Part 2
The L.T.O. and an S.T. stood by to start the motors, while the remainder were closing battery ventilators, giving a final wrench at a hatch batten, and standing by the great vent valves. Forward the T.I.[6] was fussing over a tube door, while in the engine-room the E.R.A.’s and stokers were saying soothing words to the silent engines.
Over all this Seagrave reigned supreme. This was his ‘pidgeon,’ and he ran his crew of twenty-three with the capability of a veteran in spite of his youthful appearance.
Boyd sat working out his sights. He didn’t come into this part of the business.
‘Shut off for diving, sir,’ came a voice from the engine-room, and ‘All ready, sir,’ from Seagrave.
The captain pressed a small switch and the periscope slid upwards till its lower end was at a comfortable height. He applied his eye to it and looked carefully round.
The voice of the musical stoker filtered in from the engine-room,--
‘Mother takes in wringings-out, So does sister Anne. Everybody works in our boat, But the L.T.O.’
‘You shut yer ’ead,’ came the answer. ‘Pity you ain’t got more to do than----’
‘Flood 1 and 4,’ ordered Raymond.
‘Open 1 and 4 Kingstons and 1 and 4 main vents!’ shouted Seagrave.
Two stokers wrenched back the Kingston levers, while a couple of seamen reached up and screwed open the vent valves. The coxswain and second coxswains took their stand by the hydroplane and diving rudder wheels.
‘Flood 2.’
‘Open No. 2 Kingston and No. 2 main vent,’ from the ‘Sub.’
A hiss and a spurt of water came from the air manifold, and Hoskins looked over his shoulder as he worked at the spindles.
‘1 and 4 full, sir,’ he reported.
A slight cant forward could now be felt in the boat as the tanks filled and she settled down in the water.
‘How is she, coxswain?’ asked Raymond with his eye still at the periscope.
‘Three degrees by the head, sir.’
‘Right. Flood 3.’
‘Open No. 3 Kingston and No. 3 main vent. Close 1 and 4 vents!’ cried Seagrave.
‘Vents closed, sir,’ came the reports.
‘2 full, sir,’ said Hoskins. A pause, and then ‘3 full, sir,’ he added.
‘How is she now, coxswain?’ asked the captain again.
‘Two degrees by the stern, sir.’
‘Thank you. Close main vents. Another 500 in the fore trim, Seagrave.’
‘Ay, ay, sir; 500 in the fore-trim,’ repeated the ‘Sub.’
‘Horizontal, sir,’ from the coxswain.
The needle of the depth-gauge trembled, moved slowly, reached four feet and stopped.
‘Four feet,’ announced Seagrave.
‘That’ll do,’ replied Raymond. ‘10,000 in the auxiliary and flood the buoyancy.’
The depth-needle shivered and crept on to ‘fifteen.’
‘How is she?’ asked the captain again.
‘Horizontal, sir, fifteen feet,’ replied the coxswain.
‘Start the motors. Full fields,’ ordered Raymond. ‘Thirty feet. Take her down.’
The two coxswains spun their wheels forward with eyes glued on the depth-gauge.
The needle moved slowly on. Twenty, twenty-five, twenty-seven feet, it recorded. They were whirling their wheels aft now to check her from going too deep.
Thirty feet, thirty-two, thirty-four the metre registered, and then slowly the needle swung back a little and stopped.
‘Thirty feet, sir,’ said the coxswain.
‘Right. Crack the vents and let me know if she gets heavy,’ replied the captain, lowering the periscope. ‘Finished diving stations.’
‘Everybody works in our boat But the L.T.O.’
floated forward again.
Raymond smiled as he watched the men leaving their posts. A humorist in a boat is worth his weight in gold.
The crew dispersed about their various jobs, some to continue their watch in the engine-room or at the wheels, while the watch below turned in their hammocks or stretched out on deck, leaving a courteous gangway to the curtained-off space, anywhere they could find room for a blanket and pillow.
The second coxswain set the diving rudders, spat on his hands, bit off a chunk of tobacco, and retired aft. She would do now, and the coxswain alone could keep her at her depth with the hydroplanes, the great horizontal rudders at the fore-end of the boat that steered her up or down in the same manner as an ordinary vertical rudder steers a surface ship to left or right.
Raymond spent a few minutes satisfying himself that all was well and the helmsman on his course, and then stepped through into the fore-compartment and looked at the chart.
