Chapter XIV Brave as a Briton
Whether it was that Admiral von Hilliger supposed that his nephew had some vital reason for drawing his attention to the Levity, or that his executive officers had resolved independently to punish this particularly bold and annoying destroyer, it is certain that the Levity became for some minutes a special mark for the Schiller’s big guns.
Shells fell around the little vessel like a storm of hail, and many must have hit her but that she remained end on, thus making herself a smaller target. At length one fell between her funnels, crashed through her deck-plates, and exploded in her engine-room, leaving her helpless.
The Athene and the Sarpedon continued to send their 6-inch lyddite shells into the German cruiser, their forward guns firing at the rate of half a dozen rounds a minute.
These two British light cruisers were themselves receiving a large share of the Schiller’s fire at long range, and were being constantly aimed at by torpedoes from the enemy submarines and destroyers, while there was always the danger of their running foul of floating mines. They were being hard pressed. Already the Athene had sent out wireless messages to the British battle cruiser squadron in the rear, reporting that she was in need of help.
The German cruiser Klopstock had by this time reappeared from the mist, and was steaming down to join battle. The situation was critical, yet the British ships stood their ground, and a well-placed shell from the Sarpedon smashed the forward bridge of the Schiller and injured her foremost funnel, while another from the Athene burst through her port bulwarks amidships and so damaged her internally that her engines stopped and she was seen to be on fire.
At this moment the four-funnelled Stein loomed out of the fog. The Athene signalled to her consort and the destroyers to withdraw and accompany her to cut off this new enemy cruiser.
All followed her excepting the disabled Levity, which remained rolling helplessly within point blank range of the Schiller’s guns. The explosion of the shell in her engine-room had burst one of her main steam-pipes, crippling her for the time. Her own 4-inch guns were served, but her shells fell short. Below decks the men kept grimly at their work in their efforts to repair the damaged machinery, and all the time shells fell fast and thick round the wounded vessel.
“It looks as if we were done for, this time,” the commander admitted to one of his lieutenants, as Rodney Redisham mounted to the bridge to give a report from the chief engineer. “We can’t live long through this.”
“Unless one of the flotilla should return and take us in tow,” suggested the lieutenant. “They don’t seem to realise that we are crippled, sir.”
“I am not going to ask for help, however,” the commander resolved. “It would be too risky for one of them to come back now.” He lighted a cigarette. “We will just hold on with our flag flying until we sink. Anyhow, we have done our duty.”
“The chief engineer says he can’t repair the steam-pipe without drawing the fires, sir,” Rodney reported.
“Thank you, Redisham,” nodded the captain, “We will stick to the ship, but see that every one wears a life collar.”
He continued to pace the bridge. The officers stood each at his post waiting for the end. No mercy could be expected from the Germans. The Schiller had now only one small target within range, and although her gunners were aiming badly, yet here and there a sailor dropped wounded by flying shrapnel, and more than one shell burst inboard, wrecking cabins and killing two men.
Ah! Suddenly the Lupin, with magnificent British pluck, was seen bearing down upon the Levity at full speed, little heeding the fact that she was charging into an inferno, and that at any moment a well-placed shot might sink her. She was coming to the help of her sorely-tried consort.
With splendid seamanship she was brought round. Not a shot touched her. She came close alongside. A rope was thrown to the Levity; a hawser was quickly passed and secured. In another minute both destroyers would have been out of danger; but just as the Levity was hauled round broadside on to the German guns, the strained cable snapped.
All seemed over now. There could be no escape for either the stricken Levity or her daring rescuer. The gunlayers on board the Schiller, fearing that they were being baulked of their prey, redoubled their efforts to sink her.
“Every man for himself!” shouted the British commander.
From the Lupin, now standing off, there came a tremendous cheer.
Rodney Redisham, coming up on deck through the splintered companion, heard the cheer repeated, and saw his commander and fellow officers gravely raising their hands aloft in a last farewell salute. He turned and glanced round to the westward, and to his amazement there came plunging out of the mist the giant shape of a British Dreadnought cruiser, flying a vice-admiral’s pennant.
It was the Saturn, the first of the battle line.
The mighty 13-inch guns of the cruiser boomed out across the sea, and with the first salvo the Schiller was hit in a vital part. The hail of shells round the two destroyers suddenly ceased. Another hawser was shipped, and the Levity was towed away.
With the battle cruiser squadron the light cruiser squadron also appeared and joined in the confused fighting. The Saturn and her immediate consorts gave chase to the Stein, very quickly sank her, and set the Klopstock on fire. A second of the German destroyers was sent to the bottom, whilst many others were badly damaged.
