the waiting men: the minutes pa.s.sed while the elevating wheel of the periscope revolved first in one direction and then in another. At last the form of the Second-in-Command stiffened.

"Fire!" he cried: his uncertain voice cracked into a falsetto note.

The stern of the Submarine dipped and righted itself again: the Oberleutnant's harsh voice rang out in a succession of orders. The Second-in-Command leaned against a stanchion and wiped his face with his handkerchief.

A minute pa.s.sed, and a dull concussion shook the boat from stem to stern. Von Sperrgebiet showed his dog-tooth in that terrible mirthless smile of his. "A hit, my little Ludwig!" he said.

The Second-in-Command clicked his heels together. "For the honour of the Fatherland," he said. "Gott strafe England!"

"Amen!" said Oberleutnant Otto von Sperrgebiet.

The boat had been travelling in a wide circle after the torpedo left the tube, and ten minutes later the Oberleutnant cautiously raised the periscope. The next moment he swung the wheel round again in the opposite direction.

"Another s.h.i.+p?" asked Ludwig.

"Yes," replied von Sperrgebiet. "One of their cursed Armed Merchant Cruisers." He bent over the chart table for a minute and gave an order to the helmsman.

"A fresh attack?" queried the Second-in-Command eagerly.

Von Sperrgebiet returned to the periscope. "When you have been at this work as long as I have," he replied, "you will find it healthier not to meddle with Armed Merchant Cruisers. They are all eyes and they shoot straight. No, for the time being our glorious work is done, and we shall now depart from a locality that is quickly becoming unhealthy."

He glanced at the depth gauge and thence to the faces of the crew who stood waiting for orders.

"The gramophone," he called out harshly. "Switch on the gramophone, you glum-faced swine.... Look sharp! Something lively...!"

At seven minutes past three in the afternoon, Cecily Thorogood, that very self-possessed and prettily-clad young woman, was seated in a deck-chair on the saloon-deck of a 6,000-ton liner; an American magazine was open in front of her, under cover of which she was exploring the contents of a box of chocolates with the practised eye of the expert, in quest of a particular species which contained crystallised ginger and found favour in her sight.

At nineteen minutes past three Cecily Thorogood, still self-possessed, but no longer very prettily clad, was submerged in the chilly Atlantic up to her shoulders and clinging to the life-line of an upturned jolly-boat. To the very young Fourth Officer who clung to the boat beside her with one arm and manoeuvred for a position from which he could encircle Cecily's waist protectingly with the other, she announced as well as her chattering teeth would allow that she

(a) was in no immediate danger of drowning;

(b) was not in the least frightened;

(c) was perfectly capable of holding on without anybody's support as long as was necessary.

The chain of occurrences that connected situation No. 1 with situation No. 2 was short enough in point of actual time, but so crowded with unexpected and momentous happenings that it had already a.s.sumed the proportions of a confused epoch in Cecily's mind. There were gaps in the sequence of events that remained blanks in her memory. Faces, insignificant incidents, thumbnail sketches and broad, bustling panorama of activity alternated with the blank s.p.a.ces. The heroic and the preposterous were indistinguishable....

At the first sound of the explosion of the torpedo Cecily jumped to her feet, scattering the chocolates broadcast over the deck. The s.h.i.+p seemed to lift bodily out of the water and then heeled over a little to port. There were very few people on the saloon deck and there was no excitement or rus.h.i.+ng about. The shrill call of the boatswain's mate's pipe clove the silence that followed that stupendous upheaval of sound.

A clean-shaven, middle-aged American, wearing a collar reminiscent of the late Mr. Gladstone's and a pair of pince-nez hanging from his neck on a broad black ribbon, had been walking up and down with his hands behind his back; he paused uncertainly for a moment and then began laboriously collecting the scattered chocolates. That was the only moment when hysteria brushed Cecily with its wings. She wanted to laugh or cry--she wasn't sure which.

"It doesn't matter! It doesn't matter!" she cried with a catch in her breath. "Don't stop now--we've been torpedoed!"

The American stared at the handful he had gathered.

"Folks'll tread on 'em, I guess," he replied, and suddenly raised his head with a whimsical smile. "A man likes to do something useful at times like this--it's just our instinct," he added as if explaining something more for his own satisfaction than hers. "I'm not a seaman--I'd only get in peoples' way messing round the boats before they were ready--so I reckoned I'd pick up your candies."

There were very few women onboard, and Cecily found herself the only woman allotted to the jolly-boat. She climbed in with the a.s.sistance of the very young and distressingly susceptible Fourth Officer. For a moment she found herself reflecting that his life must be one long martyrdom of unrequited affections. The stout American followed her with a number of other pa.s.sengers. The Fourth Officer gave an order and the boat began to descend towards the waves in a succession of uneven jolts. The crew were getting their oars ready, and one was hammering the plug of the boat home with the b.u.t.t of an enormous jack-knife. The stout American surveyed the tumbling sea beneath them distastefully.

"When I get to Was.h.i.+ngton," he said, "I guess I'll fly round that li'll old town till some of our precious 'too-proud-to-fight' party just gnash their teeth and shriek aloud 'How can we bear it?'"

He suddenly remembered that his pneumatic life-saving waistcoat was not inflated. Seizing the piece of rubber tubing that projected from his pocket he thrust it into his mouth and proceeded to blow with distended cheeks and his serious brown eyes fixed solemnly on Cecily's face.

He was still blowing when they capsized. How the accident happened Cecily never knew: princ.i.p.ally because she was concentrating her mind on the bottom of the boat and wondering how soon the pangs of _mal-de-mer_ might be expected to encompa.s.s her. But the fact remains that one moment the boat was rising and falling dizzily on the waves and the next, with a confused shouting of orders and a crash, they were all struggling in the water.

Cecily's life-saving jacket brought her to the surface like a cork, and a couple of strokes took her to the side of the capsized boat and situation No. 2 already described. Here she was presently joined by the American, puffing and blowing like a grampus, who was placed in possession of statement (c) referred to above. He appeared either not to hear, however, or to incline to the view that it was a mere theory based upon a fallacy....

The remaining late occupants of the boat attached themselves along the sides and awaited succour with what patience they could. Then a m.u.f.fled sound like an internal explosion came from within the stricken hull as a bulkhead went. The great s.h.i.+p lurched sickeningly above them as a wall totters to its fall. Cecily looked up and saw for a moment the figure of the Captain standing on the end of the bridge; true to his grand traditions he was staying by his s.h.i.+p to the last. She listed over further and began to settle rapidly. Then, and only then, the Captain climbed slowly over the rail and dived.

The stern of the s.h.i.+p rose slowly into the air, then swiftly slid forward with a sound like a great sob and vanished beneath the surface.

One of the life-boats approached the capsized jolly-boat, and the figures that clung to her were hauled, dripping, one by one into the stern.

Then they picked up the Captain, clinging to a grating, an angry man.

He scowled round at the long green slopes of the sea and shook his fist.

"The curs!" he said. "The dirty sc.u.m.... Women on board.... No warning...." Anger and salt water choked him.

"They wouldn't even give me a gun because I was a pa.s.senger s.h.i.+p.

Unarmed, carrying women, torpedoed without warning.... I'll spit in the face of every German I meet from here to Kingdom Come!"