Two o’clock came, then three. The tension of eager anticipation grew. With powerful night glasses, the captains swept the sea, but nothing appeared to break the leaden skyline. At four o’clock they stopped again to listen, but through the hydrophones the ocean seemed as still as the grave. Soon they would be in the path of the convoy, and, taking their stations, would stop and wait. But they had twenty-five miles yet to go and two hours more of darkness. Westward with decks awash they steamed at fourteen knots.
At half-past five nothing had broken the monotonous suspense. Then suddenly a report was flashed in by radio from the submarine at the northern end of the line—the hydrophones had detected a ship bearing northwest. This was an unexpected quarter. Was it the convoy or something else? Scarcely had this report been received when it was followed by another—the sound was increasing fast; there seemed to be more than one ship, approaching at high speed. Another of the submarines had heard the sounds also, and then another, till in a few minutes they were heard all along the line. What was it? The captains began to be uneasy. The ships were approaching much too fast to be the convoy; besides, they didn’t sound like merchant ships, nor did they sound quite like destroyers, nor yet like cruisers. One fact soon stood out above all others; their bearing did not change; whatever these ships were they were coming toward the submarines as straight as if steering for a lighthouse at their home port. Uneasiness changed to grave apprehension. Nearer still they came; the oncoming ships could not now be more than six miles from the nearest of the submarines, judging from their rate of approach.
A red streak of dawn showed faintly on the eastern horizon. There was one thing to be done, and that without delay—submerge. Quickly the orders were given, hatches were closed, valves opened, electric motors started, and the seven ships sank beneath the waves, leaving only the periscopes to observe the approach of the enigmatic ships. Nearer the sounds approached, and then the bearings became confused; the ships seemed to be spreading out in a wide arc from north to west. Then dimly through the periscopes the dark forms of long, narrow ships could be seen in the faint dawn light. Two by two they came till at last the submarine skippers counted eight. Two pairs started to cross the bows of the submarines to the west and southwest, while the other two pairs deployed to the northeast. Just what kind of ships these were could not be made out, but at all events their speed marked them as warships of some sort. The greatest safety lay in concealment and silence; the submarines, therefore, slowed their motors till they had barely steerageway; and as the light increased and the strange vessels drew nearer, the periscopes were withdrawn, and the submarines dived deeper. But before the last periscope was withdrawn below the waves, a fleeting sweep of the horizon was made which revealed the two ships to the west executing a peculiar maneuver. The leading ship of the two doubled on her course and, passing very close to her partner ship, started steaming at reduced speed in the opposite direction, while the ship which had followed her also reduced speed, but held her course. One thing more was revealed by this final sweep of the horizon—a destroyer in the wake of the other ships approached at high speed from the northwest.
On the bridge of this destroyer, besides her skipper and others on watch, stood Captain Fraser, chief of staff to Admiral Johnson, Commander Barton, of the Intelligence Bureau, and Evans. The eight ships seen by the submarines were the new net-laying squadron. Not a conning tower nor a periscope had they seen, but nevertheless they were now paying out their nets in a circle seven miles in diameter. Each pair laid a quadrant of the circle, the two starting at a point and steaming opposite ways till they met the ships of the adjacent quadrants, and thus completed the circle. On each of the eight ships the strange new mechanical gear was working at top speed, drawing the great net from the hold of the ship and paying it out over the stern, the supporting buoys and the little indicator bombs splashing ceaselessly into the water, while the crew tending the gear worked with all their might.
And now, following a few miles behind the destroyer carrying Captain Fraser, came eleven more destroyers steaming up at thirty-five knots out of the western haze. Following the lead of the first destroyer, the other eleven started steaming in a steady procession round and round the outer edge of the circle of nets. Then as the dawn merged into daylight there appeared from several points of the compass small gray chasers, hurrying to the scene of action, and finally from the northwest, more chasers, swarms of them, till the sea was alive with the little craft.
The first of the chasers to appear on the scene, some eighteen in number, coming from all directions, had been lying all night on a drifting patrol stretched in a long line from north to south across the path of the submarines. So near had each chaser been to the next in line that word could be passed from one end of the line to the other without the use of radio, by simply flashing the signals from boat to boat with infra-red rays, invisible to the eye, but readily perceived with the selenium detector. At a point near the northern end of the line, some fifteen miles from the present busy scene of action, the net-layers had lain in wait, together with the twelve destroyers, on one of which was Captain Fraser in charge of the operation. He had brought with him Commander Barton to observe results, and Evans to supervise the use of the infra-red signaling apparatus, lest through some failure of this unusual method a chaser captain should be impelled to use his radio and thus reveal his presence to the enemy.
Now, just before sunrise, while the eighteen chasers of the drifting patrol were taking station, as fast as they arrived, in groups of two and three just outside the eight openings where the individual nets met and overlapped, the other chasers which had come from the northwest filed in through one of these openings, one at a time, each rounding the net-laying ship as she lay holding the end of her net, turning and threading with an S-shaped course the narrow gap till within the enclosed area. When all had entered, they formed in two long parallel lines at right angles with the net on the northwest side, those in the front line spaced within a stone’s throw of each other, those in the second line, nearly half a mile behind, being somewhat more spread out. As soon as the lines had thus formed, buoys were thrown overboard to mark the beginning of the sweep; then each chaser in the front line dropped over her stern two paravanes or submarine kites to be towed astern at the greatest depth to which a submarine could go, one from each quarter, each equipped with a small contact mine like those in the net. At a signal from the chaser flagship, all started, jumping to their full speed, following the curve of the net in line abreast, and the sweep began.
The destroyer, with Captain Fraser on the bridge, stopped in her tour of the net, close to the point where the chasers assembled, and the officers on the bridge stood watching the maneuver.
“They’re off!” cried Fraser as the chasers started their sweep. “Over the line like a bunch of colts on a race-track. Go it, boys!” and he rang, “One third speed” on both engines to keep the destroyer abreast of the sweep, exclaiming, “I hope we’ve got the whole works inside this purse-string.”
“It’s bad business if we haven’t,” remarked Evans. “It must be ‘spurlos versenkt,’ or our talisman will lose its charm.”