In the meantime, the Athene and the Sarpedon had driven one of the enemy cruisers, the Coblentz, back towards the Schiller, where she turned and engaged them hotly at long range. Both of the British ships received a good deal of injury themselves before they succeeded in sinking her.
The crippled Schiller was still above water, trying to escape with all the speed which her damaged engines would allow. The Sarpedon gave chase and opened fire upon her at a range of about ten thousand yards.
Admiral von Hilliger replied feebly with his after-turret guns and attempted further to check his pursuer by dropping explosive mines in his wake. But the British ship, with her greater speed, quickly overhauled him and exchanged broadsides with him.
Flames and thick smoke were still rising from the Schiller, when a shell, falling close beside her, sent up a great fountain of water which deluged her decks and extinguished the fire.
Shortly afterwards, a beautifully-placed shot took away two of her funnels, and again she was seen to be on fire. All amidships became a raging furnace; her mainmast fell by the board. Then there was a sudden silence on both sides. It was now only a question of saving lives.
The Sarpedon bore down upon her stricken enemy, going close up to her on the windward side and launching two of her boats.
At close quarters the devastating effect of the British 6-inch lyddite shells was plainly apparent. The German flagship’s thickly armoured hull was like a sieve. Her fore-bridge was a tangled mass of ironwork; the wire stays of her foremast were swinging in the air. Her guns were smashed and bent, some looking round corners, some lying on their sides. Her upper decks were in a state of chaos; her fallen funnels and ventilators were red hot, and every boat was burnt. She was sinking in a cloud of smoke and flame and hissing steam.
Unnoticed by any one near, the periscope of a submarine was moving in the midst of the drowning Germans who had jumped into the sea from the doomed cruiser. The submarine was the British H29.
Below, at his post in the conning-tower, Lieutenant Ingoldsby watched all that was going on about him. He had been prepared to send his last remaining torpedo into the Schiller, but this was now unnecessary. He watched the Sarpedon’s boats coming to the rescue of the struggling Germans, whom he could not himself attempt to save. He watched the cruiser sinking.
There appeared to be only a very few living beings left on board of her. A couple of officers stood under the wreckage of her fore-bridge. There was a lonely figure on her quarter-deck, dimly visible amid the smoke and flames. He, too, looked like an officer, though little could be seen of his uniform, excepting a broad band of gold on his sleeve. His head was bare. He held his hands pressed to his eyes, as if he were blinded by the smoke, or as if he were unwilling to look upon what little remained of the ship.
Suddenly, while Ingoldsby watched, he saw one of the officers under the bridge climb up by a stanchion and leap over into the sea. The other ran aft into the smoke, disappeared for a moment, and then again was seen staggering along the red hot deck with his cap held over his mouth, dodging in and out amongst the wreckage.
For an instant he stood in hesitation, and Ingoldsby saw that he was only a youth, a midshipman. Then again he ran as with some madly hopeless purpose aft towards the quarter-deck. He was lost in the smoke for a while, but once more he appeared, crawling perilously along the narrow strip of coaming at the edge of the flame-swept deck.
Had the boy wanted to save his own life he might have done so many times by leaping down into the sea. But such most surely was not his design. Lieutenant Ingoldsby understood his intention, and thrilled with admiration as he saw it most bravely fulfilled. Dashing through the smoke, the lad at last reached the officer who had stood alone on the quarter-deck; caught him by the arm, spoke to him imploringly, and then led him gently to the vessel’s side. They stood together, an admiral and a midshipman. Together they leapt into the waves.
“About the pluckiest act I’ve ever witnessed!” declared Lieutenant Ingoldsby. “Desmond, you ought to have seen it.”
“Seen what, sir?” Lieutenant Desmond inquired.
“I’ll tell you about it afterwards,” returned Ingoldsby, still gazing intently into the periscope mirror. “Hullo! She’s gone down!”
Just at this juncture, as the Schiller sank, a large German armoured cruiser, coming out of the mist, opened fire upon the Sarpedon, whose two boats were busy picking up survivors. To save his ship, and in obedience to orders he had received to retire, the British commanding officer steamed off, abandoning his two boats with the officer in charge of them, nine seamen, and the prisoners whom they had so far rescued.
Lieutenant Ingoldsby set his electric motor to work and started off to attack the enemy cruiser, but the latter altered course to the northward before the submarine could be brought within torpedo range. Ingoldsby thereupon returned to the boats, emptying his ballast tanks and rising awash close beside them, greatly to the astonishment of their occupants.
