CHAPTER X

THE _WHACK_ AND THE _SMACK_

There was always a strange and distinctive fascination to me in standing on the bridge of one ship and watching other ships--and especially lines of ships--push up and sharpen to shape above the edge of the sea.

This feeling, strong enough in ordinary times--when it was but a peaceful merchantman one watched from and but peaceful merchantmen that one saw--is intensified manifold when it is a warship's bridge one paces, and only the silhouettes of ships of war that notch the far horizon. Battleship, battle cruiser, light cruiser, destroyer, sloop, trawler, and all the other kinds and classes of patrol craft--each has its own distinctive smudge of smoke, its own peculiar way of revealing its identity by a blurred foretop, funnel, or superstructure long before its hull has lifted its amorphous mass above the sky-line.

And now to the sky-line riddles one was given to read, and to be thrilled by as the puzzle revealed itself, had been added the great troop convoy from America, my first sight of one of which was just unfolding. H.M.S. _Buzz_, in which I chanced to be out at the time, was not one of the escorting destroyers, and it was only by accident that the course she was steering to join up with a couple of other ships of her flotilla on some kind of "hunting" stunt took her across that of the convoy, and passed it in inspiring panoramic review before our eyes. From dusky blurs of smoke trailing low along the horizon, ship after ship--from ex-floating palaces with famous names to angular craft of strange design which were evidently the latest word in standardised construction--they rose out of the sea (as our quartering course brought us nearer) until a wide angle of our seaward view was blocked by an almost solid wall of steadily steaming steel.

There was a lot to stir the imagination in that sight--aye, fairly to grip you by the throat as a dawning sense of what it portended sank home. In the abstract it was the living, breathing symbol of the relentless progress of America's mighty effort, a tangible sign of the fact that her aid to the Allies would not arrive too late. What it stood for concretely is best expressed in the words of the young R.N.R. sub-lieutenant who was officer of the watch at the time.

"It looks to me," he said, with a pleased smile, as he lowered his glass after a long scrutiny of the advancing lines of ships, "as though there'd be jolly near forty thousand new Yanks to be catered for in Liverpool by to-morrow evening."

"Yes," I said somewhat dubiously, my mind suddenly assailed by a misgiving awakened by the thousands of yards of torpedo target presented by the sides of those placidly ploughing ships, "that is, assuming that they get there safely. But they're only just entering the danger zone now, and there's a lot of water got to stream under their keels before they berth in the Mersey.

"I don't know anything about convoys, or the ways of protecting them; but all the same, it looks to me as though that bunch of troopers would offer a mark like the map of Ireland to a U-boat, and a lot more vulnerable one."

Young P---- laughed as he bent, squint-eyed, to take a bearing on a destroyer zigzagging jauntily with high-flung wake in the van of the approaching fleet.

"That's what everyone--even an old sailor--says the first time he sights one of the big transatlantic convoys," he said; "and if there are any skippers new to the job in that lot there, that's just what _they're_ saying. It's all through failure to appreciate--indeed, no one who has not seen the ins and outs of it would be in a position to appreciate--the effectiveness of the whole anti-submarine scheme, and, especially, what almost complete protection thoroughly up-to-the-minute screening--with adequate destroyers and other light craft--really affords. As a matter of fact, every soldier in that convoy is probably a good deal safer now--and right on in through this so-called danger zone to harbour--than he was marching down Broadway to the pier--at least, if Broadway is like it was when I used to put in to New York as a kid in the _Baltic_."

"But will you tell me," I protested, "how a U-boat, firing two or three torpedoes from, say, just about where we are now, could possibly miss a mark like that?"

"Well, it would take a bit of missing from hereabouts, I admit," was the reply; "only, if there is any Fritz still in the game with the nerve to try it, he would also be missing himself."

"What would happen to him?" I asked.

"One or all of two or three things might happen,----" P---- answered, after ordering a point or two alteration in course to give safe berth to the nearing destroyer.

