The withholding of fire while hostile shells are bursting around is one of the many severe strains imposed on the human mind by modern war, and in anti-submarine tactics it often means the difference between victory and defeat, which, followed to its logical conclusion, is generally life or death.
One hope now remained—that by skilful man[oe]uvring the trawlers could be kept afloat until help arrived; but in those wastes of sea no vessel might pass for many hours, and even then not a warship.
Such is the working of Fate: the leading trawler of the unit was to have been fitted with wireless while under the approaching refit, and with its aid patrol cruisers or fast destroyers could soon have been brought to the scene of operations.
Thirty minutes later the crippled ship, the junior member, gave three defiant shrieks with her syren and slid under the surface with her colours flying. For over two hours the others man[oe]uvred to get one on each side of the submarines to enable them to get the few shells remaining in their magazines home on the target, but so great was the disparity of both range and speed that at five in the evening nearly half their crews were dead or wounded, and a little while later the ice-cold water closed over the leading ship. Still the other fought on, but as dusk closed over the sea she too went down in this obscure fight.
No search for possible survivors was made by the submarines, which glided westwards into the smoky red afterglow, leaving the bitter cold to finish the work of death.
. . . . . . . .
A big armed liner of the Tenth Cruiser Squadron had heard the distant firing and came upon the scene just before darkness finally closed over. Four bodies were still lashed to a raft, but in all except one life was extinct.
When the doctors bent over the half-frozen form in which a flicker still lingered they shook their heads. Death waged a stern battle even for this last relic, but life triumphed, and when the agony of returning animation had ceased the sole survivor told the cruiser's mess how Trawler No. 1 had lost her refit.