He stepped out on the deck of the conning-tower, followed by his sub-lieutenant and quarter-master.
“I’m sorry I haven’t got anything like room for the lot of you, sir,” he said to the officer in charge of the boats. “What had we better do?”
“We have twenty-five survivors,” the other answered, “most of them badly wounded. Three of them are officers. One, indeed, is an admiral. You’d better make sure of him, in any case.”
“I think I shall be justified in making sure of my own countrymen first,” returned Ingoldsby. “Yourself and your men. That’s ten all told. Well, perhaps I can make room for the admiral and his two officers; but no more. You see, we may have to submerge. We can let the rest of them have the boats. I can give them water, biscuits, and a compass, and set them a course back to Heligoland. They’re not all of them wounded, are they? Some of them look as if they could work the oars. Which is the admiral?”
He looked across at the farther boat and saw a red-bearded man at the stern lying back with his head resting on the gunwale, while a youth in midshipman’s uniform, kneeling at his side, was bathing his eyes with a bit of rag dipped in sea water. Like the rest of the rescued Germans, they were woefully bedraggled and wet, their scorched clothes hanging in tatters.
“Ah!” exclaimed Lieutenant Ingoldsby, recognising the man whom he had seen on the quarterdeck. “It’s the same. And that’s the boy who saved him. I’m glad you picked them up. Draw the boat alongside and let us get them aboard.”
The midshipman turned a wan face towards him, gazed at him with red and swollen eyes, and shrank back.
“Queer!” murmured Lieutenant Ingoldsby in perplexity. “I’m almost certain I’ve seen that boy before, somewhere!”
He went below to plan how the additions to his ship’s company could be accommodated and to send up provisions for the boats. The British sailors were brought on board.
“The admiral will share my cabin,” he said. “Bring him down, Desmond.”
“He refuses to come, sir,” declared Lieutenant Desmond, “or, rather, the middy refuses for him. The middy speaks wonderfully good English.”
Ingoldsby, still more puzzled, went back on deck. The admiral was now sitting up in the stern sheets of the boat, blinking his inflamed eyes, and looking exceedingly miserable.
“Won’t you come on board, sir?” Ingoldsby invited, speaking in the best German he could muster.
It was the midshipman who answered.
“No,” he said. “We will not be indebted to our enemies. It would be better for us to die here and now.”
Lieutenant Ingoldsby gave a curious start of recognition and stood staring into the youth’s haggard face.
“Max Hilliger!” he cried. “You—here! Why, you were at home in Haddisport only a couple of days ago! How did you come to be aboard a German cruiser—and dressed as an officer, too? You used to be a Scout—an English Sea Scout. You haven’t the right to wear the uniform of an officer, even an officer in the German navy.”
“I have the right to fight for my own country,” Max answered boldly. “And if I wear an officer’s uniform, that is my affair and the affair of my uncle, Admiral von Hilliger.”
“Ah!” rejoined Ingoldsby. “He is your uncle. is he? That explains. I had forgotten you had an uncle in the Kaiser’s service. But you did a jolly plucky thing when you saved him just now, Max; as plucky a thing as I’ve ever seen. While I watched you doing it I was wishing that you were British. You were really as brave as a Briton. I hope you didn’t get badly burnt.”
Max glanced downward to his left leg. The bare skin was scorched. His left arm, too, was blistered from elbow to wrist.
“You had better come aboard here and I will give you some dressing,” Lieutenant Ingoldsby advised. “Bring Admiral von Hilliger with you. We haven’t much accommodation. But we shall not be very long getting across to England.”
Max Hilliger frowned.
“I suppose you mean us to go aboard as your prisoners of war?” he said. “Perhaps you could force us, since we are helpless. But you cannot take us all. It would be better if you took some of our severely wounded. My uncle and I very much prefer to stay where we are and to find our own way back to Germany, or die on the way.”
“Oh, I’m not going to force you!” returned Lieutenant Ingoldsby. “A submarine is not supposed to carry passengers or to take prisoners. Remain in the boat if you wish. But at least you will not object to our attending to the wounded before we part.”
So shockingly hurt were many of the Germans that it seemed almost a hopeless task to give them even ordinary first-aid. But for half an hour or so the British officers and men were occupied in doing the best they could. They were short of bandages, but with true British sympathy for their unfortunate enemies, they stripped themselves of everything but their trousers, and tore up their clothes with which to bind the wounds.
In the circumstances, Lieutenant Ingoldsby could not have been blamed for giving Admiral von Hilliger and his nephew their liberty. But had he foreseen what their freedom was to cost in innocent lives it is probable that he would have acted differently.