Presently a startled exclamation, followed by a call for the light, came from the gloom around the stairway. Two of the boarding party searching among the debris had stumbled across something which, instinctively, sent a cold shiver through them. The light, when moved in that direction, dimly revealed the body of a man lying face downwards on the floor. Only the lower half of the figure was, however, visible, a mass of shattered timbers having collapsed on the head and shoulders. That life had been extinct for some considerable time was evidenced by the sickly odour which hung heavily in the less ventilated parts of the cabin, and the work of extricating the body was not commenced before the whole ship had been searched for possible survivors.
This work occupied a considerable time, but nothing of importance was discovered until a slight noise, not unlike the feeble, inarticulate cry of a child in pain, came through the timbers from some distant part of the hold. It was repeated several times, and the sailors, without waiting for orders, set hastily to work to find out the cause.
The hatches were carefully removed, but only floating timber could be seen. Then the sound came again. This time it was unmistakable and relieved the tension. A little grim laugh from the searchers was followed by much poking about with a long piece of wood on the surface of the flooded hold under the decking, and some minutes later a large pile of timber floated into the light from the open hatchway, supporting a big tortoiseshell cat, looking very wet and emaciated. "Ricky"—for such is her name now—proved to be the only living thing on that ill-fated ship.
The boarding party returned to the cabin and commenced the objectionable task of extricating the dead body from the mass of wreckage. The work proceeded slowly, for the heavy broken timbers pressed mercilessly on the object beneath, and when at last it lay revealed in the dim lantern light its ghastly appearance caused all to step back in horror. It was a headless corpse!
CHAPTER XVII
MINED-IN
How many people realise that, with a single unimportant exception, there was no part of the English or Scottish coast which was not mined-in at least once by German submarines during 1914-1918? Harbour entrances, often less than two miles from the shore, were repeatedly blocked by lines of hostile mines, laid by U-C boats through their stern tubes, in which they seldom carried less than fifteen to twenty of these deadly weapons, without the vessels rising to the surface either when approaching the coast, laying the mines or effecting their escape.
Many important waterways, such as the Straits of Dover, the mouth of the Thames, the approaches to Liverpool, the Firth of Forth, Aberdeen, Lowestoft and Portsmouth, were repeatedly chosen for this form of submarine attack. At one base alone no less than 400 mines were destroyed by the attached anti-submarine flotillas in one year, and round the coasts of the United Kingdom an average of about 3000 of these invisible weapons were located and destroyed annually.