“We are going to lie here until the destroyer reaches the other end of his patrol, which is about three to four sea miles from here. Then, at once, quickly empty all the tanks so that the boat cuts loose from the reef. At top speed, we will make for deep water and then dive again to a safe position below the surface.”
Again a light rain-cloud floated slowly towards us and favored our plans. Soon the destroyer could be seen only as a fading figure in the mist. Now we could risk to arise and get away from our other danger—the fiercely rolling breakers.
The valves were quickly opened. At once the boat came up. The terrific jolting ceased. The hand of the manometer moved upwards, and, after a few seconds, the boat’s broad, dripping back broke through the surface.
There is the buoy! Now full speed ahead! We’ll be soon there—now but a few hundred meters more and then the game is ours—a game on which life and death depended; a game which would have turned our hair white if we had not been so young, and if we had not, through horrible dangers, been united by true and faithful bonds.
As soon as we had placed ourselves on the right side of the longed-for buoy we again hurled ourselves deep down into the cool sea as happily as a fish which for a long time had been on dry land, and suddenly gets into its own element again.
The first and most dangerous part of our journey through the “Witch-Kettle” was over, although not without its horrible experiences. The narrow inlet was passed and also the several sea miles, wide and free from reefs and other navigation difficulties. Thus we merrily glided about in the deep and, in good spirits, hammered and listened and felt our splendid, hard-tried, heavily-tested boat all over back and forth, to see if it had pulled through without a leak from the pit of the rolling breakers; and we soon all forgot. As long as the nerves were at a continuous tension we had no time to think about past events. And though we had happily passed through and over mines and reefs, still the day was far from ended, and our main task was still before us.
This day continually brought us new and unexpected surprises, so that, at last, we had a gruesome feeling that everything had united itself for our destruction. First there were the trawlers; then the motor boats, which in pairs, with a steel net between them, searched through the channel where they suspected that U-boats were lurking. Every time we stuck up our periscope cautiously in order to look around a bit, it never failed that we had one of those searching parties right in front of us, so that we must submerge in a hurry to a greater depth in order not to be caught by the dangerous nets. And if for a short time there was an opportunity to scan the horizon undisturbed, then the atmosphere was thick, and we were unable to locate the shores, which we knew were close at hand, so that at last we hardly knew where we were, as the currents in these parts could not be estimated. Since the famous buoy we had not seen any mark which would in any degree assist us to locate ourselves.
We kept to our course up the center of the channel and trusted that our lucky star would lead us straight. Every half hour we came up from the safety of the deep and tried to take our bearings and then submerged again, disappointed. The crew, of course, must remain at the diving stations uninterruptedly.
About two o’clock the cook came around with pea-soup and pork in small tin cups. He also stretched up his arms to us in the conning tower with a steaming plate in his hands. I put the plate on my knees and dipped out its contents, thinking “The wild beasts are fed.” The moisture, which forms in large drops on the ceiling during long trips under the water, fell down on my head and into my plate and left small splotches of oil in the pea-soup as a sign they were real drops of U-boat sweat.
We again arose to the periscope level at four o’clock. At a distance of five hundred meters, a scouting fleet was moving about. At the same time on our starboard bow a French torpedo boat with four funnels was cruising around.