"He might get his hide holed by gunfire, he might get split open by a depth-charge, he might get rammed, and he might get several other things. With all the luck in his favour, he might even get a transport. But there's one thing I can assure you he wouldn't get--and that's back to his base. There may be two or three bearings from which one of these big convoys appears to present a mark as wide and unbroken as the map of Ireland; but there's nothing in heaven or earth to save the Fritz who hasn't learned by the sad example of no small number of his mates that it is quick suicide for him to slip a mouldie down one of them."

"You mean that he doesn't try it? that he's afraid to take the chance?" I asked somewhat incredulously, for I had somehow come to regard Fritz, though a pirate, as a dashing and daring one when the stake was high enough.

"Except under very favourable circumstances, yes," was the reply; "and now that, with the coming of the American destroyers and patrol boats, we are able to do the thing the way we want to, what Fritz might reckon as 'very favourable circumstances' are becoming increasingly fewer and farther between. Now a few months ago, when we were just getting the convoy system under weigh, and when there was a shortage of every kind of screening craft, things were different. Fritz's _moral_ was better then than it is now, and we didn't have the means of shaking it that we have piled up since. At our first convoys, straggling and little schooled in looking after themselves, he used to take a chance as often as not, if he happened to sight them; but even then he rarely got back to tell what happened to him. There was the one that tried to celebrate the advent of 'Peace-on-Earth-Good-Will-to-Men' last Christmas Day by sinking the _Amperi_, which was one of a convoy the _Whack_ (in which I was Number Two at the time) was helping to escort. Well, I couldn't say much for his 'Good-Will-toward-Men,' but he certainly found a short cut to 'Peace-on-Earth,' or at least the bottom of the sea.

"Now that chap took a real sporting chance, and got his reward for it--both ways. I mean to say, that he sunk the ship he went after all right--which was his reward one way; and that we then sunk him--which was his reward the other way. There was a funny coincidence in connection with that little episode which might amuse you. We were----"

He paused for a moment while he spelled out for himself the "Visual" which one of the escorting destroyers was flashing to the convoy leader, but presently, with a smile of pleased reminiscence, took up the thread of his yarn. This is the story that young Sub-Lieutenant P----, R.N.R., told me the while we leaned on the lee rail of the bridge and watched the passing of those miles-long lines of packed troopers as, silently sure of purpose, superbly contemptuous of danger, they steamed steadily on to deliver their cargoes of human freight one step further towards the fulfilment of its destiny.

"It was Christmas Day, as I told you," he said, bracing comfortable against the roll, "and a cold, blustering, windy day it was. Several days previously we had picked up a small slow convoy off a West African port, and were escorting it to a port on the West Coast of England. The escort consisted only of the _Whack_ and the _Smack_, the skipper of the latter, as the senior officer, being in command. None of the ships--they were mostly slow freighters--had had much convoy experience to speak of at the time, and we were having our hands full all the way keeping them in any kind of formation. They seemed to be getting worse rather than better in this respect as we got into the waters where U-boat attacks might be expected, but this may have been largely due to the weather, which was--well, about the usual mid-winter brand in those latitudes. In fact, we were just becoming hopeful that the rising wind and sea, both were about 'Force 6,' might make it impossible for submarines to operate during the day or so that still must elapse before reaching port, when trouble began.

"All the morning the _Plato_, which had been a bad straggler throughout, had been falling astern, and finally the _Smack_ ordered _Whack_ back to prod her on and do what could be done in the way of screening her. She still continued to lose distance, however, so that, at noon, we were nearly out of sight of the main convoy, of which little more than smoke and topmasts could be seen on the northern horizon.

"At that hour the _Smack_, doubtless because he had received some report of the presence of U-boats in his vicinity, ordered us to rejoin the convoy. We left an armed trawler to do what it could for the loitering _Plato_, and started off at the best rate the weather would allow to make up the distance lost. It was at this juncture that the amusing little coincidence I mentioned a while ago occurred.

