Chapter XXXI Submarines at Work
“Glad to see as you’re able to get about again, sir.”
Constable Challis, patrolling the esplanade, had come to a halt beside an invalid’s bath-chair in which old Mr. Croucher sat, gripping an unopened newspaper in his thin, white fingers. The bath-chair had been drawn up against the rail so that the invalid might have an uninterrupted view of the sea. Not far from it a boy in Sea Scout’s uniform stood watching a company of Territorials busily digging trenches on the lower level of the denes.
“It must be quite a couple of months since you was out here last,” continued the policeman.
“It is just two months and three days,” returned Mr. Croucher, leaning back with a weary sigh. “It was on the morning after the first Zeppelin raid, you remember. Yes, I am much better; but this last attack has been quite the worst I have known—rheumatism, Challis, rheumatism. I should hardly have come out even on a fine morning like this, only that Seth Newruck, here, kindly offered to wheel my bath-chair, my man having enlisted.”
He paused as if exhausted by so long a speech.
“I see changes, Challis,” he resumed. “Many changes. Most of the villas are tenantless. People are at last realising the danger of an invasion. Even Mrs. Daplin-Gennery has taken flight. Where has she gone, Challis?”
“Buxton, sir,” the constable answered.
“Ah, well inland! The enemy will not reach so far as that until England is conquered.”
“Which isn’t at all likely,” added Challis.
“I don’t feel so sure about that,” retorted Mr. Croucher. “Everything seems to point to the probability that the Germans will land sooner or later. Look at what the War Office are doing here! Look at that long line of trenches and the breastworks. Look at all these soldiers!”
“Yes, sir,” nodded the constable, “we’re beginnin’ to look quite military, aren’t we?”
“Military? I call it desperately warlike,” declared the invalid. “Those trenches are not being so carefully dug merely to give training to the Territorials. They are being made for military use. Such elaborate defences would be a waste of time and material if there were not grave danger. It is clear that the authorities expect them to land just here.”
Constable Challis leant his folded arms on the rail.
“You may take it from me, sir,” he said, reassuringly, “that it’s only a reasonable precaution. The same sort of defence work is going on at other places—at Buremouth and Eastwold.”
But Mr. Croucher shook his head obstinately.
“Not to the same extent, Challis,” he insisted. “I am told that there are twenty thousand soldiers assembled within easy reach of Haddisport. That is not simple precaution. It is preparation—preparation for an armed resistance. And look at these stockades and redoubts, or whatever they call them—battlements—fortifications! Look at the loopholes for heavy guns, and the sandbags! I suppose the guns themselves are lying ready somewhere close at hand, with the shells to fire them with.”
“Yes, sir,” Challis nodded. “They are all handy in the grounds of Sunnydene. Tons of ’em.”
“Dear me, dear me!” said Mr. Croucher in consternation.
Seth Newruck had turned the bath-chair so that its occupant could have a fuller view of the embrasures and their connecting palisades of corrugated iron. “It isn’t so very long ago, sir,” Seth reminded him mischievously, “since you argued that there ought to be heavy guns stationed all along the East Coast. And now that they are putting up a few fortifications, you take alarm.”
“Alarm?” repeated Mr. Croucher. “But isn’t it enough to cause alarm? Why, it’s just as good as an advertisement of the fact that the enemy’s transports and cruisers may be expected any day, any hour!”
“What amuses me,” added Constable Challis, “is that all those packin’ cases which they have filled with sea sand, makin’ them like blocks of granite, are really fish boxes belongin’ to the Germans themselves. Before the war they were the property of a firm of German fish curers. You can read the name of ‘Hilliger and Co.’ on every one of ’em!”
“Hilliger? Ah!” cried Mr. Croucher, “That man Hilliger, I am convinced, has been working towards this war for years past. He ought never to have been allowed to carry on his business in Haddisport. It was only a blind—a blind to cover his underhand work of spying and intrigue. Where is he now, Challis—do you know?”
“Over in his own country, I suppose,” answered the constable. “But here’s young Mark Redisham comin’ along. He knows a lot more about these things than I do.”
Mark Redisham had paused to look out upon the sea at a patrol trawler in which he appeared to be greatly interested. When he came nearer and saw Seth Newruck and the two men he saluted and again paused.
“The enemy seem to have been pretty close,” he observed, speaking especially to his fellow scout.
“Yes,” returned Seth. “It looks as if there were a submarine somewhere near.”
“And it has been doing some damage,” rejoined Mark.
“Eh? What’s that?” interrogated Mr. Croucher. “A German submarine? Where? How do you know?”
Mark explained, indicating the trawler.
