The same sort of shop talk and banter in the wardroom, which trims and polishes human edges; the same fellowship of a world apart. Securely ready the British fleet waits. Enough drill and not too much; occasional visits between ships; books and newspapers and a light-hearted relaxation of scattered conversation in the mess. One wardroom had a thirty-five-second record for getting past all the pitfalls in the popular “Silver Bullet” game, if I remember correctly.
XXXII
HUNTING THE SUBMARINE
Seaplanes afloat and on high—Diabolical bombs—Sighting a submarine—The chase—Submarine defences—Torpedo boats at home—The mine sweepers—Patience in the cold of the North Sea.
Seaplanes cut practice circles over the fleet and then flew away on their errands, to be lost in the sky beyond the harbour entrance. With their floats, they were like ducks when they came to rest on the water, sturdy and a little clumsy looking compared to those hawks the army planes, soaring to higher altitudes.
The hawk had a broad, level field for its roost; the duck, bobbing with the waves after it came down, had its wings folded as became a bird at rest after its engines stopped and a dead thing, it was lifted on board its floating home with a crane, as cargo is swung into the hold.
On shipboard there must be shipshapeness; and that capacious, one-time popular Atlantic liner had undergone changes to prepare it for its mothering part, with platforms in place of the promenades where people had lounged during the voyage, and bombs in place of deck quoits and dining-saloons turned into workshops. Of course, one was shown the different sizes and types of bombs. Aviators exhibit them with the pride of a collector showing his porcelains. Every time they seem to me to have grown larger and more diabolical. Where will aerial progress end? Will the next war be fought by forces that dive and fly like fish and birds?
“I’d like to drop that hundred-pounder onto a Zeppelin!” said one of the aviators. All the population of London would like to see him do it. Also Fritz, of the submarine, does not like to see the shadow of man’s wings above the water.
Seaplanes and destroyers carry the imagination away from the fleet to another sphere of activity, which I had not the fortune to see. An aviator can see Fritz below a smooth surface; for he cannot travel much deeper than thirty or forty feet. He leaves a characteristic ripple and tell-tale bubbles of air and streaks of oil. When the planes have located him they can tell the hunters where to go. Sometimes it is known that a submarine is in a certain region; he is lost sight of and seen again; a squall may cover his track a second time, and the hunters, keeping touch with the planes by signals, course here and there on the lookout for another glimpse. Perhaps he escapes altogether. It is a tireless game of hide-and-seek, like that of gunnery at the front. Naval ingenuity has invented no end of methods and no end of experiments have been tried. Strictest kept of naval secrets, these. Fritz is not to be told what to avoid and what not to avoid.