Kitabı oku: «Pincher Martin, O.D.: A Story of the Inner Life of the Royal Navy», sayfa 20

II

Who would not sell a farm and go to sea? Life in the navy, even in war, has its compensations. At any rate, the sailor's commodious residence conveys him, his belongings, his food, and his weapons to the scene of his activities at a speed of anything between seven and a half and thirty-six knots, according to circumstances. The soldier, on the other hand, though he may sometimes ride upon a horse or travel in a train, generally has to rely upon his own flat feet for locomotion. Moreover, he carries on his person several days' provisions, spare clothing, a rifle, a bayonet, ammunition, and equipment, together with an assortment of bombs, gas-masks, and entrenching tools. Any spare space or weight-carrying capacity which may remain to him is presumably at his own disposal, and may be utilised for accommodating gifts of tobacco, magazines, and socks from home. So the sailor is lucky in a way; while he also escapes the mud of the trenches, the plagues of flies, and other abominations – for which he is duly grateful. It is true, though, that his floating home, particularly if it is a small one like a destroyer, is very subject to the vicissitudes of the weather, and has a knack of being abominably wet and very unstable in a seaway. But life at sea in peace and life at sea in war are not so very different. The ocean, with its gales, calms, and fogs, is always the same, and hostilities only mean more time spent at sea, a few extra dangers thrown in, in the shape of mines and submarines, and the chance of a 'scrap' with the enemy.

Sometimes, during their expeditions to that region known as 'the other side,' for the express purpose of discomforting the Hun, the Mariner and the light cruisers and other destroyers with her had bad weather. Occasionally it was very bad indeed, and until they got used to it some of the ship's company wished fervently that they had never joined the navy at all. When their little ship was punching home against a rapidly rising gale, the green seas had a playful habit of breaking over the bows and of washing waist-deep over the upper deck; while, even in the quiet intervals, sheets of spray came flying on board until every one was soaked through and through, in spite of oilskins.

The movement was dizzy and maddening. It was usually a combined pitch and roll, a horrible corkscrew motion which left one wondering what antics the ship was going to indulge in next. At one instant the bows would be flung high into the air on the crest of a wave until the forefoot and some length of the bottom were clean out of the water. Then the sea would fall away from underneath, and, after hesitating a little, the bows would fall into the next hollow with a sickening downward plunge. Then a great gray wall of advancing water, topped with a mass of yeasty foam, would rear itself up and obliterate the horizon ahead. Sometimes the ship lifted in time to ride over it. Sometimes she seemed to hang, and the liquid avalanche broke on board and surged over the forecastle with a crashing and a thudding which made the whole ship quiver and tremble. At such times the mess-decks, the wardroom, and the cabins, however watertight they were supposed to be, were usually inundated with several inches of water. Hot food was often out of the question, for even if the cook were not seasick, or his fire were not extinguished by the sea, he, not being blessed with the tentacles of an octopus, could hardly prevent himself from being hurled violently forth through his galley door, let alone retain an array of saucepans, kettles, and frying-pans on the top of a nearly red-hot stove. Something was bound to go, and 'cookie' took very good care it was not he. Then it was that officers and men ate and drank what they could. Wooten favoured Bovril from a vacuum flask, corned beef sandwiches, and cheese; but some people, having no appetites, preferred to fast.

Destroyers cannot steam very fast against a heavy head-sea, and with bad weather from the west there was always the possibility that the enemy's battle-cruisers might emerge from their lair and chase and sink the retiring British ships one by one as they punched slowly homewards. Small craft are not suited for fighting in very bad weather, and such an eventuality might have been disastrous; but nobody seemed to trouble his head about it.

