CHAPTER VII

ADRIATIC PATROL

Boring into a North Sea blizzard in a destroyer off the coast of Norway is not exactly the kind of thing that one would think would turn a man's thoughts to sunny climes, with scented breezes blowing over flowery fields, and cobalt skies arching over sapphire waters, and all that sort of thing; but the human mind moves in a mysterious way, and that is just what Lieutenant K---- started talking about the night we were shepherding the northbound convoy together, after it had been temporarily scattered by what had proved to be an abortive German light cruiser raid.

Sea-booted, mufflered and goggled, and ponderous where his half-inflated "Gieve" bulged beneath his ample duffle-coat, he leaned over the starboard rail of the bridge for a space to get the clear view ahead that the frost-layer on the wind-screen denied him from anywhere inboard. Then, just ducking a sea that rolled in tumultuously fluent ebony over the forecastle gun and smothered the bridge in flying spray, he nipped across and threw a half-Nelson around a convenient stanchion before the pitch, as she dived down the back of the retreating wave, threw him against the port rail.

"Got 'em all in line again," he said, pushing his face close to mine. "That's something to be thankful for, anyhow. Didn't expect to round up half of 'em before we had to stand away to pick up the southbound. Piece of uncommon good luck. Now we can stand easy for a spell."

I was about to observe that "stand easy" didn't seem to me quite the appropriate term to apply to the act of keeping one's balance on a craft which was blending thirty-degree rolls with forty-degree pitches to form a corkscrew-like motion of an eccentricity comparable to nothing else in the gamut of human experience, when he continued with: "Not much like what I was enjoying a month ago, this," indicating the encompassing darkness with a rotary roll of his head. "I was in a destroyer at an Italian base then--Brindisi--with the smell of dust and donkeys and wine-shops in the air, and straight-backed, black-haired, black-eyed girls, with rings in their ears and baskets of fruit--soft red and yellow and blue fruit--on their heads. Now it's"--and she put her nose deep into a wave that dealt her a sledge-hammer blow and sent spray flying half-way to the foretop in a solid stream--"this, just this. Grey by day, black by night, and slap-bang all the time. No light, no colour, no atmosphere, no----"

"I quite understand," I cut in. "No straight-backed girls with rings in their ears and fruit-baskets on their heads. Of course, there's more light and colour down there than here; but wasn't there also a bit of slap-bang to it now and then?"

"Ay, there was a bit," he replied. "There was the time----" He started to tell me the already time-worn yarn of the Yarmouth trawler skipper and the Grimsby trawler skipper, each of whom, enamoured of the same Taranto maid, wooed her while the other was absent on patrol; of how one of them, looking through his glass as he stood in toward the entrance on one of his return trips, saw his rival walking on the beach with arm round the waist of the artful minx in question, and her red-and-yellow kerchief-bound head resting on his shoulder; of how the one on the trawler, consumed by a jealousy fairly Latin in its intensity, swung round his six-pounder, discharged it at the faithless pair, and--so crookedly did the rage-blind eyes see through the sights--hit a fisherman's hut half a mile away from his target!

I had heard the story in Taranto a year previously, and knew it to be somewhat apocryphal at best. "I didn't mean that kind of 'slap-bang,'" I said. "I was under the impression that the destroyers had some rather lively work down there on one or two occasions."

"There were several brushes which might have been called lively while they lasted," he admitted. "I was in one of them myself just before I was transferred north."

"You don't mean the recent attack on the drifter patrol--the one where two British destroyers stood the brunt of the attack of four Austrian destroyers and a light cruiser or two?" I asked. "I have always wanted to hear about that. I've heard Italian naval men say some very flattering things of the way the British carried on."

"That's the one," he replied. "I was in the _Flop_--the one that got rather the worst banging up."

"You've just got time for the yarn before your watch is over," I said, settling myself into the nearest thing to a listening attitude that one can assume on the bridge of a destroyer bucking a north-east gale. "Fire away."

I didn't much expect he would "come through," for I had failed in so many attempts to draw a good yarn by a frontal attack of this kind that I had little faith in it as compared with more subtle methods. Perhaps it was because rough methods were suited to the rough night; or it may have been only because K----'s mind (his non-working mind, I mean; not that closed compartment of sense and instinct with which he was directing his ship) had drifted back to the Adriatic, and he was glad of the chance to talk about it; at any rate, in the hour that had still to go before eight bells went for midnight, to the accompaniment of the banging of the seas on the bows and the obbligato of the spray beating on the glass and canvas of the screens, he told me the story I asked for.

