barometer again obliged by falling rapidly.
It was a wild night and very dark when the first mine splashed overboard. A snowstorm set in, and as the work proceeded heavy seas broke over the vessel, smothering her with spray, but she was comparatively a large ship, built for ocean trade. Although the darkness and the snow were conditions favourable to the laying of mines in secret, and without their aid the danger of discovery would have been great, the rising gale and the heavy seas rendered the work both difficult and dangerous, notwithstanding that these deadly weapons were so arranged as to go automatically overboard.
Before the last of her cargo had been consigned to the deep it was blowing great guns, and one sea after another was breaking over the ship. Although sheltered waters lay less than fifty miles distant, to proceed there would mean certain discovery and destruction, so all through that wild night, and for many hours afterwards, the raider sought by every means in her power to battle seawards, away from the coast and danger, heading into the teeth of the gale and out on to the broad bosom of the North Atlantic, all unknowing that but for the severity of the storm she must have been observed, probably in the very act of laying the mine-field, by the small warship riding out the north-wester in the more sheltered waters close inshore.
It is interesting to note that it was on this mine-field a few days later that one of the largest transatlantic liners was sunk.
CHAPTER XXI
The S.O.S.
A great work of rescue was carried on throughout the war on all the seven seas by vessels of both the old and the new navy. This service was rendered to ally, neutral and enemy alike, but no complete record of the gallant deeds performed nor even of the numbers and nationalities of those saved will, in all probability, ever be available, and none is needed, for it was a duty which brought its own reward.
Typical of the way succour was brought by the naval patrols to those unhappy victims of both sexes left adrift in open boats in calm and rough, sunshine and snow, all over the northern seas by the cowardly
It was mid-December, and flurries of snow were being driven before a stinging north-westerly wind. The sea was moderate, but the heavy Atlantic swell caused the lonely patrol ship to sink sluggishly into the watery hollows, with only her aerials showing above the surrounding slopes of grey-green sea, and a minute or so later to be poised giddily on the bosoms of acre-wide rollers with nothing but the white mists obscuring the broad horizon.
It was a wild wintry scene, pregnant with cold and hardship. The officer who had just come up from the warmth of the wardroom to relieve his “opposite number” on the bridge pulled the thick wool muffler closer round his neck and dug mittened hands deep into the pockets of his duffel coat.
In the Marconi cabin, situated on the deck of the
Presently a message began to spell itself in Morse. Taking a pencil, the operator scribbled various hieroglyphics on the naval signal paper lying on the desk in front of him; then after a pause of a few seconds he pulled forward a tiny lever and began a rhythmic tap on an ebonite key.
It was the “S.O.S.” call and the reply that had flashed through the ether. A minute or so later the written signal, giving the appeal for help and the position and name of the torpedoed liner, was handed to the commander. A glance at the chart told that young but experienced officer that he could not hope to bring his ship to the scene of the disaster before dusk closed down, and a message was sparked across the eighty miles of intervening sea asking how long the crippled ship could be kept afloat.
To this, however, there came no reply, and the engines of the sloop were put to full speed ahead. A heavy spray now commenced to sweep across the deck in drenching showers, and the snow haze thickened. The pitching of the ship increased as she raced over the ocean swell, driving her sharp bows deep into the masses of sea. The limbs of the watch grew stiff and numb, and a fine coating of wet salt stung their faces. Eyes ached from gazing into the bitter wind, and for over four hours the race against approaching night continued. If darkness closed down before that eighty miles of sea was covered all on board realised that the chances of finding any survivors would be greatly diminished. Even the strongest vitality could not long resist exposure to the intense cold, and there might be women and children in the sea ahead.
Many of the officers and crew of the sloop had experienced the agonies of cold, wounds and salt water when cast adrift on wintry seas, and the memory acted like a whip. As the hours went by the greenish tint of the sea slowly turned to leaden-grey, and the pure white of the driving snow contrasted sharply with the quickening dusk of the December night.
It was in the last half-hour of the dog watch that the sloop reached the scene of the disaster and the speed was reduced. Scattered over the sea around, and floating southwards in grim procession, was a mass of wreckage—a broken raft, a number of deck-chairs, spars and cordage, a life-belt and some oars—but of boats with living freights there was not a sign.
Steaming slowly round in widening circles, the sloop searched while the light lasted, but the whirling haze of fine snow blotted out the distance, and soon the early darkness of a winter night settled over the sea. The cold became intense. The white beam of a searchlight now flashed out over the black waters. There was a grave risk in this betraying light, one not sanctioned by the theory of war. It made the warship a target for any hostile submarine lurking around, but it seemed impossible to believe that a 6000-ton liner, with probably several hundred human beings on board, could have been so completely obliterated, and to the commander of the sloop the risk seemed justified.
Other ships might have intercepted the S.O.S. call and reached the scene of the disaster earlier, but the sloop’s wireless, although put into action, could not confirm this, and so the search was continued.
On and off during the bitter night the white beam of light flashed out through the snow. For a few seconds it swept the sea close around and was then shut off. In the pall-like blackness which followed ears listened intently, but could distinguish nothing except the lash of the sea.
The sound-deadening qualities of falling snow would have cut short the range of any cry, for the human voice at its strongest, and with the atmospheric conditions favourable, can seldom be heard more than 1000 yards distant. So hour after hour of numbing cold went by with nothing to show except the occasional pathway of light on the grey slopes of sea and the low moaning wind.
The snowing ceased, and in the cold stillness which so often precedes daybreak in the north a faint cry came from the sea, at first so indistinct and mingled with water noises that it would never have been heard at all if the engines of the sloop had not been shut off, as they had been at frequent intervals during the night, to enable those on board to listen. The cry was quickly followed by the “snore” of a boat’s fog-horn. A few turns of the sloop’s propellers and in the grey light of the December dawn a large ship’s life-boat could be dimly seen, away to starboard, when it rose on the bosom of the swell.
Careful man?uvring placed the warship alongside the boat-load of half-frozen castaways and the work of rescue commenced. It was a sad task. Amongst the thirty-two survivors there were twelve women and children, seven of whom had died of cold and exposure during that bitter night. One, a young Canadian wife coming home to her wounded soldier husband, had been crushed by the explosion of the first torpedo and suffered agonies in the open boat before sinking into the peace of death.
To dwell here on the suffering caused by intense cold, exposure, hunger, thirst, untended wounds, and the mental agony of suspense, often to delicate women and children, when cast adrift on the open sea, would be merely to repeat what has so often been written, and which will live for ever in the memory of sailormen.
When the survivors had all been lifted on board—and many had suffered badly from frost-bite—the search for
