When they had reached the coast and mounted the rough stone steps leading to the elevated look-out tower, a clear sweep of the dark, foam-crested surface was obtained, and the news was shouted above the roar of the gale that somewhere out in the night, amid the tormented waters, a ship was in distress, though the flying spray made it impossible to locate the exact direction.
Below the signal tower, and built on a mass of rock projecting into the half-sheltered water inside the concrete pier, was the life-boat house. From this point the white rays of a chemical flare lighted up the surface of the sea as far as the harbour bar, which, with its flanking rocks, resembled a seething cauldron. Into this the life- boat plunged from its inclined slipway, and was almost instantly swallowed up in the outer ring of darkness and spray. The flare died out suddenly and the night seemed even blacker than before.
After a brief struggle with the wind, now blowing at a speed of over seventy miles an hour, the men who had assembled around the signal station made their way out on to the spray-swept breakwater, and there waited for the coloured rocket from the life-boat which would signify that she had found the wreck.
Nearly an hour passed but no sign came from the darkness and boiling sea. Then a light appeared momentarily on the harbour bar and was lost in the smother of white. A few minutes later a grinding crash came from the rocks less than a hundred yards distant from the end of the breakwater.
The groups of sailors standing under the lee of the wall, chafing at their apparent helplessness and gazing anxiously out to sea, were suddenly electrified into action by a few sharp orders from the oilskinned commander. A minute or two of seemingly inextricable confusion resulted in the beams of a portable searchlight flashing out from the spray-swept breakwater and lighting up rocks, foam, and a big three-masted Norwegian sailing ship, with sails torn, her fore-mast broken off short and every sea lifting high her stern and driving her farther on to the half-hidden tongues of stone. Even as the light played on her she heeled over to starboard at an angle of about forty-five degrees with an ominous rending of timbers which sounded above the roar of wind and surf.
Orders were bellowed through a megaphone, and again men moved quickly in all directions. This time a fiery rocket, bearing a life-line, soared from its tube with a loud hiss and sped across the hundred yards of boiling sea. It straddled the wreck. The thin line it carried was soon exchanged for a stout hawser—hauled from the breakwater —and this was made fast to the stump of the mainmast, which had followed the other “sticks” overboard when the vessel heeled over on the rocks. It was now floating, wrestling and tugging at the mass of confused rigging, and pounding dangerously at the ship’s side.
One by one the unfortunate Norse crew were hauled over the harbour bar in the breeches-buoy by fifty willing British sailors, and the first to come was the captain’s wife and little daughter.
There was but one casualty, and that among the rescuers. The stretcher was lifted from the ambulance at the door of the substantially built house standing back from the little town. A white-faced woman ran out into the storm. She had spent a year of nights and days half expecting such as this, and now that it had come the blood seemed to ebb from her body, and at first she scarcely heard a familiar voice assuring her that it was only a cut on the head from a broken wire rope.
CHAPTER XIX
How H.M. Trawler No. 6 Lost Her Refit
An earlier chapter described the periodical overhauls necessary to keep the ships of the hard-worked auxiliary navy in proper fighting condition. These “refits” were needed not only by the ships but also by the men who worked them. They came about once a year and lasted for two or three weeks, during which time the crews were able to go home for at least a few days of much-needed rest.
To describe how everyone, from commander to signal-boy, looked forward to these spells of leave is unnecessary. Let the reader imagine how he himself would feel after nine or ten months of the monotony and danger, to say nothing of the hardships, of life at sea in time of war.
There was, however, another consideration, one seldom referred to but nevertheless unavoidably present in the minds of all. Each time a refit came round there were ships which would never be docked again, and comrades who had missed their leave. Men told themselves that the luck they had enjoyed for so long could not last, and it is about one of these, in a fight against overwhelming odds, that the following story deals.
Three of his Majesty’s armed trawlers were plunging through the sea on their lonely beat in the Western Ocean. The Hebrides lay far to the southward, and less than two days’ steam ahead lay the Arctic Circle. These cheerless surroundings, however, found no echo in the hearts of the watch below on the leading ship of the unit, who were lounging on the settees in the oil-smelling fo’c’sle discussing their prospects of long leave, for their ship was to “blow-down” for a thorough refit when they returned to harbour in less than three weeks’ time.
On the deck of the same vessel two officers, standing in the shelter of the wheel-house, were sweating and shivering in patches, but also happy with the thought of the forthcoming reunion with their families and the brief enjoyment of the comforts of home after seven long winter months’ wandering, with soul-destroying monotony, over the windswept wastes of England’s frontier. The watch on deck, with the exception of the helmsman and look-out, crouched under the lee of the iron superstructure, alternately swinging their arms and stamping their heavily booted feet, but they too were mentally impervious to the dismal surroundings.
Of the second ship in the line the same cheery story cannot be told. She was jealous of the first. It would be another two months at least before she would go in dock for refit; and among the watch below there were three new hands on their first voyage, two of whom would, just then, have preferred the peace and stillness of the sea bottom to the friskiness of the surface.
The third trawler was a happy little ship, for although the junior of the unit she had been very fortunate in securing a “Fritz” all to her own cheek less than three months before.
This, then, was one of the units on the Outer Hebrides and Iceland patrol during the winter of 1915, and they seemed to be the sole occupants of the leagues of water around.
It was barely eleven o’clock, Greenwich time, when they reached the last ten miles of their beat, and speed was reduced so that they would not have to turn about and begin steaming back over the course they had come until the morning watch went below at midday. This was an artful though harmless arrangement to enable those going off duty to have a meal and at least an hour’s rest in peace, as on the voyage back both wind and sea would be astern and the vicious lurching of the small ship reduced to a minimum.
The time passed slowly, as it generally did on patrol when nothing exciting was afoot, but a few minutes before the awaited eight bells the officer on duty snatched up the binoculars, and almost simultaneously the look- out gave a warning shout which caused the attention of everyone on deck to suddenly become strained.
Away to port, less than half-a-mile distant, the thin grey tube of a periscope could be seen planing through the waves, with a fringe of white foam blowing from its base. There was a hoarse cry down the fo’c’sle hatch for “All hands on deck!” The telegraph tinkled for “Full ahead!” A signal was made to the ships astern for concerted action. The gun was manned, and the leading trawler, now cleared for action, headed towards her under-water opponent.
The other two vessels of the unit put on speed and spread out until all three were line-abreast and about two cables apart. In this formation the chase was maintained for some twenty minutes, when a second submarine appeared above the surface away to starboard. She appeared to be a large vessel and would probably have turned the scale at 1000 tons.
It was at this early stage in the action that the mistake was made. The leading trawler immediately opened fire, but the range was considerable and the shells fell short. Signalling to the other two trawlers to continue the chase of the first submarine sighted, she headed straight for the largest of the two hostile craft to engage her at close range.
While this was in progress the first submarine came to the surface and proved to be also a larger craft than had been anticipated. The two trawlers chasing her immediately opened fire, but her superior surface speed soon placed her out of range of the comparatively small guns then carried by the trawler patrols.
Now came the surprise. Almost simultaneously the two submarines opened fire from heavy guns. The shells at first fell wide, but in a moment the British officers realised that they were outranged, for whereas their shells were falling short, those from the enemy whistled over their heads and ploughed up columns of white water over a cable’s length astern.
