A Job That Called for Finesse
“I have seen her at work. She is a little old composite steamer built of iron and teak—incredibly old, fifty years at least; she knocks about among wreckage as indifferent to hard blows as was Nansen’s Fram; and she brings to her never-ending jobs gear and brains which make their incredible accomplishment seem easy. K-13, emptied of men, would soon have been lightened and raised by the Ranger’s tremendous steam pumps—she will lift a dreadnought if it be not damaged beyond possibility of patching up by her divers—but K-13, with fifty living men inside, called for finesse rather than power. It was the men, not the ship, that Barttelot and Young were out to save.
“And while in the cold pale light of that Tuesday morning in the North the salvors sent down divers to call in friendly Morse upon their comrades below, and to cheer them with the assurance of rescue, the unexpected happened again, as it always does at sea. Suddenly before the astonished eyes of the salvage party up shot a column of foam and bubbles, and in the center of an artificial whirlpool gyrated stern upwards a human body. And a very live body it proved to be when up-ended and pulled clear of the water. Involuntarily, without the smallest intention of quitting, Commander Herbert had been boosted by the ill-mannered high-pressure air out of his own ship, and flung, a bedraggled, gasping figure, in shirt and trousers, almost into the arms of his would be rescuers. How he came out I will now tell, and in doing so will return to 3.30 p.m. on the Monday when K-13 settled down in the mud of the Gareloch.