Seagrave and Boyd had both turned in, and in the ‘Ward Room’ it seemed strangely silent. When on the surface the thump and bang of the Diesels filled the boat, and down below one could always hear the water lapping over the superstructure, and feel the vibration and general sense of resistance and energy. But now she was submerged there was an intense stillness, a sort of dead stillness, and only the faint hum of the motors indicated that she was under weigh. There was no motion, no vibration, and no feeling of strain or energy. She might have been at anchor in harbour, except that the hatches were closed and the steering chain rattled now and again.
At one moment noise and rushing water, the next, ‘Diving stations!’ a clang, a hiss or two, and ... silence.
The men’s voices drifted in from the after-compartment, and the clatter of knives and forks indicated that the cook was getting breakfast ready.
After a while Raymond went back to the control room, inhabited now by only the coxswain and helmsman.
‘Eighteen feet,’ he said.
The coxswain spun his wheel until the depth-needles steadied once more.
‘Eighteen feet, sir,’ he announced.
At this depth the lowered periscope was just below the surface of the water and still invisible from above. The captain pressed the switch and it slid up to its required height, bringing its upper lens about three feet above the surface, a thin brass cylinder being all that was apparent to any hostile craft.
With his eye to the lens at the lower end, Raymond obtained a view much like that seen through ordinary binoculars.
As he turned the instrument round he could see the horizon and the wake of the periscope lying astern in creamy bubbles, then the enemy coast about twenty miles away filling the whole of his view to the eastward, then a glimpse of his own hydroplanes, again the horizon and the circle was complete.
Nothing in sight. He lowered the periscope, and giving the order ‘thirty feet,’ returned to the fore-compartment and sat down by the chart-table with a magazine.
Every ten minutes he went back to the control room, the boat rose to eighteen feet, the periscope was hoisted, and he took his careful survey. Then down to the patrolling depth again and back he went to the silent ‘Ward Room’ to glance at the chart or anything that would pass the time.
Towards eight o’clock, the cook came forward to ask Raymond what time he wanted breakfast.
‘Now,’ answered the skipper laconically, picking up the dividers and sticking them into Seagrave’s leg, as the cook departed.
The sleeper grunted and turned over.
‘Wake up, young feller,’ said Raymond. ‘Don’t you want any breakfast?’
The ‘Sub.’ sat up and rubbed his eyes.
‘Oh, Lord!’ he groaned. ‘Why can’t you leave a chap alone?’
‘Come on now; it’s good for children, invalids, and the aged. Shake a leg and let’s get that table out.’
Seagrave staggered over to the folding basin.
‘As usual,’ he grumbled, ‘no bally water now, and I can’t see out of my eyes till I’ve had a wash.’
‘My goodness, you do look a picture of a promising young officer,’ grinned Raymond, ‘and let me tell you, you wash far too often. None of the really classy people in submarines ever wash. When I was up the Marmora I didn’t wash for a month.’
‘Nor since, either, I should imagine,’ retorted Seagrave.
‘This flippancy in one of tender years is very galling. You don’t follow my august example. Look at Boyd, for instance. Gets out of his bunk as if he were going to be Queen of the May.’
Between them they pushed in the lower bunk and hauled out a table flap, on which the meal was laid by the cook, who bore in the eggs and sausages with the air of one who has achieved a culinary triumph.
‘Just look at those sausages,’ said Seagrave sitting down. ‘They look as if they’d spent their palmier days on a cab rank.’
‘You’ve been spoilt,’ replied the skipper. ‘You’ve been brought up on Service bangers, and now you think that our best Vienna sausages, provided by me at great personal expense, are beneath you.’
‘I’d have been glad enough to see any sort of sausages when I was apprentice in a wind-jammer,’ put in Boyd. ‘Cracker hash was what we got. However, I don’t blame you. If I felt like you look, I don’t think I _could_ eat a fried egg.’
‘A most appalling example of a youthful officer on his way to the bow-wows,’ put in Raymond. ‘Eighteen feet.’
The meal over, Seagrave went aft to look at his beloved motors and engines, while the captain and navigator consulted the chart.
‘Near enough to the land, I think,’ said Raymond; ‘we don’t know exactly where their minefields are. We’ll steer an opposite course till noon.’
‘Very good, sir. Steer 236 deg., helmsman.’
‘236 deg., sir,’ came the reply as the wheel went over, and a little later,--
‘Course, sir?’
‘All “Sir Garnet” in the engine-room,’ announced Seagrave, returning from his tour of inspection. ‘The batteries are still up to twelve twenty-five.’