Life at sea in the summer, when there was hardly a ripple on the water, with a brilliant sun and no fog, was enjoyable, though it is true that they always ran a certain amount of risk from mines, floating or otherwise. The dangerous red squares, oblongs, and circles on the chart were abundant and well scattered. Ships did not willingly venture over them; but summer sun and absence of wind breed fogs, and they might be at sea in misty weather for a couple or more days with no glimpse of the land, no chance of taking an observation of the sun, and nothing but a dead reckoning position to work from. This – since tides, currents, and wind have a variable effect – might sometimes be anything up to twenty miles wrong, so destroyers occasionally trespassed upon the red danger areas without really meaning to do so. How could they help it?

Liberties should not be taken with mines. They are inventions of the Evil One, and at the beginning of the war caused many people to suffer from insomnia; but later on those who did nothing but traverse waters in which some unscrupulous mine-layer had deposited her eggs lost much of their dread of them. Familiarity had bred not actually contempt, but a species of fatalistic indifference which is rather difficult to describe. A mine explosion is always serious, sometimes disastrous, and it is never exactly pleasant to know that your ship may be blown up at any moment, and that you and your shipmates may have to take to the boats, if there is room in them for all hands and the cook, or if there is not, to go bathing in life-belts or swimming-collars. Moreover, some of you may be killed or wounded by the explosion itself, particularly if it occurs under a magazine; and if it happens close to the enemy's coast one may possibly be rescued by the Huns and incarcerated in Germany for the duration of the war. There is a chance of being saved by a British ship if one is anywhere near; but whichever way one looks at it, an under-water explosion is never anything but unpleasant to the victim thereof.

But there is nothing to be gained by worrying. In war one can go to Kingdom Come in such a variety of ways, all equally violent and all horrible, that it is as well never to allow the mind to dwell on any particular method of extinction. People never run unnecessary risks, naturally; but risks have to be taken, and mines moored beneath the surface are invisible at any time. 'Floaters,' too, are a source of danger; and, though mines which have become parted from their moorings are nominally supposed to be harmless, Hague Conventions and the tenets of International Law are sometimes disregarded. War has lost its old-time chivalry. It is now a dirty and an ungentlemanly business – one at which the modern Hun excels.

III

One dark winter evening the Mariner and three other destroyers were groping their way back toward the British coast after being at sea for two days and two nights. They had had the usual North Sea weather, thick haze and some rain; but during the later portion of the trip there had been a gale of wind from the south-west and an unusually bad sea. Even now, when they were close to the coast, and should have been more or less under the lee of the land, it still blew hard, with a heavy perpendicular lop which made the little ships pitch and wallow as they drove through it. The evening was as black as the mouth of the nethermost pit, and the sky was completely overcast, while for the last forty-eight hours they had never had a glimpse of the sun or the land. Their position, as usual in such circumstances, was more or less an unknown thing, a mere matter of dead reckoning and guesswork, which even the constant use of the sounding-machine could not verify.

Making the land after dark in peace-time, with all shore lights blazing, sometimes gives cause for anxiety; but in war, when all the lighthouses and lightships are extinguished, when many buoys are removed, and there are various dangerous mined areas to be dodged and avoided, it becomes something more than a joke. If mines are known to be present, the feeling is not at all a pleasant one. It is rather like being blindfolded and trying to find the door in a pitch-dark room, the floor of which is well strewn with bombs ready to explode on being touched. That was the sort of sensation at the back of Wooten's mind.

The Mariner happened to be the third ship in the line of four, and at five-fifty-one precisely, when the skipper, the sub-lieutenant, and the usual quartermaster, signalman, and lookouts were on the bridge watching the next ahead, there came a rumbling, crashing roar from somewhere close astern. It made the ship dance and tremble, and was nothing the least like the sharp report of a gun. The sound was more or less muffled, and the violent, reverberating thud could only be compared with the sudden banging of a heavy steel velvet-covered door in a jerry-built villa, if such a thing can be imagined.

Wooten, who had heard such reports before, knew at once what it was. 'God!' he exclaimed anxiously, looking astern; 'some one's got it in the neck!'

Some one had – the Monsoon, the ship astern – and a moment later her signal-lamp was flickering agitatedly in and out in the darkness. 'Have struck a mine!' she spelt out hastily.