"A patrol-boat, of course, does not carry a padre, any more than it does a number of the other comforts and luxuries provided in cruisers and battleships, and for that reason we hadn't been able to do very much in the way of a Christmas service. Several of the ship's company were somewhat religiously inclined, however, and these, in lieu of anything better, had asked for and received permission to hold a bit of a song service, in case there was opportunity for it, during the day. As the morning had been a rather full one, no suitable interval offered until their rather poor apology for a Christmas dinner was out of the way, and we were headed back to join the convoy. Then they went to it with a will, and for the next hour or more fragments of Yuletide songs came drifting back to my cabin to mingle with a number of other things conspiring to disturb the forty winks I was trying to snatch while the going was good. After a while, it appears, having run through their repertoire of Christmas songs, they started in on Easter ones, 'Bein' that they was mo' or less on the same subject,' as one of them explained to me later. They had just boomed the last line of a chorus which concluded with 'We shall seek our risen Lord,' when a signal was received stating that a periscope had been sighted by some ship of the convoy, and, sure enough, off they had to go to seek--well, I wouldn't take the Hun quite so near his own valuation of himself to put it as the song does, but all the same that quick new kick of the screws told me as plain as any words, even before I read the signal, that the old _Whack_ was jumping away to seek _something_ that had risen.

"The convoy was dead ahead of us at a distance of about seven miles when I reached the bridge, and, the visibility being unusually good for that time of year, I could see all of the ships distinctly, as they steamed in two columns of three abreast. I was even able to recognise the _Amperi_ in the centre of the leading line. We were just comforting each other with the assurance that it was getting too rough for a U-boat to run a torpedo with any chance of finding its mark, when a huge spout of water jumped skyward right in the middle of the convoy. When it subsided, the _Amperi_, with a heavy list to port, could be seen heading westward, evidently with her engines and steering gear disabled, while the rest of the convoy, smoke rolling from their funnels, were 'starring' on northerly courses.

"The alarm was rung, and as the men rushed to action stations a signal was made to the _Smack_ asking what was wrong. She replied, '_Amperi_ torpedoed; join me with all dispatch.' This, of course, we had already started to do, though the wind and sea were knocking a good many knots off our best speed. It was evident enough that the _Amperi_ had received a death-blow, so that we were not surprised to find them abandoning ship as we began to close her.

"Rotten as the weather was for it, this was being conducted most coolly and skilfully, and three boats had already left her before we came driving down to her assistance. _Smack_ had signalled us to pick up survivors, and we had stood in, at reduced speed, to 250 yards of the now heavily heeling ship, with the intention of proceeding on down, to the leeward of her to the aid of two of her boats, when we sighted three or four feet of periscope sticking out of the water, one point on the starboard bow and at a distance of about a couple of hundred yards. To see anything at all in rough water like that, you understand, a periscope has to be poked well above the slap of the waves, and that about equalizes the greater difficulty there is in picking up the 'feather' when it's choppy.

"I was at my action station with the 12-pounder batteries at this juncture, but as it looked like a better chance for the depth-charges than the guns, no order to open fire was given just yet. The captain ordered the helm to be steadied, and rang up 'Full speed ahead' to the engine-room. We passed the periscope ten yards on the port side, and when the stern was just coming abreast it, two charges were released together. As they were both set for the same depth it is probable that the one staggeringly powerful explosion we felt was caused by their detonating simultaneously. The shock was as solid as though we had struck a rock, and I could feel a distinct lift to the ship before the impact of it. There was something so substantially satisfying about that muffled jar that it seemed only in the natural course of things that it effected what it was intended to. The bow of the U-boat broke surface almost immediately, the fact that it showed before the conning-tower proving at once that she was hard hit and heavily down by the stern. Indeed, the deck of her from the conning-tower aft was fated never again to feel the rush of sea air.

"She was now less than a hundred yards right astern of us, and heading, in a wobbly sort of way, like a half-stunned porpoise floundering away from the 'boil' of a depth-charge, on just about the course the _Whack_ had been on when she kicked loose her 'cans.'

