"Submarine right ahead—about 1000 metres."
The message came from an observing station on the foremast. The three officers on the bridge searched the sea in front of them with their binoculars. Yes! No! Yes! The navigating lieutenant saw a flitting patch of foam on the dark sea, a splash in the air as a wave lifted. He recognised it instantly as a periscope cutting through the water, coming straight towards them. They must shoot—shoot at once! He turned to his superiors. The captain had already shouted one order, was now yelling instructions to the men at the port anti-torpedo guns. The cruiser turned slightly to starboard. Onward drove the patch of foam, aiming apparently at their side. The lieutenant felt his left hand hurt him—it was the intensity of his nervous grip upon the rail. Behind him he heard a sudden order, followed instantly by the sharp, splitting report of the light guns. At the same moment the circle of a conning-tower broke the surface of the sea, followed by a glistening whale-back. As it emerged he saw it veiled in a sheet of flame, a film of smoke. He had a glimpse of a great hole in the whale-back and then the submarine dived nose foremost, kicking up her stern in the air as she went. For one awful, ghastly second the lieutenant had a view of the large initial in her conning-tower. It was U—Unterseeboot!—They had sunk one of their own submarines!
He turned to see the face of his captain fixed in an expression of horror. Everyone on the bridge was trembling. They had lost command over themselves, and they knew it. No one spoke. With a fierce effort of will the lieutenant pressed his glasses to his eyes, scanned the horizon. What was that? He saw a dark spot rising and falling, circling against the grey sky like a black gull wheeling in the gale. It was a seaplane, daringly reconnoitring even in this weather. It was discovery. Borkum confirmed the fear. "Cruisers turning back to sea—difficult to range in this weather."
The guns' crews at the anti-torpedo armament had also seen the aeroplane. A shot cracked out, automatically, without orders. The captain, losing all control over his nerves after the last shock, ran along the bridge to the port rail and excitedly ordered them to continue. "Fire!" he shouted. "Fire! A hundred marks to the crew that brings it down!" His face worked with an insane hatred, his voice was the voice of a man out of himself. It seemed that he wished to revenge his terrible mistake upon the aeroplane. Crack! Crack! Crack! went the guns, while the men behind the rubber shoulder-pieces swore violent oaths. The firing had continued for a couple of minutes or more when the telephone bell rang again.
"The lieutenant in the observing station wishes to know what you are firing at, Herr Kapitän!"
The captain was about to discharge a volley of oaths upon the man when a sharp cry from the commander stopped him. The captain looked again through his glasses. It was suddenly obvious to everybody that the aeroplane was no aeroplane but in actual fact a wheeling gull.
"Cease fire, you—(objurgatory)—fools!" yelled the captain. In a nervous rage he bit furiously at the red beard below his lip. "Tell the Herr Leutnant Feldmann to keep a better look out!" he said savagely to the messenger.
Eight bells sounded. The navigating lieutenant was relieved. He descended from the bridge and stood for a moment in a warm spot in the lee of the forward funnel, trying to achieve a yawn that kept opening his mouth without filling his lungs. His blood, drugged with fatigue-toxins, was in urgent need of more oxygen, but his overtaxed nerves failed to synchronise the action of the muscles. His eyes burned in his head. He stumbled down the companionway, rubbing at them, and took off his dripping oilskins outside the wardroom door. His servant appeared and was ordered to bring him a stiff tumbler of brandy. Then he entered the empty wardroom and flung himself full length upon a sofa. He tried to shut his eyes, but found himself obstinately staring wide awake at a paint-blister on the bulkhead. Disconnected thoughts—visions, rather, of craft of various types driving through the gale passed through his brain. Especially the black dot of the seaplane which was no seaplane danced before his eyes, maddening him with its refusal to be banished. Behind a door in his consciousness was the horror of the sunk submarine—he fought hard to keep that door closed, and caught himself staring into it in intervals of relaxed vigilance. He could not sleep, try as he would. Even the strong spirits failed to narcotise him. If anything they spurred his harassed brain into greater activity. He fretted for a drowsiness that would not come. At last, with a curse, he rose and walked out of the wardroom.
Outside he stood for a moment, hesitating, craving for companionship like a sick man who lies awake at night. He ran over the list of his comrades at their battle stations. Then he made his way down to the engine-room.
A stifling atmosphere, hot, damp and thick with the smell of oil, assailed him as he descended the steep iron ladder. The sweat broke out on his brow as he passed along a gloomy narrow corridor, just wide enough for a man, between packed boiler-tubes ranged on both sides to the roof like bottles in a wine merchant's vault. He emerged finally into a large space, brilliant with electric light. On a platform at one end stood the staff-engineer with some of his assistants, surrounded by a formidable array of indicator-dials, telegraphs, telephones, speaking-tubes, and other fittings of whose use he had but a vague idea. The engineer still worried at his little grey moustache as he gazed below him to where the turbines hummed in their casings. It was comparatively quiet down here. Only a few men were visible, but the lieutenant knew that a hundred or so were labouring fiercely in the bowels of this mass of mechanism which gave the ship her life. From a manhole at the other end of the engine-room a couple of men were drawing out what seemed to be a corpse, its naked torso black as with an explosion. It was a stoker who had collapsed. The staff-engineer frowned as the limp body was carried off to the sick bay. He turned and snarled irritably at the question of the lieutenant.