CHAPTER XIV

The Night of Nights

"Hurrah! They've laid the ship slap alongside the Mole," reported Seton from his post of observation at the seaward aperture.

"Sure," agreed Smith. "And it's about time we broke bounds and had a chip in."

Both men were shouting at the top of their voices, for the noise without was deafening. The roar of the heavy guns punctuated by the crash of the quick-firers, the rattle of machine-guns, the hiss of escaping steam, the grinding of the _Vindictive's_ hull against the masonry, the cheers and shouts of the storming-parties, and the cries and groans of the wounded, all united in an indescribable babel of discord.

Owing to the relative position of the ship and the prisoners' observation aperture, only a few feet of the _Vindictive's_ stern could be seen. There was nothing to indicate whether the assault had been successful. But on the Mole side there were soon evidences that the British seamen and marines had obtained a footing, and had more than made good their position.

Grotesquely garbed men were dashing forward in sections, hurling bombs and using Lewis-guns like fiends possessed. Here and there a cornered Hun would put up a fight until laid low by bullet or cutlass thrust. Slowly but surely the British invaders of the Mole were working their way along.

"No place for us here," yelled Seton. "Our fellows are bombing every hole they see. It's useless to attempt to tell them who we are, and I don't fancy being blown to atoms by our own side. We'll have to take to the tunnel."

"Right-o!" agreed the pilot.

Together they struggled desperately with the refractory stone, until by dint of great effort they succeeded in raising it on to the floor of the cell. It was then a matter of comparative ease to enlarge the hole sufficiently to allow them to effect their escape.

They were not a moment too soon. With the sounds of the conflict immediately outside their cell, the two men dropped through the gaping hole, alighting on the stone floor of the corridor eight or nine feet below.

The tunnel was thick with suffocating fumes. Until the smoke cleared any attempt at escape in the rear of the storming- and demolition-parties was out of the question. All that could be done was to work their way along to the seaward end of the corridor, and there await developments.

"Wish I had a gas-mask," exclaimed Alec chokingly.

"Same here," agreed the pilot. "Here," he added, pointing to a pile of what appeared to be short sticks, "take a few, they'll come in handy."

The acquired articles were bombs of German manufacture, and had evidently been placed there as a reserve stock.

"Know how they work?" inquired Smith.

Alec shook his head. He understood the mechanism of the Mills' grenade, but he had never before had an opportunity of handling a German bomb.

"Simply pass this thing round your wrist and chuck the thing as hard as you can. The cord is tied to the safety-pin, and the jerk releases the pin. Quite easy."

"And easy to blow yourself up," added Seton. "All right, carry on! We'll do our best with the things."

Proceeding cautiously, for they could hear Huns talking in the tunnel, the two men worked their way along the tunnel for nearly a hundred yards. Then they paused abruptly and flattened themselves against the wall.

A few feet farther along, the corridor terminated in a flight of steps, seven in number, leading upwards to a fairly spacious casemate. From where Alec and his comrade stood the legs of several Germans could be seen, the rest of their bodies being hidden by the curvature of the roof of the tunnel. The men were formed up round a quick-firing gun of 15 centimetres, or approximately 4.1 inches--a weapon of great hitting power and rapidity of action.

Evidently they were waiting to train the weapon upon some moving objective that had not yet entered the arc of fire.

The two officers glanced at each other. Their teeth gleamed in the dull light, as they exchanged grins of delight. They were no longer prisoners of the tyrannical Hun, but strong men armed. Providence had delivered the enemy into their hands, but it would not be a one-sided contest. The surprise of the attack would compensate for the inequality of numbers, and there were the survivors and possibly crews of guns in another casemate to be reckoned with.

Simultaneously both officers took a step forward, and launched their deadly missiles. The two reports sounded as one, outvoicing in the confined space the din of the conflict without. Amid the rattle of metallic splinters could be heard the thud of bodies falling and the startled squeals of wounded men who find themselves unexpectedly hit.

The rapid crack of an automatic pistol and the splaying of bullets against the stonework gave Seton and his companion warning that their work had not been thorough. Through the pall of smoke a Hun--perhaps more than one--was "letting rip".

Four bombs in quick succession gave the unseen foe his quietus. Silence reigned in the casemate. The roar of battle without was increasing in violence.

