Dropping into the water, he pushed this before him, and swam warily to the shore, but found himself unable, at his first point of landing, to scale the cliffs that were here very precipitous. Accordingly he pushed out his raft again, and swam along the coast until a more promising ascent revealed itself, where he dressed, loaded himself with his charge, and, after a very steep climb, reached the top of the cliffs. Half an hour later, making his way inland, he came upon the line of the railway, and then, carrying his charge, began to creep quietly along it in the direction of the viaduct.
This he did for about a quarter of a mile, when he suddenly heard voices ahead of him, and presently saw three men sitting by the side of the railway, talking together loudly, and evidently quite oblivious of him. Crouching in the darkness, he watched them for some little time, and then decided to leave his heavy charge where it was, and, after having made a wide detour inland, inspect the viaduct and see how it was guarded.
Having marked the spot, therefore, where he had concealed his charge, he struck away from the railway into the unknown country beyond, and here he very nearly came to disaster, owing to an unlucky stumble into a small farmyard. The poultry scuttered about calling, but happily without rousing the family, from whose undisturbed dreams it would surely be true to say that nothing could have been remoter than the vision of a British naval lieutenant, cursing under his breath, in the middle of their fowl-run. He was soon well away from this, and not very long afterward was within three hundred yards of the viaduct, where it soon became clear that there was very little prospect of his being able to secrete and fire his charge. At the end of it nearest to him, he could see a bright fire burning and the figures of several men moving to and fro, while the panting of an engine could be heard through the night, either on the viaduct itself or just beyond it.
There was nothing for it, therefore, but to make his way back to the place where he had hidden his explosive, and to find as suitable a spot in which to discharge it as the circumstances would allow. After a further search, he discovered a low brickwork support, carrying the line over a small hollow, and it was beneath this that he finally decided to place and explode his charge. Unfortunately the three men, whom he had first seen, were still sitting chatting by the line, and the spot selected was no more than one hundred and fifty yards away from them.
There was no other place, however, where so much damage could be done, and muffling up the fuse pistol with a rag, he discharged it. But the night was so still and the men were so near that for them to hear the report had been inevitable. Instantly they were on their feet and running down the line, and there was nothing for it but to take to his heels, the three men following at the top of their speed, a couple of revolver shots failing to check them. They too fired, but ineffectively, and the chase went on for about a mile, Lieutenant D'Oyly Hughes deciding that it was impossible to try and return the way he had come, and making down the line till he came to a place where it ran out beside the sea.
Just as he reached this, he had the satisfaction of hearing a loud explosion in the darkness behind him, some of the debris falling into the water, nearly half a mile away, close to the waiting submarine. But there was not a moment to be lost, and, fully dressed, Lieutenant D'Oyly Hughes plunged from the shore and swam as fast as he could for about a quarter of a mile straight out to sea. There he blew his whistle, but was unheard by the watchers on the submarine, this latter being behind a bend in the cliffs. Lieutenant D'Oyly Hughes therefore swam back to the shore again, and, after having rested for a few moments, decided that there was no other course open to him than to swim round this bend. Day was already nearing, and, time being imperative, he threw away his pistol, bayonet, and electric torch; and it was not until he had rounded the last point that his whistle was heard by the watchers on the E11. But others had heard it, too, and, from the top of the cliffs above him, there began to float down shouts and the reports of rifle shots. Owing to a trick of the morning mist, too, the emerging submarine appeared to him at first to be three separate rowing-boats—the bow, the conning-tower, and the gun being responsible for this illusion. Once again, therefore, he took to the shore with the intention of hiding under the cliffs, when, after climbing out of the water, he saw his mistake and shouted and signalled to his comrades. Eventually he was picked up by them forty yards out, almost on the point of exhaustion, and having swum, after no mean exertions ashore, nearly a mile in his clothes.
While the British submarines and their officers and crews were thus making themselves at home in the Sea of Marmora, a campaign as daring had already been begun in the similar enclosed area of the Baltic, Commander Max Horton in the E9 being in this case the pioneer. This officer had already accounted for a couple of German men-of-war, the light cruiser Hela sunk in the previous September, and the destroyer S126 put down three weeks later It was early on a fine Sunday morning that the E8 had sighted the Hela about six miles south of Heligoland. Two torpedoes were launched, and about half a minute after the second was despatched, the listeners on board E9 had heard an explosion telling them that one at any rate had got home. A quarter of an hour later, the E9 had emerged again to see the Hela listing heavily and apparently beyond hope of redemption; and, when she had next come to the surface, it was to find the cruiser gone and her first German warship to her credit. The destroyer had been sunk three weeks later, near the mouth of the Ems River and under the very guns of Borkum.
Such was the record of Commander Max Horton before he made his way into the Baltic in the following year, and began to operate there almost at the same time as his colleagues established their mastery in the Sea of Marmora; and he was worthily succeeded by Francis Cromie, than whose personal story the war produced no stranger. Entering the Baltic in the summer of 1915, as a lieutenant-commander in the submarine E19, to die three years later, as an acting captain, in the most tragic of circumstances at Petrograd, few men can have played, in so short a time, such a bewildering variety of parts.
Having arrived in the Baltic, his first task was to combat as far as possible the importation into Germany of ore from the Swedish mines. To this end he organized, therefore, and he was the first to organize, a definite and coördinated plan of campaign; and this soon bore visible fruits, not only in the number of vessels sunk, but in the precautions forced upon the enemy. Within a few days, in the early autumn, no less than ten of these vessels were put out of action, the majority being total losses. Amongst the victims were the Lulfa, Nicomedia, Gutrune, and Pernambuco—all vessels over 3,000 tons; while, a few days afterward, five German transports were torpedoed and sunk, and a sixth forced to run aground. Of these no less than ten were the actual victims of Lieutenant-Commander Cromie himself in the E19.
His most notable feat in this year, however, was the sinking of the German cruiser Undine, which was engaged with some destroyers in protecting a train-ferry upon which Lieutenant-Commander Cromie had designs. Of the general spirit in which not only this particular expedition, but all his work was undertaken, something can be gathered from a letter to his mother in which he describes his adventures as follows: "We did another fifteen hundred miles," he wrote, "this last trip. I went to bed for the first two days out with 'flue,' and so directed operations from my bunk. We met a German submarine and had to dive in a hurry, and found ourselves down at 140 feet, before I could get out of bed to take charge. The third day we found a lot of 'wood' outside neutral waters, and, after a short chase, we made a lovely bonfire, being unable to sink the stuff. The 'inhabitants' left hurriedly, leaving a small puppy dog, which we rescued. Its father was a Great Dane, and its mother a pug, but considering it is a 'Hun' it is not half bad, and is a great favourite. Nothing travels by daylight since our last raid on the 'hen-run'; so my special haunt was very dull, and I gave it up after four days, and tried another spot where I knew train-ferries must pass. We had an exciting chase, but it was spoilt by two destroyers and a cruiser turning up. Guessing that they would come back again I lay low, and, sure enough, I caught the Undine in the afternoon. The first shot stopped her and put her on fire, but she was not going down quickly enough, so, avoiding the destroyer who was after us, I dived under the Undine's stern and gave her another from the other side.... We arrived in covered with ice."