“We have the remnants of the net all over us,” I shouted through the noise of the storm to Gröning. “Get the nippers, hammer, and chisel ready. As soon as it is light enough, we must go to work to cut it free.”
And the thick, dark snake—what was that? It came up to starboard, slipped across the deck, and disappeared to port into the darkness. It did not take us long to find out what kind of a snake it was, and I comprehended everything fully. That persistent, mysterious pursuit by the Frenchman was at once plain. Now I understood clearly what had happened on the surface after the explosion of the mine. My heart froze when I thought how readily the enemy had been able to follow our course.
We could easily trace the snake with all its curves, as it became lighter, because it was a long cork hawser, made for the purpose of sustaining the net. This was of light cork of about the thickness of a forearm and was light brown in color.
About two hundred meters of this easily perceptible hawser were floating on the water, and gave us a tail with many curves in it. This tail, which we had been dragging after us, gave us the solution of the puzzling pursuit.
When we had torn the net, with our engines at their highest speed, a large piece of it to which the hawser was fastened had clung to our U-boat and, after we had submerged, the hawser was still floating on the surface and continued to drag along behind us, still floating when we had submerged to a great depth. The Frenchman, who had discovered us on account of the explosion, had observed this, and, in spite of all our twistings and turnings, could follow us easily.
It was a master work of our able sea crew to cut clear that heavy steel net. The sea became still higher and washed furiously over the deck, angered by the resistance of our little nutshell. The men were standing up to their stomachs in the white, foaming waves, and had to use all their strength to stand against their force. Full of anxiety, I sat in the conning tower with a life-saving buoy ready and followed closely with worried eyes every move of my men during their dangerous work.
All went well, and, after a half hour’s hard work, we were rid of the troublesome net. The nippers, hammer, and chisel and six drenched sailors disappeared down the conning tower. Each of the six held in his numbed, wet fist a rusty piece of the net as a souvenir of the fourteenth day of April.
The sun arose as if nothing had happened. From the eastern horizon it shone over the French coast as if to say:
“I am neutral! I am neutral!”
When it got up higher in the heavens and sent its greeting to England, it shivered and hid behind a thick cloud.