Raymond nodded approval.
‘That’s the sort. Hard-working ‘Subs’ of boats a pace forward, march! One of our world’s workers, but died before attaining maturity. All the same this new battery of ours seems pretty good.’
‘What always scares me,’ returned the other, ‘is shutting down the ventilators for diving. I know I shall forget it some day, and then we’ll have chlorine gas in the boat and be as cold as haddocks in about five minutes, like those poor beggars in “164.”’
‘The day you feel that coming on, you want to let me know. Suicidal mania is not one of my deficiencies. You let me know beforehand and I’ll have you hanged, drawn, and quartered, and bits of you hung round the superstructure as a warning to others of the awful fate of ‘Subs’ who feel the first symptoms of incipient lunacy approaching.’
‘What was it happened to “159” last trip, by the way?’ put in Boyd.
‘Oh, it wasn’t much,’ replied Raymond. ‘“Snatcher” told me about it. They were having tea at about thirty feet when they heard a rumbling stunt. He took her down to eighty feet and stopped there till he had recovered from the fit of nervous prostration into which he had been thrown. Then he went down to a hundred and twenty, took the opportunity of going round and seeing if the boat was right at that depth. When he was satisfied he came up and kept her at forty-five for the rest of the patrol.’
‘What was it?’ queried Seagrave.
‘Seaplane bomb dropped from right above, and only just missed ’em. It was a smooth day, and the pilot must have been able to see the boat easily. The joke was that the stoker P.O., who was off watch at the time, was asleep, with his head against the skin of the hull, and when the bomb went off, the vibration of the boat’s side gave him a lump on the back of the chump as big as an ostrich egg.’
‘Interesting and instructive experience,’ remarked Boyd. ‘Honest Herbert harried by the Hun! That’s the reason there wasn’t any gin in the boat yesterday. The shock to the nerves must have been too much for them.
‘Let the Hun pass, Though he’s an ass. I warrant he’ll prove an excuse for the glass.’
‘Yes,’ said Seagrave, ‘I heard “Bunty” trying to cadge a bottle off the mess-man before we left. But it wasn’t any good. He pleaded that they might meet a “U” boat this time, and that after they’d finished her off they wouldn’t have anything to celebrate the event in. Then he tried strategy, and told the mess-man that he was positive all the German boats were well supplied, on the off-chance of strafing one of our “E” boats.’
‘What did the mess-man say?’
‘Said “U” stood for ’Un and “E” for England, and handed him his mess bill, plus extras,’ said Seagrave, hoisting himself into the upper bunk.
‘Now, just watch me,’ grinned Boyd, pushing back the table, ‘in my wonderful impersonation of shut-eye Joe, the modern sleeping beauty. Warranted to sleep until the next meal, or, failing that, till Fritz shows us his world-famous tip-and-run stunt. Bye-bye, good people. Call me when she swings.’
Raymond was taking the periscope watch himself, as the others were fully employed on watch-keeping and other duties when on the surface. The morning dragged slowly away without incident, and the land was getting distant now and was barely visible by about eleven o’clock.
It was very still and peaceful once more, and the two off-watch slept the sleep of the just. Occasionally a man passed forward outside the curtains on his way to the lockers, or the sound of voices drifted in from the after compartment. Only the sunlight, visible on the water through the periscope, indicated that it was broad daylight.
Once an electric bell broke the stillness with a persistent clanging which caused Boyd to leap from his bunk and rush off muttering imprecations on the gyro compass. The bell stopped, and presently he reappeared.
Raymond looked an inquiry.
‘Only the Count,’ explained the other. ‘That blessed twenty volt generator cut-out plays tricks every now and again,’ and he relapsed into slumber once more.
He was up again at eleven o’clock, however, and telling Raymond that the sun would cross the meridian at a quarter past.
The captain shook his head sadly.
‘It’s no good,’ he groaned. ‘I’ve done my best for you and you don’t get any better. I shall have to humour you or you may become dangerous. However, I’ll see what can be done,’ and he went to the periscope with the air of a doctor who knows the case is hopeless.
‘All right,’ he called from the control room. ‘We’ll rise for it. Too far off the land for bearings. Wake Seagrave. Diving stations!’
Once more the men stood at their posts, and the captain kept his eye at the periscope, while Seagrave superintended and Boyd stood by with his sextant ready.
‘Blow 2 and 3,’ came the order.
‘Open 2 and 3 Kingstons,’ cried Seagrave.