"I don't need to tell you," he said, after giving the man at the wheel the course for the next zigzag, "that the Adriatic is full of various and sundry little traps and contrivances calculated to interfere as much as possible with the even tenor of the way of the Austrian U-boats which, basing at Pola and Trieste, sally forth in an endeavour to penetrate the Straits of Otranto and attack the commerce of the Mediterranean. You doubtless also know that this work is very largely in British hands. This is no reflection whatever on our Italian ally. Italy simply did not have the material and the trained men for the task in hand, and since Britain had both, it was naturally up to us to step in and take it over. This was done over two years ago; but, like the anti-submarine work everywhere, it is only now just beginning to round into shape to effect its ends. The winter of his discontent for the U-boat in these waters is closing in fast.

"You will understand, too, that these various anti-U-boats contrivances take a lot of looking after to prevent their interference with, or even their complete destruction, by enemy surface craft. All the good harbours are on the east coast of the Adriatic, and that sea is so narrow that swift Austrian destroyers can raid all the way across it at many points, and still have time to get back to their bases the same night. With our own bases--the only practicable ones available--at the extreme southern end of the Adriatic, our greatest difficulty, perhaps, has been in guarding against these swift tip-and-run night-raids by the enemy's speedy surface craft. I don't know whether the fact that we seem to have about put an end to their operations of this kind is a greater tribute to our enterprise or the Austrians' lack of it. The brush in question occurred as a consequence of the latest of the Austrian attempts to interfere with the measures which, he knows only too well, will ultimately reduce his U-boats to comparative impotence.

"I was Number Two in the _Flop_, which, with the _Flip_, was patrolling a certain billet well over toward the Austrian coast of the Adriatic. We had turned at about eleven o'clock, and were heading back on a westerly course, when the captain sighted a number of vessels just abaft the starboard beam. Being almost in the track of the low-hanging moon, they were sharply silhouetted; but the queer atmospheric conditions played such pranks with their outlines that, for a time, he was deceived as to their real character. The warm, coastal airs, blowing to sea for a few hours after nightfall, have a tendency to produce mirage effects scarcely less striking than those one sees on the desert along the Suez Canal. It was the distortion of the mirage that was responsible for the fact that the captain mistook two Austrian light cruisers for small Italian transports (such as we frequently encountered on the run between Brindisi and Valona or Santi Quaranti), and that he reported what shortly turned out to be enemy destroyers as drifters.

"The captain had just made a shaded lamp signal to the _Flip_, calling attention to the ships and their supposed character, when the white, black-curling bow-wave of the two leaders caught his eye and made him suspect they were warships. The alarm bell clanging for 'Action Stations' was the first intimation I had that anything was afoot. In the Adriatic, as everywhere else, everyone in a destroyer turns in 'all standing'; so it was only a few seconds until I was out of my bunk and up to my station on the bridge. It was not many minutes later before I found myself in command of the ship.

"It was now clear that the force sighted consisted of two enemy light cruisers and four destroyers, the latter disposed two on each quarter of the rear cruiser. They were closing on us at high speed at a constant bearing of a point or two abaft the beam. It was up to the _Flip_, as senior ship, to decide whether to fight or to run away on the off-chance of living to fight another day, something which was hardly likely to happen in the event we closed in a real death grapple. The disparity between our strength and that of the enemy would have entirely justified us in doing our utmost to avoid a decisive fight, had it been that the cards on the table were the only ones in the game. But this was hardly the case. Out of sight, but still not so many miles distant, was another subdivision of our destroyers, while overwhelming forces would ultimately be hurrying up to our aid in case the enemy could be delayed long enough. To close in immediate action was plainly the thing, and the _Flip_ was turning in to challenge even as she made us a signal indicating that this was her decision. A moment more, and we were turning into line astern of her.

"Out of the moon-track now, the outlines of the enemy ships were indistinct and shadowy, and it was from the dull blur of opacity above the slightly phosphorescent glow of the 'bone' in the teeth of the leading cruiser that the opening shot was fired. It lighted her up brilliantly for the fraction of a second, and the ghostly geyser from the bursting shell showed up distinctly a few hundred yards ahead of the _Flip_. Both the sharpened image of the cruiser in the light of the gun-fire and the time of flight of the shell helped us with the range, and the fall of shot from the _Flip's_ opener looked like a very near thing. We followed it with one from our fo'c'sl' gun, which was a bit short, and the next, if not a hit, was only slightly over. At this juncture, all six of the enemy ships came into action with every gun they could bring to bear, and the _Flip_ and the _Flop_ did the same. For the next few minutes things happened so fast that I can't be sure of getting them in anywhere near their actual sequence.