Keeping a sharp look-out for the approach of Hun reliefs along the corridor, the two officers waited until the pungent fumes had almost cleared. Then, into the suffocating atmosphere they penetrated. Ascending the short flight of steps they gained the gun emplacement. The weapon, trained to the extreme left, was pointing slightly to the right of the lighthouse, at the extreme end of the Mole extension. Around it lay the bodies of the crew.

A glance through the sighting-slit in the gun-shield gave Alec a clue. Seaward the water was swept by search-lights, the giant beams darting between the sullenly rolling clouds of artificial fog. Quick-firing guns were blazing away like fury. Apparently a torpedo-craft attack on the harbour was about to take place.

"Make a job of it while we are about it," shouted Smith, pointing to a passage on their right. "Another quick-firer in there!"

Through the passage dashed the impromptu bombers, encouraged by their previous victory. Less than ten yards away was another 15-centimetre gun. Apparently its crew were either in ignorance of the knocking-out of the sister-gun, or else they attributed the noise of the bombs to the explosion of a shell fired from seaward.

In any case the surprise was complete. Two bombs were sufficient to silence the weapon.

Beyond was yet a third gun. In this instance the task was by no means so easy, for running along the communication passage came a stalwart naval gunner--one of a picked crew from the German High Seas Fleet.

It was the two officers' canvas suits--garments so grudgingly accepted and yet so opportune--that saved them from instant detection. The Hun, imagining them to be two members of a working-party, bellowed an incoherent order. In a trice he was collared in approved Rugby fashion, while a heavy blow behind the ear reduced him to a state of insensibility.

The scuffle was witnessed by two or three Germans engaged in bringing up ammunition. Their shouts of alarm roused the rest of the gun's crew.

Before Seton and his companion, having completed their task of strafing the Hun gunner, could hurl their bombs, a fusillade of pistol shots rang out. A bullet grazed Smith's cheek; another ploughed a furrow through Seton's hair.

The pilot threw a bomb full in the face of a Prussian unter-leutnant. The missile failed to explode, although it floored the German. Another Boche picked up the bomb and hurled it back. Ricochetting against the wall it hurtled past Seton's head and clattered on the floor of the tunnel ten feet in the rear of the British officers.

There was no time to devote to that. If the sinister missile exploded it meant an end to the contest, but fortunately it was what was known as a "dud".

Almost immediately Alec threw a grenade. It exploded within a couple of seconds of leaving the Sub's hand. When the smoke cleared away, the gun was deserted, save by the dead and dying. Three Huns who had escaped the death-dealing missile had promptly leapt through the embrasure into the sea.

"By Jove, we've put a battery out of action," declared Smith breathlessly. "What luck!"

"Luck, indeed," agreed Alec, pointing to the unexploded bomb. "If that beauty had gone up--but it didn't. What's doing now?"

The two men made their way to the embrasure. It was just possible to squeeze between the steel shield and the granite face of the gun emplacement.

Without, the scene beggared description. Although the 15-centimetre guns were silent, hundreds of smaller quick-firers and machine-guns were letting rip at what was certainly short range. Search-lights were swinging to and fro across the harbour, star-shells bursting high aloft turned night into day.

From seaward shells were coming in showers knocking splinters from the Mole extension on which a Hun battery of six 88-millimetre guns was rapidly being put out of action.

To the right of the embrasure at which the two British officers had taken up their post of observation could be discerned a string of canal barges, moored end to end with anti-torpedo nets between, while the line of obstruction terminated in a number of net defence buoys, their position hardly visible even in the strong artificial light.

The while, sounds of conflict on the Mole were distinctly audible, although from where Seton and his companion stood it was impossible to see what was taking place. The crash of bombs and the rattle of machine-guns mingled with British cheers and German guttural shouts. Whatever was happening it was apparent that the landing-parties were making things particularly hot for Fritz on Zeebrugge Mole.

Even as the two men looked the object of the Huns' shortened fire became visible, for, steaming at full speed towards the Mole-head, were the first of the British block-ships _Thetis_, _Intrepid_, and _Iphigenia_.

Once more it was a case of the onlookers seeing most of the game. At the risk of being knocked out by a British shell--for the position of the now silent 15-centimetre guns was known to the attacking forces, although the actual bore of the guns was supposed to be but 10.5 centimetres--Seton and his companion stood enthralled at the spectacle of supreme valour.