Wooten cursed under his breath. 'These things always happen on nights like this!' he observed bitterly. 'Just like our rotten luck! – Signalman!'

'Sir?'

'Tell Monsoon I'm coming to her assistance,' Wooten gave the necessary orders to the quartermaster at the wheel. – 'Hargreaves, have the boats turned out ready for lowering in case she goes, and send down to No. 1, and tell him to be ready for taking her in tow. As fast as you can!'

The sub. hurriedly left the bridge, and Wooten, working the helm and the twin screws, circled round until his ship was about fifty yards away from and abreast of the damaged vessel, which had fallen off into the trough of the sea. The Mariner's men, meanwhile, in all stages of deshabille, had thronged to the upper deck at the sound of the explosion, and were making the various necessary preparations.

'Are you all right?' the skipper bellowed as the ship slid slowly past, rolling heavily.

'I don't know about being all right,' came back a voice. 'My stern, with the rudder, screws, and the whole bag o' tricks, is missing. I think she'll float, though.'

'Right! I'll take you in tow!' went back the reply. – 'Good Lord!' added Wooten, swaying to the heavy rolling and looking at the sea; 'it's going to be the devil's own job, though.'

It was. When a searchlight shone out and illuminated the scene, the Monsoon seemed to be in a very bad way. She was not rolling very heavily, for some portion of her damaged stern was still connected to the hull, causing her to lie over to starboard toward the wind until the mast was at an angle of thirty degrees to the vertical, and broken water could be seen washing half-way across her upper deck. The spectacle was an alarming one, for she seemed to be in some danger of capsizing.

The Mariner, meanwhile, had drawn slightly ahead. She was rolling so heavily that at one moment her rails were under water, and the next were high in the air, while the men working on the wet and slippery deck had the greatest difficulty in preventing themselves from being hurled bodily overboard.

Wooten manœuvred his ship until her stern was on a level with the Monsoon's bows, and about thirty feet distant; where-upon men stationed aft endeavoured to hurl heaving-lines across on to the forecastle of the damaged vessel. If a small line could be got across from ship to ship, the end of it would be made fast to a coir hawser in the Monsoon. The coir would then be dragged over to the Mariner, and on the end of it would be secured the steel-wire towing-hawser, one end of which would be hauled on board and secured in the towing ship, and the other in the vessel being towed. But, try as they might, they could not bridge the space. The wind simply laughed at them, and hurled their lines back in their faces, while all the time the throwers were in constant danger of being shot into the sea by the movement. Except for the glare of the searchlight, it was pitch-dark. Wooten could not approach any closer for fear of bringing the vulnerable stern, with its rudder and screws, into collision with the Monsoon's bows, and if he allowed that to happen his own ship would be disabled and rendered helpless, and the last state of affairs would be worse than the first. There was only one alternative, and that was to lower a boat to take the lines across; but this again was easier said than done.

Hargreaves, the sub-lieutenant, and five men took their places in the whaler hanging at her davits, and the boat was then lowered gradually toward the water. The skipper watched them with his heart in his mouth, for as she descended, and the falls lengthened, the scope of her oscillation became longer and longer, and dizzier and dizzier. The ship herself was still rolling horribly, and at one instant the whaler was swung giddily out at an impossible angle over the water, while the next she came into contact with the ship's side with a crash and a thump which threatened to stave in her planks and to precipitate every mother's son of her crew into the sea. Watching the business was a ghastly nightmare which seemed to last for minutes. In reality it must have been over in a few seconds, but Wooten heaved a sigh of heartfelt relief when he saw the boat fall with a splash on to the top of a gigantic sea. But the next moment he held his breath again, for she was flung bodily aft on the crest of the billow until she was all but deposited on deck as the ship rolled drunkenly toward her. Then she sank out of sight somewhere under the bottom as the Mariner lurched over the other way, to reappear a few seconds later, with her crew plying their oars lustily. How they ever succeeded in getting clear nobody quite knew, for in that sea only a merciful Providence saved Hargreaves and his five men from disaster.