“Well, sir,” he said. “She’s flying the signal to say so. That red flag with the ball beneath it means that there’s a submarine in the neighbourhood. But as well as that, she has more men in her than her own crew. I expect she has rescued them from some ship that the submarine has torpedoed.”
“Dear me!” exclaimed Mr. Croucher. “We shall have no ships left soon if this sort of thing goes on much longer! Can’t the navy put a stop to it? Even the enemy’s battleships are doing less harm than their submarines. It’s simply terrible!”
“Between ourselves,” remarked Constable Challis, “it’s nothing but silly spite and disappointment that makes them sink our ships. They can’t touch our cruisers now, so they sneak about sendin’ our merchant vessels to the bottom. Yesterday I came upon some boys tryin’ to get at a bird’s nest. When they saw they couldn’t manage it, they began to throw stones at it. That’s the way the Germans do. Silly spite; that’s all.”
Mark Redisham went down the town, keeping step with a battalion of Territorials marching behind their band. When he arrived at the harbour the trawler which he had watched from the cliff was coming in. She had picked up sixteen men drifting in open boats. Their ship, the Priscilla, a cargo steamer bound for one of the northern ports, had been sunk by an enemy submarine.
Early in the morning the Priscilla had been going under easy steam when a submarine had come to the surface a little distance away on the starboard side, hoisting the German flag and signalling to the steamer to stop.
Instead of obeying, the English captain put on full speed and steered a zig-zag course with such skill that the submarine soon dropped astern, unable to keep pace with him or to aim at him with her torpedoes or even her deck guns.
The captain was congratulating himself and his engineer on their lucky escape when suddenly a second submarine popped up right in front of his vessel’s bows. This time he was obliged to stop his engines, for he saw a gun rise from its chamber on the submarine’s deck. Two officers stood on the platform of the conning-tower.
One of them called out in perfect English, asking where the steamer was bound for, what was her cargo, and where was the British fleet?
“I’m sorry to cause inconvenience,” the German added, “but you must remember this is war. I shall have to sink you. I will give you ten minutes to get clear of the steamer. Get as many of your belongings together as you can and take to your boats.”
While the crew were hastily putting their clothing and personal possessions into their kit bags, and launching the two boats, the captain was ordered to produce his ship’s papers. He observed as the submarine drew alongside that both officers wore the Iron Cross, and that one of them was hardly more than a boy.
“You can take some food and water with you,” said the younger, “and if you steer north-west you will probably come upon some fishing boats that may help you.”
The crew had rowed a short distance away from their steamer when they saw a couple of German sailors go on board of her with what looked like explosive bombs. A few minutes afterwards they returned empty-handed, the submarine backed away. There was a loud explosion on board the Priscilla and she rapidly sank.
The submarine then went off at high speed, and as she did so a couple of dummy funnels were raised on her deck, false bulwarks at bow and stern were rigged up, and with a pair of masts and with smoke curling from the funnels she had all the appearance of a heavily laden steamer.
“You didn’t happen to notice her number, did you, captain?” Arnold Bilverstone inquired, when the master of the Priscilla was narrating his experience to the officers in the naval base at Haddisport.
“Well, it was painted over,” the captain explained, “and an eye was painted in its stead. But under the paint I could make out the raised figures U50.”
“Then the younger of those two officers was Max Hilliger,” decided Mark Redisham; and Mr. Bilverstone agreed.
Later on that same day, or rather in the evening, Mark Redisham was again at the naval base. Just at about dusk a wireless message was received, intimating that two enemy submarines were in the neighbourhood.
The air was calm and clear and the sea smooth. Half a dozen of the most powerful telescopes and marine glasses were engaged by as many expert watchers in sweeping the sea, while at the end of the pier a naval gun was charged and a crew of experienced marksmen were at the breech ready to train it on the instant if the Germans’ periscopes should be sighted.
Mark Redisham was the first to discover a ripple on the water some three miles away, but it was one of the officers who determined that the ripple was caused by the movement of a half-submerged submarine. It was apparently making towards Alderwick Roads, where half a dozen patrol trawlers lay at anchor.
The light was gradually fading, but the moving target was still visible. The gun was laid. For months back, at intervals, it had been brought into practice upon a mark less easily seen than the one upon which it was pointed at this moment, and the gunner who now controlled its aim had never been known to fail.
The lever was pressed. The shell shrieked forth. Then there was a terrific explosion which shook the windows of the town as the submarine was struck and sent to its doom.
An electric launch was sent out to pick up possible survivors, but all that could be seen was a slimy film of oil on the water’s surface.
From the pier as the boat went out, the periscopes of the second submarine were sighted, but before the gun could be trained it had disappeared.