Chapter XXXII U50’s Worst Crime
“This second submarine was the U50.
“It’s that naval gun on Haddisport pier that I warned you of,” said Max Hilliger, as the vessel submerged and her electric motors were turned on. “We ought not to have come in so close. I believe those mine-sweepers in the Roads must have discovered us. Most of them are fitted with wireless masts. No, it’s no use trying to rescue our friends. They couldn’t have escaped after an explosion like that. We had better remain submerged and get away from the coast as quickly as we can.”
Lieutenant Körner was inconsolable over the loss of the other submarine. They had been working in partnership for several days past, sinking fishing boats more especially and using explosive bombs rather than wasting expensive torpedoes.
This use of bombs had necessitated the stopping of their intended victims. Having stopped and boarded them, there had always come the difficulty of dealing with their crews.
If you send a torpedo into an enemy ship from a discreet distance there is no question of sparing life. A submarine could not in any case encumber herself with prisoners. But when you have to speak to the vessel’s skipper and have been polite to him, the matter is different. Even a German commander can hardly refuse to give him and his ship’s company a chance of saving their lives.
Max Hilliger was greatly in favour of using bombs. He did not advance any serious scruples against the destruction of property; but he had been educated in England, he still retained a sense of honour and fairness, and he drew the line at taking the lives of innocent and unoffending seamen.
This was the rock upon which he and Lieutenant Hermann Körner split. Körner was not burdened with any of his subordinate’s English ideas of humanity. He hated the English, and everything British. Like most Germans, he had persuaded himself that the war had been begun entirely by Great Britain; that Germany had never wanted to go to war. He resolutely closed his mind to the fact that his country had for many years been preparing for war, and seeking for a cause to pick a quarrel with Great Britain so that, being fully prepared, she might fall upon her and smash her.
Above all, he hated Great Britain because of her supremacy upon the seas. She had put a stop to German commerce and held Germany’s great navy in a firm grip; therefore he considered that it was his highest patriotic duty to go about stealthily in his submarine destroying British shipping regardless of whether the ships he sank were armed for defence or were peaceful, unoffending fishing smacks.
He would have preferred it if all the vessels which came within reach of his torpedoes were ships of war; so that by sinking them he might lessen the overpowering strength of the British Navy.
But he had discovered long ago that the British naval officers and seamen were even more clever in protecting themselves from sudden attack than the Germans were in taking them by surprise.
Many times the U50 had been taken with other German submarines and torpedo boats to lie concealed in the narrow seas in the hope of being able to sink some of our transports carrying troops and munitions across to France; but they had always been frustrated or outwitted.
Lieutenant Körner found that it was much more easy to lurk submerged in the tideways of commerce and to attack undefended merchant ships or fishing boats. Had not Max Hilliger sometimes opposed him, he would never have allowed a crew to escape. Max, however, held to one unvarying argument.
“What we are ordered to do,” he declared, “is to help to overcome the enemy by starvation—preventing their ships from carrying food and other merchandise into their seaports. And if we sink the ships and their cargoes there is no further advantage to be gained by taking also the lives of their crews. Give their men at least a chance to escape in their boats.”
Sometimes when the vessel attacked was of little importance, and especially if she happened to be a neutral, Körner yielded and gave the crew time to abandon their doomed ship. But if the vessel were fitted with wireless masts, if she appeared to be armed, or if she offered any resistance, he showed no mercy, but came within gun range and opened fire upon her. It was only the very large ships against which he fired a torpedo. It is of one such exploit that I am now going to tell you.
Leaving the neighbourhood of Haddisport, the U50 crossed the North Sea and made her secret way down the Dutch coast to Flanders. Avoiding the British mine-field and keeping carefully out of the way of the British naval patrols, she was taken into the German submarine harbour at Zeebrugge, where she remained for some days, having her instruments cleaned and tested, her torpedo chambers replenished, and taking in stores for a long voyage.
Lieutenant Körner behaved rather mysteriously towards Max Hilliger during this time. He had many consultations with staff officers and with the commanders of other submarines, and refused to inform Max what was in the wind. All that he would admit was the fact that they were going out under sealed orders, which were not to be opened until they should reach a point somewhere to the westward of Land’s End.