"We began hitting repeatedly, and with good effect, after the first few shots, and the _Flip_ also appeared to be throwing some telling ones home. The enemy were hitting the both of us about the same time, however, and, of course, with many times the weight of metal we were getting to him. At this juncture the skipper of the _Flip_, evidently figuring that the Austrians, now that they were fully engaged and had a good chance of polishing us off, would not break off the fight, turned southward with the idea of drawing them toward the other forces which we knew would be rushing up in response to the signal we had sent out the instant the character of the strange ships was evident.

"The _Flip_, like a big squid, began smoke-screening heavily as she turned, the _Flop_ following suit. The sooty oil fumes poured out in clouds thick enough to walk on, but unluckily, neither our course nor the state of the atmosphere was quite favourable for making it go where it would have served us best. Possibly it was because the _Flip_ was making a better screen than the _Flop_, or possibly it was because they were concentrating on the 'windy corner' just as we were rounding it. At any rate, trying to observe through our rather patchy smoke the effect of what appeared to be a couple of extremely well-placed shots of ours on the leading cruiser, I suddenly became aware that all four of the destroyers and the second cruiser were directing all of their fire upon the poor little _Flop_. I don't recall exactly whether I twigged this before we began to feel the effects of it or not, but I am rather under the impression that I seemed to sense it from the brighter brightness--a gun firing directly at you makes a more brilliant flash than the same gun laid on a target ahead or astern of you--of the flame-spurts even before I was aware of the sudden increase of the fall of shot.

"They had us ranged to a yard by this time, of course, and the captain turned away a couple of points in an endeavour to throw them off. I recall distinctly that it was just as the grind of the ported helm began to throb up to the bridge that a full salvo--probably from one of the cruisers--came crashing into us. My first impression was that we were blown up completely, for of the two shells which had struck for'ard, one had brought down the mast and the other had scored a clean hit on the forebridge. There was also a hit or two aft, but the immediate effects of these were not evident in the chaos caused by the others. This was absolutely beyond description.

"The actual shock to a ship of being struck by a shell of even large calibre is nothing to compare with that from almost any one of these seas that are crashing over us now. But it is the noise of the explosion, the rending of metal, and the bang of flying fragments and falling gear that makes a heavy shelling so staggering, to mind if not to body. Of course everyone on the forebridge was knocked flat by the explosion of the shell which hit it, and the worst of it was that the most of us didn't get up again. The sub and the middy who were acting as Control Officers were blown off their platform and so badly knocked up that they were unable to carry on. One signalman and one voice-pipe man were killed outright.

"The rest of us were only shaken up or no more than slightly wounded by this particular shell, but the one which brought down the mast added not a little both to casualties and material damage. The radio aerials came down with the mast, of course, and it was some of the wreckage from one or the other that fell on the captain, wounding him severely in both arms. Dazed and shaken, he still gamely stuck to the wreck of the bridge, but the active command now fell to me.

"This damage, serious as it was, was by no means the extent of that inflicted by this unlucky salvo. A third shell, as I shortly learned, had passed through the fore shell-room and into the fore magazine. In which it exploded I could not quite make sure, but both were set on fire. This fire got to some of the cordite before it was possible to get it away, and the ensuing explosion killed or wounded most of the supply parties and the crews of the twelve-pounders. It was brave beyond all words, the fight those men made to save the ship down in that unspeakable hell-hole, and it was due wholly to their courage and devotion that the explosion was no worse than it was. This trouble, luckily, was hardly more than local, but a number of good lives was the price of keeping it so.

"There was one other consequence of that salvo, and though it sounds funny to tell about it now, it might well have made all the difference in the world to us. In the bad smashing-up of the bridge of any ship by shell-fire the means of communication with the rest of her--the voice-pipes, telephones, telegraphs, etc.--are among the first things to be knocked out. This means, if there are no alternatives left, that directions have to be relayed around by shouting from one to another until the order reaches the man to carry it out. This would be an awkward enough expedient for a ship that is not under fire and fighting for time and her life. What it is with the enemy's shell exploding about you, and with your own guns firing, I will leave you to imagine. Well, we had all this going on, and besides that a fire raging below that always had the possibilities of disaster in it until it was extinguished. Also, we were already short-handed from our losses in killed and wounded. There wasn't anyone to spare to relay orders about in any case. But what capped the climax was this: When the mast was shot down, some of the raffle of rigging or radio fouled the wires leading back to both of the sirens, turning a full pressure of steam into them and starting them blowing continuously. It was almost as though the poor maimed and mangled _Flop_ were wailing aloud in her agony.