The levers were drawn back and there was a faint jar and a rush of compressed air as Hoskins opened the blows and the water was forced out of the tanks.
The depth-needle came slowly back to four feet and remained steady.
‘2 and 3 out, sir,’ said Hoskins.
The captain left the periscope and went up the dark shaft of the conning-tower hatch. Very gingerly he eased the strongback, and there was a rush of escaping air as the pressure was released from the boat.
Seagrave had his eye on the barometer, which had swung round while diving to ‘off the map,’ and was now rapidly decreasing to the external pressure.
‘One inch!’ he shouted up the hatch. ‘Equal!’
The men could feel the change in the atmosphere by a tickling sensation in the ears, much like having a drop of water in them. Raymond threw open the hatch and stepped out, followed by Boyd.
Up here the sunlight struck sharply on the eyes. In this trim the boat was half submerged and looked like some water-logged hulk wallowing on the surface. She dripped at every pore, and the calm sea washed sluggishly over her superstructure.
Three minutes later the sun crossed, and they were down again, Raymond closing the hatch behind him as he descended.
‘Flood main ballast,’ he ordered.
Once more the tanks filled, the Kingstons were closed, and in less than sixty seconds she was down to thirty feet again.
Ten minutes had sufficed for the whole business.
‘You’re getting a bit thick, Boyd,’ grumbled the ‘Sub’ as they went back to the Ward Room. ‘I can’t get any sleep at all nowadays, what with your confounded sights and the skipper’s blooming energy. Last trip I was just caulking the bunk good-oh when Raymond started a field-day of pasting notices into the pilots. He said the paste wouldn’t stick the things unless there was a weight on them, and shoved the whole lot under me in the bunk. I ought to get extra pay for that sort of thing.’
‘Now, now, you mustn’t get in a state, dearie,’ replied Boyd. ‘Too much work is making you peevish. Here’s lunch. Just try to pick a bit of chicken, cold one, and you’ll rise from the table like a lion refreshed.’
‘At one time,’ said Raymond, sitting down, ‘we didn’t get much at sea, but in these new boats I always look forward to the trip on account of the change of grub.’
‘And yet we growl,’ put in Boyd. ‘I never met any one at sea yet who hadn’t a moan about the food.’
The meal was eaten in shirt sleeves, as the boat was getting rather hot now that the sun was well up, and after the fruit and custard had disappeared Raymond leant back with a yawn.
‘Pity we can’t smoke,’ he said. ‘I’m feeling damn tired. You keep a watch on the “perisher”[7] this afternoon, Seagrave.’
‘All right. Turn in and trust me to let you know if we bump a “mouldy.”[8] I won’t forget.’
In the after compartment the mess tables were down and the men were getting outside their meal seated on stools, the deck, or anything that came to hand. The gyro buzzed on one side of them, and the rattle of the steering-gear formed an accompaniment, which, however, did not seem to upset their appetites. Young men mostly, with here and there a grizzled petty officer for leavening, they moved about with that deftness which men acquire who are accustomed to live in confined spaces.
By-and-by, Seagrave went up the control room shaft and unscrewed one of the brass ports, disclosing a small circle of thick glass. Through this the water could be seen looking intensely blue, while on glancing up he could see the surface thirty feet above, which appeared like a blue ceiling or a large sheet stretched over the boat.
Occasionally the under side of a piece of driftwood could be seen floating on the surface and the fore-deck, and the gun stood out sharply defined.
The atmosphere was bad up here, as all the foul air drifted upwards, and Seagrave soon screwed back the post and returned to his book in the fore compartment.
Every ten minutes came the monotonous order, ‘Eighteen feet,’ the periscope was hoisted and lowered, and the boat descended to the thirty-foot level.
Nearly every one was asleep, the heavy atmosphere making them drowsy, and it was very quiet and peaceful, when the second coxswain, who was at the hydroplanes, called out sharply,--
‘Getting ’eavy, sir! I can’t ’ol ’er up!’
Now, no submarine can descend to an unlimited depth, because the external pressure becomes too great, and below two hundred feet or so they are liable to crush and flatten in like pancakes. Also if she begins to leak owing to excessive depth, water may get to the batteries, whereupon chlorine gas will form and suffocate all hands. Therefore a decent haste is necessary if at any time, owing to an increase of water in the bilges, the boat becomes heavy and has what is known as ‘negative buoyancy.’
Raymond and Seagrave hurried into the control room, the captain giving his orders as he came.