The point indicated on their chart was in the midst of the Scilly Islands. Here, on a certain very dark night, the U50 lay motionless in a calm channel, with only the upper part of her conning-tower above the surface, hardly distinguishable from the surrounding rocks. Hermann Körner was on watch with a pair of powerful binoculars.
“You appear to be expecting something,” remarked Max Hilliger from below. “There can be no enemy ships in a dangerous corner like this.”
“It is for that reason that I am watching,” returned Körner. “Since there can be no enemy near, it is safe for us to enter into communication with our friends.”
“Spies, I suppose,” conjectured Max, peering upward through the darkness.
“Ah!” exclaimed Körner. “At last; I was searching in the wrong direction.”
He drew an electric torch from his pocket and began to flash it. It was a wan, green light, which could not have been seen from a great distance. Körner returned the torch to his pocket, closed the trap door of the conning-tower, and descended into the cabin, humming the air of a German folk-song.
“Well?” said Max.
“It is all right,” nodded Körner. “You can enjoy a good sleep, my friend. You will need it; because for some days and nights to come it is probable we shall both require to have very good eyesight.”
Max turned into his bunk, but did not at once fall asleep. The intense silence and darkness kept him wakeful. He would much rather have been listening to the busy humming of the electric engines. At about midnight he turned on his pillow and spoke.
“Hermann!” he called.
There was no answer. He lay listening, and from one of the distant compartments there came to him the faint tap-tapping sound of the wireless instrument. It was too faint for him to hear distinctly enough to follow the message; and just as he was beginning to catch a word here and there, it stopped, and there was a long interval of silence, during which he fell asleep, not to be awakened again until late on the following morning. The petrol engines were at work, a dim gleam of daylight came in through the thick glass of an uncovered skylight. A servant was busy laying breakfast on the little table in the middle of the cabin.
“We are under weigh, then?” cried Max, speaking to the man in German.
“Ja, mein Herr. Since eight o’clock.”
Max glanced up at the tell-tale compass above the table, and saw that the course was due west.
“It is the direction of America, mein Herr,” said the servant, following his glance.
Max dressed and went out on deck. The dummy funnels and the false bulwarks were raised. There was a ragged red ensign flying from the mast. No land was in sight, and the sea was clear of shipping; but in the wake he presently discovered the swiftly moving periscopes of two other submarines. Lieutenant Körner was on deck, but there were seamen about, and Max suppressed his desire to go up to him and question him.
When they were alone together at breakfast, however, he leant across the table and said:
“Is there any particular reason why I should not know something of our destination, Herr Körner? I see that there are two others of our undersea boats in our company. Our purpose, whatever it is, must therefore be of importance.”
“If it succeeds,” returned Körner, breaking the top of an egg, “it will be the biggest, most important thing we have ever done, or are ever likely to do. It will send a thrill of astonishment over the whole world. It will prove that the Kaiser’s brave submarines are more powerful weapons than any dreadnought that ever was built.”
“You amaze me,” said Max. “I do not understand. I cannot guess. We are making a course westward, leaving England behind. We appear to be going out into the Atlantic Ocean. It is not there that we shall find any British battleships.”
Lieutenant Körner laughed.
“Let us hope not,” he rejoined. “No, my dear friend. Believe me, it is not battleships that we seek.”
“What then?” cried Max, nervously clutching at the edge of the table. “You do not mean—you cannot mean—that it is your intention to try to sink an Atlantic liner!”
“Well guessed!” laughed Körner. “We shall torpedo her—a great liner—the greatest liner—the Ruritania.”
Max Hilliger leapt from his chair.
“What?” he cried. “Impossible! You cannot be serious.”
“I was never more serious in my life,” Körner assured him. “I tell you we are going to lie in her track—we and our two companion submarines. We shall station ourselves at three different points, one of which she must surely pass. And then, when she comes in sight, we shall creep nearer, unseen, unsuspected, and wait until she draws within range, when we shall take careful aim, making no mistake; and send our torpedoes into her. You see, it is war, my dear child; it is war.”
Max Hilliger had turned suddenly pale; his eyes were staring wildly, his hands trembled.