The line was passed across by the boat, and the end of the Monsoon's wire hawser was shackled on to a length of chain cable at the Mariner's stern, and when this had been done the two ships were connected and everything was ready for going ahead. The whaler was then rehoisted after another series of hairbreadth experiences, and the struggle began to get the damaged ship head on to the sea and wind preparatory to towing her into safety. A bare hour and twenty-four minutes had passed since the explosion had occurred. To Wooten and his men it had seemed like half the night.

Pincher Martin, who was on the bridge at one of the engine-room telegraphs up till midnight, saw and heard all that went on. By the time the Monsoon was safely in tow both vessels were lying broadside on to the wind and sea, with their heads to the south-eastward. The course to get the damaged ship head on to the waves and toward the shelter of the coast was south-west, and at first Wooten went dead slow ahead with both engines to tug her round. But it was a more difficult task than he had bargained for. He could not go fast, for the violent motion on his ship and the consequent jerking on the towing-wire would have caused the latter to part like a piece of thread; and even as it was, the wire was jerking out of the sea one minute, humming like a harp-string, while the next the bight of it was sagging loosely under the water. Moreover, a destroyer is not an ideal ship for towing another at the best of times. The tow-rope necessarily has to be made fast in the extreme stern, not, as is the case in a properly fitted tug, more or less amidships in the spot where the vessel pivots when turning. The consequence is that manœuvring-power is reduced almost to a minimum, while on this particular occasion the Monsoon, with her stern cut off and some of the wreckage trailing behind her, lay like a log on the water, and did her very utmost to pull the Mariner round the wrong way – that is, to the east, instead of through south to south-west. It was rather like trying to tow a derelict motor-bus with a bicycle.

The skipper worked his engines very gingerly, and tautened out the tow with his helm to port. Then he gradually increased the revolutions of the turbines until they should have been travelling at eight knots.

'How's her head, coxswain?' he asked after an interval.

'South sixty-five east, sir,' said Willis.

Wooten sighed deeply, and verified the statement by glancing at the compass. 'Lord!' he said, 'she was there ten minutes ago. Isn't she moving at all?'

'Wagglin' about a bit,' the coxswain answered, gazing at his compass-card in his usual imperturbable way. 'She's all over the shop. Up to sou'-east one minute, an' back to south-eighty the next. She's just startin' to move to starboard now, sir,' he added eagerly an instant later. 'Blarst!' in a very audible undertone; 'no, she ain't. She's startin' to fall off the wrong way.'

'Damn!' Wooten muttered; 'I don't believe we'll ever get her round.'

Willis gave vent to a throaty sigh. He evidently thought the same.

It certainly did seem an impossible job, for with the drag on her stern the Mariner was practically stationary, while using more speed was out of the question without running a dangerous risk of snapping the towing-wire. Time after time the ship's head came round to south-east, sometimes a few degrees farther; but on each occasion, after hesitating for a moment or so, she fell back to her original starting-point, south sixty-five degrees east.

They tugged and tugged for over an hour with no effect. Wooten exhausted all his unparliamentary vocabulary, and Willis became speechless and purple about the face; but nothing happened – absolutely nothing. The Monsoon was making signals all the while – urgent signals, signals of real distress. 'Please tow me head to sea and wind as soon as you possibly can,' they said. 'Sea may smash in my after bulkheads, and cause ship to sink.'

'Am doing my very utmost,' said the Mariner in reply.

They certainly were. They could do no more.

By about eight-thirty, at which time both ships were still in the trough of the sea, and the Mariner was oscillating like the pendulum of a clock, thin, drizzling rain came to add to their discomfort.

'Damn it all!' growled Wooten between his teeth, 'we must do something drastic. We haven't budged an inch since we started.'

'Please don't go any faster, sir!' protested MacDonald. 'The wire won't stand it. It's on the verge of carrying away as it is.'