‘Start the pump on the auxiliary. Speed up to 500 on the motors.’
The purr of the motors increased, and the adjusting pump added its clack to the subdued noises.
Raymond hoped that the extra speed by giving her more steerage-weigh, and with the hydroplanes ‘hard-a-rise,’ would bring her up without the tedious necessity of blowing main ballast.
She was going down fast, however. Forty, fifty, sixty, seventy feet the depth-gauge recorded. At seventy-five feet she stopped.
‘Stand by the hatches,’ cried Seagrave. ‘Report any leak at once.’
She rose slowly and Raymond stopped the pump. The coxswain twirled his wheel, and she was bringing up at thirty feet when an avalanche of water came down the conning-tower hatch.
The captain sprang for the ladder through the mass of water and disappeared up the shaft. The flow decreased and stopped, and he reappeared drenched to the skin.
Everybody got very busy suddenly. Nobody seemed to wish to be unduly noticed, and all showed a strange eagerness for work of any sort. The coxswain winked at the helmsman, and that worthy leant towards the compass with a fixed stare.
‘These ruddy hatches!’ bellowed Raymond. ‘The damned thing came open, and I’ve only got one shirt in the boat.’
‘Here, messenger,’ he added, pulling it off, ‘take this into the engine-room and get it dried. No water in the battery, is there, Seagrave?’
‘No, sir,’ replied the ‘Sub’ with a stony countenance. ‘That’s the best of these high coamings, and we’ve got the rubber deck-cloth screwed well down. The batteries are all right.’
‘Well, that’s a bit of luck, anyway. And now, after that lot, another little drink wouldn’t do us any harm. But don’t wake Boyd, as we haven’t much whisky left.’
The pressure in the boat had slightly lifted the hatch on the catch slipping its socket. Otherwise, owing to the weight of thirty feet of water, it could never have admitted the slightest drop.
‘All’s well that ends well,’ said Raymond, as he raised his glass, ‘but that water coming in like that certainly shook me. I didn’t think there was so much pressure in the boat.’
‘It shook me far more to see you looking like a drowned rat when you came down. This is what is known ashore as “Seeing Life.”’
‘You keep a look-out with that “perisher,” my boy, and don’t worry about me. You’ve got a shirt to wear, and I haven’t, unless it’s dry before we rise.’
Presently they relapsed into silence, and Raymond dropped off to sleep again, while the ‘Sub’ carried on with the watch.
At four o’clock tea put in an appearance, after which Boyd took his turn at the periscope watch, while the others sat reading.
The wind had been increasing since noon, and the sea was getting up. Looking through the periscope his view was often obscured by the waves, and occasionally they broke right over, shutting out the scene as if a light blue curtain had been flung over the eyes and torn away again.
Even at thirty feet the boat began to roll, and when suddenly a bump was heard forward and a rattle the whole length of the boat, Raymond jumped from his chair, brought her quickly up and glanced ahead.
However, there was nothing to be seen, and he lowered the periscope, the boat descending to the patrol level again.
‘What was it?’ asked Seagrave.
The other shook his head. ‘Don’t know. One of the mysteries of the deep. Perhaps a mine that didn’t go off. Anyhow you can say so in your letters home. I heard that noise three times in an afternoon when I was in “85” last year. You never can say for certain that it’s not the moorings of a mine, so it’s always best to be on the look-out if you hear that sort of row. I don’t like them knocking to be let in in that way. It’s too forward of them altogether.’
‘I saw that “U” boat we recovered the other day when I was on leave,’ said Boyd. ‘She struck a mine end on. Great Scott! she was a sight. The whole bow-cap was blown right off, and they found the bodies of the crew in her when they got her up. Poor beggars. They’d grouped up and put the hydroplanes hard-a-rise before they were snuffed out.’
‘Yes,’ remarked Raymond. ‘I can’t say that it gives me any particular pleasure to think of a crowd of Germans in a submarine striking a mine. It brings it too much home to one, as it were, and, after all, they’re obeying orders in the same way as we are.’
‘It must seem funny,’ said Seagrave. ‘One minute sitting here reading, and the next, the fore-end blown off and a wall of water flopping in on you. I don’t expect you’d know much about it, though.’
‘I say, you fellows,’ cried Boyd, coming in from the control room. ‘There’s a hell of a sea getting up. We’re in for a wet night. Sea-boots and oilskins for mine.’
‘My usual luck,’ said Raymond, fishing in a drawer. ‘I always get it rough on the way home. Who’s the Jonah?’