“War?” he repeated. “Do you call it an act of war to sink a great steamship like that—a ship carrying no protective armour, no defensive guns, a ship crowded with innocent passengers, not all English, many of them Americans no doubt, probably scores of women and children. War? War? That is not war, Hermann Körner. It would have no excuse, no justification. It would be crime, I tell you—a horrible, fiendish crime. It would be murder.”
Lieutenant Körner looked up at him with his egg-spoon poised.
“Calm yourself, my friend,” he urged. “Call it what you will, that has nothing to do with you or with me. It is our part to do our duty by obeying our orders. And we have orders to sink this Ruritania. We shall obey.”
Max shrugged his shoulders and sat down again, but not to eat.
“Oh, well!” he said presently. “After all, I need not distress myself perhaps. Her owners, her captain, her passengers have been warned. We shall not even see her. She will steam by another way, and even then be escorted by British cruisers. Otherwise—if I thought there was the merest chance of your doing this horrible thing—I should ask you to put me ashore on the nearest land, or I should pray that we ourselves should be sent to the bottom of the sea.”
All the rest of that day and through the next night, while the U50 went on her way to take up her appointed position on the steamship route, Max Hilliger thought and brooded, wondering by what possible means he could avert the contemplated crime, even by the sacrifice of his own life.
He wondered if he could open some valve so that the submarine should never again rise to the surface; if he could secretly smash or disable some important piece of mechanism, or jam the torpedo tubes. But all the time he knew that if he should attempt such a thing there still remained the other two submarines, either of which might succeed where Hermann Körner had failed.
At length the appointed position was reached. The commander occupied himself in making calculations of time and distance. Again and again he examined his instruments and controls, again and again he went through a rehearsal of every act and movement which would be put into practice when, if at all, the fatal moment arrived. Had Max Hilliger tried to disable any of the mechanism he could not have succeeded, so carefully was everything watched, so constantly was he himself kept under observation.
He contrived as often as he could to be in the conning-tower; but Körner and the quarter-master were usually at the periscopes, and Max could only watch the two men, hoping, always hoping, that they would discover no sign of the expected liner. By their hardly suppressed excitement he knew that should she be keeping to her usual course and time, she was already due.
Suddenly Lieutenant Körner ordered “diving stations.” The tanks were filled—the vessel was submerged, and she sped through the dark depths at the fullest speed of her electric motors for about a quarter of an hour, when she again rose. Telegraph signals were rung. The torpedo tubes were charged.
“Is it the Ruritania?” Max panted. He saw that the moment had come.
“Yes. Quick! Get down into the torpedo chamber.”
Instead of obeying the command, Max Hilliger snatched his loaded automatic pistol from his belt and leapt like a maddened animal at the commander.
“Stop!” he shouted. “Stop! Touch that lever and I will shoot you!” He flung himself forward, but a blow from the quarter-master’s fist struck him in the face and he wheeled round, lost his balance, and fell. The pistol dropped from his grasp. His brain reeled, yet half consciously he heard the command given: “Fire!” He felt the vessel give a jump as the torpedo left its tube. From somewhere far away he heard a deep, dull explosion. Then, as a second torpedo was discharged, he came to his fuller senses.
“It is done!” cried Lieutenant Körner with an exultant laugh as he drew back from his periscope.
Max Hilliger had risen to his knees. He had seized his fallen pistol and now he levelled the weapon at the commander.
“God forgive me,” he murmured. “But it is less than you deserve.”
And with that he pressed the trigger, firing point blank at a spot beside the Iron Cross on his companion’s breast.
Hermann Körner flung up his arms, tumbled backward, and lay upon the grating very still.
Dropping his weapon, Max stepped over him and made his way to the periscope. Trembling from head to foot, he yet controlled himself sufficiently to bend over the instrument to adjust its disturbed focus. Reflected in the mirror he saw the image of an immense Atlantic liner with four red funnels, and many decks crowded with people. Her whole vast fabric was heeling over. She seemed to have been struck by the torpedo somewhere amidships.
“How awful!” he exclaimed.
He turned to look once again at the commander lying dead at his feet.
“God forgive me,” he repeated. “But it is less than you deserve.”