'We shall have to chance it, No. 1. We can't spend the whole night messing about here like this.'

Wooten solved the difficulty by going slow astern with the starboard propeller and putting the port engine-room telegraph to 'half-speed ahead,' and gradually increasing the revolutions of the port screw to sixteen knots. This exerted a greater thrust, tending to turn the ship to starboard, and at last, after ten minutes of it, she actually began to move.

'How's she going now?' Wooten inquired five minutes later.

'Comin' round very, very slow, sir,' said Willis. 'She's at south-forty east.'

They persevered. Sometimes the ship swung round a matter of ten degrees or so in the right direction with a rush, only to fall back seven of them a moment later. Sometimes the lubber's line of the compass went back beyond the original starting-point, but generally they managed to gain a degree or two. The Monsoon had been in tow at seven-fifteen, and it was not until three hours later that they finally got her on to the desired course of south-west.

The mere recital of the incident seems commonplace and trivial enough; but to Wooten the period was one of poignant anxiety, for the damaged ship, judging from what could be seen of her in the glare of the searchlight, seemed to be on the verge of capsizing. Her signals said as much, too; and if her bulkheads had burst, and she had turned over, the Mariner, with a wire made fast to her stern, and a gale of wind blowing, and a sea running in which a small, heavily laden boat had very little chance of remaining afloat, would have been able to do little toward saving her crew. They would have attempted it, of course, but all would probably have perished together. Moreover, in the darkness and generally bad conditions which prevailed, there was always the chance that Wooten would have bad luck, and damage, if not lose, his ship. If he did that people would call him a silly fool behind his back, and would say he should have known better than to attempt the impossible, while his career in the service might be marred. If, on the other hand, he succeeded in doing what he set out to do, the powers that be might pat him on the back and call him a good boy, but very possibly would refrain from doing anything of the kind. The standard in the navy is ever a high one, and in time of war incidents of this kind are all in the day's work.

But all's well that ends well, and on this particular occasion they did succeed, and the Mariner, with the Monsoon in tow, steamed slowly off toward the land. The speed they made was roughly three and a quarter knots, perhaps a trifle less; but it was all in the right direction, and by midnight the damaged vessel was under the lee of the shore and in safety. They finally dropped the tow at six o'clock the next morning, when the skipper, in a sudden fit of exuberance, went on faster than he really should have done, and promptly parted the wire. But no harm was done, for by this time they were in calm water, and a light cruiser was in attendance.

The same afternoon he met the commanding officer of the Monsoon.

'Well, Peter,' said the latter, 'we got jolly well out of that show last night.'

'By George! yes,' Wooten agreed. 'I thought we'd never get you round head to wind. How did your chaps take it?'

'They weren't particularly cheery at first,' said the other, laughing. 'But as soon as you got us in tow they spent their time singing "Lead, kindly Light." You know how it brings in "The night is dark, and I am far from home," so it was quite suitable to the occasion. The ship was in a shocking mess, though; and when the mine went up it blew the after storerooms and most of the wardroom into the sea, so we hadn't any food. We were all jolly glad to get back into harbour again, and it was only by the mercy of God that we had no casualties.'

Wooten nodded.

'I suppose you know, Peter,' continued the other, 'that we were bang on the top of a Hun minefield.'

'Minefield! I thought the one that got you was a floater.'

'Don't you believe it. They tell me the place we were in is fairly thick with 'em. You can thank your lucky stars you didn't bump one.'

The possibility of the Mariner also being blown up had never really occurred to Wooten at the time. Perhaps it was just as well for him that it didn't, and that the taking of the Monsoon in tow gave him little or no time to think of anything else. 'Great Scott!' he observed, with his usual slow smile and a little whistle of astonishment; 'I'm glad we didn't come a mucker – jolly glad! What about a glass of sherry to celebrate the auspicious occasion?'

'I'm on, Peter,' said his friend; 'but I really think it's up to me to pay for it.'