"The skipper put the helm hard-a-starboard, with the idea of turning to ram, at the same time ordering me to open fire with the port twelve-pounder. That was what I had been waiting for. The gun-crew was down to three--through the others having been detailed for boat work in connection with picking up the survivors from the _Amperi_--but that didn't bother a good deal in a short and sweet practice like this one. The ship was bobbing like a cork from the seas, in addition to her heavy heel from the short turn and the vibration from the grind of the helm. But neither did any of these little things matter materially, for we'd always made a point of carrying out our target practice under the worst conditions.

"The first round, fired at three hundred yards, was an 'over' by a narrow margin, but the second, at two hundred yards, was a clean hit on the conning-tower, carrying away the periscope and the stays supporting it. The explosion of this shell appeared to split the whole superstructure of the conning-tower, from the bridge to the deck. I did not see anyone on the bridge at this moment, and if there had been he must certainly have been killed. The fact that the submarine seemed to have been blown to the surface by the force of our exploding depth-charges rather than to have come up voluntarily, may account for the fact that no head was poked above the bridge rail as she emerged. If she had come up deliberately it would have been the duty of the skipper and a signalman to pop out on to the bridge at once to be ready for eventualities. Evidently they had no chance to do so on this occasion, and as a consequence spun out their thread o' life by anywhere from twenty to thirty seconds--whatever that was worth to them.

"My third shot plumped into her abaft the conning-tower, and the explosion which followed it had a good deal more behind it than the charge of a twelve-pounder shell. Before I had a chance to see what had blown up, however, we had rammed her, and whatever damage that shot had caused dissolved in the chaos of what proved the real _coup de grâce_. That ramming was undoubtedly one of the prettiest little jobs of its kind, one of the most neatly finessed, ever brought off.

"Since running over the submarine and dropping the depth-charges the captain had turned the _Whack_ through thirty-two points, a complete circle. This brought her back to a course just at right angles to the beam of the now helpless enemy, toward which she was driven to the limit of the last kick of the engines. Just before the moment of impact the screws were stopped dead, so as to sink the bow and reduce the chance of riding over the U-boat and rolling it under her stem, as has occasionally happened, instead of cutting it straight in two. The jar, when it came, was terrific, throwing from his feet every man not holding to something; yet there was that in the clean, sweet crunch of it that told me that it had accomplished all the heart could desire, even before the next second furnished graphic ocular evidence of it.

"The sharp, fine bows of the _Whack_ drove home well abaft the conning-tower, and--though the staggering jar told of the resistance met--for all the eye could see, cut through like a knife in soft butter. Indeed, the amazing cleanness of the cut has always seemed to me the most remarkable feature of the whole show. The bow end of the U-boat, with the conning-tower, was the section which was cut off on my side--port--and the even cross-section of it that gaped up at me was very little different from that I once saw when one of our own submarines was being sawed through amidships in connection with some repairs. Even the plating did not appear to be bent or buckled. The impression that ring of shining clean-cloven steel left on my mind was of a cut as true and even as could have been done in dock with an acetylene flame. This was largely imagination, of course; and yet how photographic my mind-picture is you may judge from the fact that I have distinct recollection of seeing the thin circle of red lead where it showed all the way round beneath the grey of the outer paint.

"The heavily tilted main deck of the interior of this section of the U-boat did not appear to be flooded at this juncture, though any water that had been shipped, of course, would have been in the now submerged bows. I have a jumbled recollection of wheels and levers and switchboards, fittings of brass and steel, and what I took to be three torpedoes--one on the port side, and two, one above the other, on the starboard. The most arresting thing of all, however, was the figure of a solitary man, the only one, strange to say, that anybody reports having seen. He was scrambling upward toward the opening, and I have never been quite sure whether he was 'Kamerad-ing' with his uplifted hands, or whether they were raised preparatory to the dive it is quite probable he intended to make into the sea.

