A bitter wind swept the grey wastes of the North Sea and a fine haze of snow, driven by stinging gusts, obscured all except the long hillocks of water which rose and fell around the tiny M.L.—a lonely thirty tons of nautical humanity in as many square leagues of sub-Arctic sea.
Nineteen degrees of frost during the long winter night had flattened the boisterous, foam-capped waves, and now, in the early December dawn, all within vision was of that colourless grey so familiar to those who kept the North Sea on the winter patrol.
It was one bell in the first watch and three shapeless figures clad in duffel coats with big hoods and wearing heavy sea-boots stood silent in the draughty, canvas-screened wheel-house as M.L.822 wallowed northwards through the seas which came in endless succession out of the snowy mist. It was just the ordinary everyday patrol duty, when nothing was expected but anything might happen, so eyes were strained seawards in a vain endeavour to penetrate the icy curtain blowing down from the Pole. Twelve hours more of half-frozen existence stretched in front of these silent watchers, as they clung with stiffened limbs to ropes stretched purposely handy to keep them upright when the little ship lurched more fiercely in a steeper sea.
Of the three figures in the meagre shelter of the wheel-house there was little to distinguish who or what they were, except, perhaps, a cleaner and more yellowish duffel coat and a big white muffler in which the lieutenant-in-command tried, without success, to keep his teeth from chattering and the icy draught from finding its way into the seemingly endless openings of his woollen clothing. What he had been before the Great War and the North Sea claimed him was a mystery to those on board, but the people of more than one capital knew his name. Near by stood a younger man—a boy before the war—who, although pale and dark-eyed, did not appear to feel the intense cold so much, although the dampness of the long-past summer fogs had chilled him to the bone. He was the sub-lieutenant, and hailed from the Great North-West, where Canadian winters had hardened his skin to the stinging dry cold.
Fig. 33.—Duffel or Arctic clothing.
The immense bundle of nondescript clothing at the wheel was "Mac," the coxswain, whose voyages in Arctic seas with the Iceland fishing fleet numbered more than his years of life, and whose deep-voiced Gaelic roar could bring the "watch below" on to the cold, wet deck to their action stations in less time than it would take a new recruit to tumble out of his hammock.
Although the silence of the sea seems to settle on its watchers in those northern marches, there was an unduly long absence of comment on the nature of the weather and the prospects of "something exciting" turning up out of the icy mist. The reason lay in the subconscious mind of all on deck, for it was Christmas morning, 1916, and the thoughts of all were dwelling on past years in the cheery surroundings of English and Colonial homes—in vivid contrast to the dismal grey of the North Sea. To break the spell of memory both officers felt would be blasphemy, and yet a feeble attempt at conversation was made every now and then for the sake of appearances.
To Mac, from the Orkneys, no such sentiment held sway, for Christmas to him meant little compared with New Year's Day; but this was a special Christmas, for a big plum pudding was being boiled on the petrol stove below, and each roll of the little vessel threatened its useful existence. Eventually he could keep silent no longer and tentatively suggested a change of course to ease the violent lurching. The wheel was spun round with alacrity as the telegraph rang out below and the engines slowed down to a slow pulsating throb. The sharp bows of the patrol boat rose dripping from each green-grey mass of sea as it rolled up out of the white haze ahead and then fell gently back into the trough. The violent pitching gave place to a more easy see-saw movement, and in spite of the cold, which seemed to grow keener every minute to the half-numbed figures on deck, a grunt of satisfaction escaped the helmsman, and visions of steaming plum duff—a present from the Admiral's wife—supplanted the more anxious thoughts of war and the dangers of mine and submarine which lay hidden in the white snow-mists and grey seas around.