Literally into the jaws of Death came the _Thetis_, majestically, unswerving, and as steadily as if about to pick up moorings at Spithead. With her quick-firers replying to the storm of German shrapnel she held on, rounded the Mole-head, and passed within a cable's length of the battery in which Seton and Smith stood.

Then, with a slight alteration of helm she steered straight for the barge farthest from the Mole. Down went the barge; on swept the _Thetis_. Between the net defence she went, tearing buoys and nets from their anchors and sinkers. Hampered by these obstructions, for apparently the nets fouled her propellers, the _Thetis_ slowed down and grounded diagonally across the entrance to the canal and about a hundred yards from the pier-heads.

Even as she settled, for she had been purposely sunk in the fairway, the _Intrepid_ came into view. In her case she was late in rounding the Mole-head, a circumstance that was subsequently explained by the fact that her surplus watch of stokers, determined not to miss the scrap, had refused to be taken off by the M.-L.'s. Consequently the _Intrepid_ went into Zeebrugge Harbour with a complement of 87 officers and men instead of 54, and that meant that if possible 33 extra men had to be rescued by the little M.-L.'s.

Steering for the gap in the net defences made by the _Thetis_ and judging her position by the latter vessel, hard aground, the second participator in the marine Balaclava entered the Harbour.

Although receiving a heavy gruelling the _Intrepid_, worthy of her name, held resolutely to her course, until she grounded heavily in the centre of the entrance to the canal. Her mission accomplished she was sunk by orders of her gallant skipper, and thus thousands of tons of hard cement were firmly embedded in the mud and sandy bottom of the canal. And now, to make doubly sure of the bottling-up process, the _Iphigenia_ approached under a heavy fire. She, too, was carrying far more than her required complement of men, the supernumeraries, resolutely determined not to be out of the grim business, having dodged the motor-launches told off to remove them before the ship made for the harbour.

From their point of observation Seton and Smith watched the majestically-moving _Iphigenia_. Frequently hidden by driving clouds of artificial fog, pounded by guns of all calibres, with her upper-works shot through and through, the third block-ship held on.

Suddenly two shells hit the ship on the starboard side. Following the blast and smoke of the exploding missiles a dense cloud of steam poured from her vitals, enveloping the whole of the forepart in blinding vapour.

"Steam-pipe severed," decided Alec. "Now, what will she do? She's missing the entrance, by Jove!"

Fortunately, at that juncture the smoke cleared sufficiently to allow the temporarily blinded navigation-party to realize their mistake. With her partly-disabled engines going at full speed astern, the _Iphigenia_ drove between a large dredger and a lighter, sinking the latter like a stone. Then, driving the rammed barge ahead with her only starboard engine working, she literally pushed the huge, unwieldy craft into the canal.

It was tricky navigation, difficult even in times of peace, to manoeuvre a craft like the _Iphigenia_ in a narrow waterway. Hampered by smoke, pounded at by guns, and blinded by search-lights and star-shells, her commander's task appeared to be super-human. Yet marvels were accomplished that night, and _Iphigenia's_ handling was one of them. Ably manoeuvred, she narrowly missed colliding with the sunken _Intrepid_, then coolly and deliberately she was grounded on the east side of the canal, thus making doubly sure that the hornets' nest was sealed.

And now, their work completed, the storming- and demolition-parties from the _Vindictive_, _Iris_, and _Daffodil_ were being withdrawn.

"Time for us to be making tracks, old man," shouted Alec to his chum. "Our fellows are clearing off the Mole. It's our chance to slip off with them, without being plugged by an over-excitable marine or blown sky high by a British bomb."

"Yes, the show's over," rejoined the R.A.F. officer, as the pair began to retrace their footsteps. "Jolly fine stunt--eh, what?"

Past the silent gun emplacements with the wiped-out crews, the two officers hastened, and descending the short flight of steps, gained the communication passage that ran practically the whole length of the Mole.

For quite two hundred yards they fought their way through pungent vapours, hoping to find an exit and thus mingle with the storming-party as the men withdrew to their ships.

Suddenly they found themselves confronted by a mass of blackened rubble, the stones still warm to the touch. A hasty examination showed that a heavy charge of gun-cotton had blown in the tunnel, completely cutting off the escape of Alec and his companion.

"Properly dished!" exclaimed Smith disgustedly. "We're trapped!"

"Tails up!" exhorted his companion. "I know of a way. Game for a swim?"

"Right-o!" replied the R.A.F. officer. "Lead on, old son! It's the night of nights, isn't it?"