I. Heavy Metal
It was still dark when the battle cruisers slipped from their moorings and began to feel their way towards the unseen entrance of the harbour. From the bridge of each mass of towering indeterminate shadows the stern light of the next ahead could be discerned dimly through binoculars, and on those pin-points of light they steered. What the battle cruiser flagship steered by, in the narrow confines of the crowded harbour and the inky darkness, only the little knot of figures on her forebridge knew: the admiral and flag captain, the navigator and officer-of-the-watch, muffled in duffle coats and moving mysteriously about the glow-worm arc of light from the binnacle and charttable.
One by one the long black shapes slid through the outer defences, ebon shadows in a world of shades. The voices of the leadsmen in the chains blended their mournful intermittent chant with the rush of water past the ship’s side; to all but the ears of the watchful figures on the bridges the sound was swallowed by the dirge of the funnel stays and halliards in the cold wind heralding the dawn.
The red and green lights on the gate-marking vessels winked and bobbed in the swell caused by the passage of the grim host. It passed with incredible swiftness; and before the troubled waters began to quiet, the escorting destroyers came pelting up astern, heralded by the rush and rattle of spray-thrashed steel, funnels glowing, and the roar of their fans pouring out from the engine-room exhausts. Night and the mystery of the darkness enfolded them. The gates closed upon their churning wakes and the tumult of their passing. Dawn glimmered pale behind the hills and broadened slowly into day; it found the harbour empty, save for small craft. Beyond the headlands, beyond the mist-enshrouded horizon, the battle cruisers were abroad, unleashed.
Once clear of their protecting minefields, the battle cruisers moved south at high speed, with their smoke trailing astern in broad zig-zags across a grey sky. At intervals they altered course simultaneously and then swung back to their original path, flinging the grey seas asunder from each gaunt, axe-headed bow as they turned.
They scarcely resembled ships, in their remorseless, purposeful rush under the lowering sky. The screening T.B.D.’s spread fan-wise on their flanks were dwarfed to insignificance beside these stupendous destroyers with the smoke pouring from their huge funnels, and nothing to break their stark nakedness of outline but the hooded guns. Men lived on board them, it is true: under each White Ensign a thousand souls laboured out each one its insignificant destiny. They were entities invisible like mites in a cheese; but the ships that bore them were instruments, visible enough, of the triumphant destiny of an empire.
As far as the eye could reach, the battle cruisers were alone on that grey waste of water. But swift as was their passage, something swifter overtook them out of the north as the morning wore on. It was the voice of the battle fleet moving south in support. “Speed so-and-so, on such-and-such a course,” flickered the curt cipher messages through sixty miles of space. And south they came in battle array, battleships, light cruisers, and destroyers, ringed by the misty horizon of the North Sea, with the calling gulls following the white furrows of their keels like crows after the plough.
A division of light cruisers, driving through the crested seas at the speed of a galloping horse, linked the battle fleet with the battle cruisers. Seen from either force they were but wraiths of smoke on the horizon: but ever and anon a daylight searchlight winked out of the mist, spanning the leagues with soundless talk.
It was still early afternoon when a trail of bubbles flickered ahead of the flagship of the battle fleet’s lee line. It crossed at right angles to their course, and a thousand yards abeam of the third ship in the line something silvery broke the surface in a cloud of spray. It was a torpedo that had run its course and had missed the mark. Simultaneously, one of the escorting destroyers, a mile abeam, turned like a mongoose on a snake, and circled questing for a couple of minutes. Then suddenly a column of water leaped into the air astern of the destroyer, and the sound of the explosion was engulfed by the great loneliness of sea and sky. She remained circling while the battle fleet swept on with swift, bewildering alterations of course, and later another far-off explosion overtook them.
“Strong smell of oil; air bubbles. No wreckage visible. Consider enemy submarine sunk. No survivors,” blinked the laconic searchlight, and the avenger, belching smoke from four raking funnels, came racing up to her appointed station.
As the afternoon wore on, a neutral passenger ship crossed the path of the fleet. She was steering a westerly course, and altered to pass astern of the battle cruisers.
The captain wiped his glasses and handed them to one of the passengers, an amiable merchant of the same nationality as himself, and a self-confessed admirer of all things British.
“Ha!” said the captain. “You see? The clenched fist of Britain! It is being pushed under the nose of Germany—so!” He laughingly extended a gnarled fist in the other’s face. The merchant was a frequent passenger of his, and the sort of man (by reason of his aforesaid proclivities) to appreciate the jest. The merchant stepped back a pace rather hurriedly: then he laughed loudly. “Exactly!” he said, “very neat, my friend.” And borrowing his friend’s glasses he studied the far-off tendrils of smoke in silence awhile.
A quarter of an hour later, a light cruiser altered course from the fleet in the direction of the neutral steamer. Then it was that the amiable merchant was struck by a sudden recollection. It was a matter of considerable urgency and concerned an order for a large number of bolts of calico and a customer’s credit. So pressing was the business that he obtained the captain’s permission to send a radio telegram to his firm while the approaching cruiser was still some miles away.
The message was duly dispatched, and, with surprising rapidity, by methods with which this narrative is not concerned (of which, indeed, the narrator is entirely ignorant), reached Wilhelmshaven by nightfall. Here four German battle cruisers were raising steam preparatory to carrying out a bombardment at dawn of a populous English watering-place. The message that reached them had, however, nothing to do with calico or credit, but it bade them draw fires and give the usual leave to officers and men; orders for the bombardment were cancelled. The German battle cruisers were not unaccustomed to rapid changes of programme of this sort, and they asked no questions.
At nine o’clock the following morning, a British taxpayer sat down to breakfast in a house commanding a fine view of the sea from the popular watering-place already mentioned. It was a large house, and incidentally offered an admirable target from the sea. The taxpayer unfolded his morning paper, and took a sip of his tea. Then he put the cup down quickly. “You’ve forgotten the sugar,” he said.
“No, dear,” replied his wife, “I haven’t forgotten it, but there isn’t any.”
“Eh,” said the taxpayer, “why not? why the devil isn’t there any sugar?”
The taxpayer’s wife advanced a number of popular theories to account for the phenomenon, while the taxpayer gloomily stirred his unsweetened tea.
“Then all I should like to know,” he replied, when she had finished, “is, what the blazes is our Navy doing?”
“I don’t know, dear,” said the taxpayer’s wife.