"I didn't think of it that way at the time, though, for I had my hands full wailing loud enough myself to make even the man at the wheel understand what I wanted him to do. Luckily, the engine-room telegraph, though somewhat cranky, was still in action, and orders to other parts of the ship we managed to convey by flash-lamp or messenger. It was ten minutes or more before they contrived to hush the sirens--it was cutting off their steam that did it, I believe--and by then a new and even more serious trouble had developed through the jamming of the helm. It was hard over to starboard at that, so that the _Flop_ simply began turning round and round like a kitten chasing its tail. This involuntary manoeuvre had one favourable effect in that it seemed to throw the Austrian gunnery off for a bit, though one shell which penetrated and exploded in the after tiller-flat shortly after she began cutting capers did not make it any easier to coax the jammed helm into doing its bit again.

"Our 'ring-around-the-roses' course had resulted in our coming much nearer to the enemy, who, seeing a chance to finish us off, was trying to close the range at high speed. Our rotary course brought them on a continually shifting bearing, and it was while they were coming up on our port bow at a distance of less than a mile that it suddenly became evident that the cruisers were about to present us the finest and easiest kind of a torpedo target. The captain, who, in spite of his wounds, was still trying to stick the show through, saw the opening as soon as I did, and, because there was no one else free to attempt the trick, tackled it himself. But it was a case of the spirit being willing and the flesh weak. With every ounce of nerve in him he tried to make his almost useless hands work the forebridge firing-gear. The chance passed while he still fumbled frantically but vainly to release the one little messenger--a mouldie--that would have been enough to square accounts, and with some to spare. It was the hardest thing of all--not being able to take advantage of that opening.

"It was twenty minutes before the helm was of any use at all, and the Austrians had only their lack of nerve to thank for not putting us down while they had a chance. It must have been because they were afraid of some kind of a trap, for there were a half-dozen ways in which a force of their strength could have disposed of a ship as helpless and knocked-out generally as was the _Flop_. The _Flip_ had also been hard hit, and when I had a chance for a good look at her again it appeared that her mast, like ours, was trailing over the side. She was still firing, however, and it was she rather than the enemy that was trying to close. We were quite cut off from wireless communication, as all attempts to disentangle the aerials from the wreckage of the mast had been unsuccessful; but it was evident that help was coming to us, and that the Austrians had in some way got wind of it. At any rate, our immediate responsibilities were over. We had prevented the enemy from reaching his objective, and possibly delayed him long enough for some of our other ships to have a chance at harrying his retreat. It was now up to us to limp to port on whatever legs we had left.

"We were still a long way from being out of action even now, but with the fires continuing to burn fiercely in the fore magazine and shell-room, with the helm threatening to jam every time course was altered, and with a considerable mixture of water beginning to make its presence felt in the oil, there was no telling what complications might set in at any moment. As one of the Italian bases in Albania was rather nearer than any port on the other side of the Adriatic, it was for that we set our still erratic course.

"Our troubles were not yet over, however. Just as the moon came down and sat on the sea preliminary to setting, squarely against the round yellow background it formed I saw the silhouette of the conning-tower of a U-boat. At almost the same instant the helm jammed again. Then it worked free for a few seconds, but only to jam presently, just as before. This continued during two or three minutes, and just as it was wangled right and we began to steady again I saw the wake of a torpedo pass across our bows. Half a minute later another one missed us in the same way, and by about the same distance. I have always thought that nothing but that providential jamming of the helm just then saved us from intercepting both of those mouldies.

"The fires in the fore shell-room and magazine were eventually got under control by flooding, and we were fairly cushy when we dropped anchor at base a little before daybreak."

K---- lurched over to the starboard rail and counted the dark blurs that represented the units of the straggling convoy. He was wiping snow and spray from his face as he slid back on the roll to our stanchion.

"Fine place, Southern Albania," he muttered. "Plenty of heat and dust and sunshine and----"

I never did hear what the rest of those Albanian attractions were. At that juncture dusky figures emerging from the deeper gloom of the ladder heralded the appearance of the middle watch, and for those relieved, including myself, the world held just one thing--a long, narrow bunk, with a high side rail to prevent the occupant from rolling out. You go at your sleep on a destroyer as a dog dives at a bone, for you never know how long it may be before you get another chance.