"Whichever the attitude was, it had no chance to serve its purpose. The stern section of the U-boat--the one most heavily damaged by the depth-charges--was seen to sink abreast the starboard 12-pounder battery by the crew of that gun, but the forward part--the one with the conning-tower, which I had seen into the interior of--buoyed up by the water-tight compartments in the bows, continued to float. Observing this, the Captain ordered the helm put a-starboard, and as we turned, the 4-inch gun and my 12-pounder opened up together. My very first round, fired over the port quarter, hit and exploded fairly inside the gaping end of the section, right where I had last seen the man with upraised hands. That, and the two or three smashing hits by the 4-inch gun, finished the job. A whirlpool in the sea marked the rush of water into the severed end, and this section--for all the world as though it had been a complete submarine--tossed its bows, with their elephant-ear-like rudders, skyward, and planed off on an easy angle toward the bottom. Its disappearance was complete. There were no survivors, and practically no floating wreckage. Only a spreading film of oil and a tangle of torn wakes slowly dissolving in the wash of the driving seas marked the scene of the action. It had lasted something over ten minutes.

"The _Whack_ suffered considerable damage from the impact with the submarine, though not enough to give us serious worry, even in so heavy a sea. The stem was bent over to port, like a broken nose, and the buckling plates caused her to make quite a bit of water. We had no trouble coping with this, however, and made port, with the survivors of the _Amperi_ aboard, without difficulty. There we soon had the--well, not unmixedly unpleasant--news that the _Whack's_ wounds were of a nature somewhat comparable to what the Tommy in France calls a 'Blighty.' Without having any real permanent harm done her, she was still enough banged up to need a special refit, the period of which, of course, the most of us would be able to spend at home on leave. Yes, indeed," he concluded, grinning pleasedly, "that was a ripping piece of ramming in more ways than one."

P---- went over and bent above the shivering "Gyro," for a moment, took a long look through his glasses at the last of the now receding convoy, and then came back and rejoined me by the rail.

"There was one little thing I neglected to tell you about," he said presently, "and that was the part the _Smack_ played in that show. Although the _Whack_ got all the _kudos_ for the sinking, there is a decided possibility that a bit of a stunt the _Smack_ brought off before ever we came up may have been largely if not entirely responsible for us getting the chance we did.

"_Smack_, you see, was near at hand when the _Amperi_ was torpedoed, and the instant her Captain saw the spout of water shoot up in the air, he altered course and drove at full speed for the point he reckoned the submarine would be most likely to be encountered. He reports that he had the good fortune to hit it, while it was still submerged, and that the shock was severe enough to throw men off their balance. Shortly after that a periscope appeared, and it was this that gave the _Whack_ her chance to drop her depth-charges.

"Now, not unnaturally, the Captain of the _Smack_ had good reason to believe that his striking the U-boat, even if he only grazed her, had something to do with her reappearance on the surface at a moment when she must have known a strenuous hunt for her was in progress. Unluckily, for his claim, however, the bows of the _Smack_, when she came to be docked, did not show sufficient evidences of having been in heavy collision to warrant the conclusion that the U-boat had been enough damaged to have gone to the surface from that cause alone. Under the circumstances, therefore, there wasn't anything else to do but give the credit for bringing her up to _Whack's_ depth-charges, while of course, the fact that it was also the _Whack_ that rammed her was obvious enough. The consequence was, as I said, that _we_ got all the _kudos_."

He gazed for a few moments at the back-curling bow-wave, before resuming. "Yes, _we_ got all the _kudos_," he said slowly; "but, all the same, I've never been able to figure why Fritz didn't douse his periscope and try to dive deeper when he saw the _Whack_ rounding toward him, if it wasn't because there was something pretty radically wrong with him already. I can't help thinking that the old _Smack_ had a lot to do with starting that Fritz on his downward path, even if it was the _Whack_ that gave him the final shove."

* * * * *

It was very characteristic, that last little explanation of P----'s. If there is one thing more than another that has impressed me in hearing these young British destroyer officers tell the "little games they have played with Fritz," it is the fine sporting spirit in which they invariably insist in sharing the credit of an achievement with every other officer, and man, and ship that has in any way figured in the action. It was the fault of the Hun that we could no longer treat the enemy as we would an opponent in sport; but that only makes it all the more inspiring to see the fellow-players still keeping alive the old spirit among themselves.