If you would understand the ocean we sailed in war-time, do not forget that it was essentially an ambush, that the foe was waiting for us in hiding. Nothing real or imagined brooded over the ocean to warn a vessel of the presence of danger, for the waters engulfed and forgot the tragedies of this war as they have engulfed and forgotten all disasters since the beginning of time. The great unquiet shield of the sea stretched afar to pale horizons, the sun shone as he might shine on a pretty village at high noon, the gulls followed alert and clamorous. Yet a thundering instant was capable of transforming this apparent calm into the most formidable insecurity. In four minutes you would have nothing left of your ship and its company but a few boats, some bodies, and a miscellaneous litter of wreckage strewn about the scene of the disaster. Of the assassin there was not a sign.
All agreed that the torpedo arrived at a fearful speed. "Like a long white bullet through the water," said one survivor. "Honest to God, I never saw anything come so fast," said another.
"Where did it strike?" I asked the first speaker, a fine intelligent English seaman who had been rescued by a destroyer and brought to an American base.
"In a line with the funnel, sir. A great column of steam and water went up together, and the pieces of the two port boats fell all around the bridge. I think it was a bit of one of the boats that struck me here." He held up a bandaged hand.
"What happened then?"
"All the lights went out. It was just dusk, you see, so we had to abandon the boat in the darkness. A broken steam pipe was roaring so that you couldn't hear a word any one was saying. She sank very fast."
"Did you see any sign of the submarine?"
"The captain's steward thought he saw something come up just about three hundred yards away as we were going down. But in my judgment, it was too dark to see anything distinctly, and my notion is that he saw a bit of wreckage, perhaps a hatch."
The next man to whom I talked was a chunky little stoker who might have stepped out of the pages of one of Jacobs' stories. I shall not aim to reproduce his dialect—it was of the "wot abaht it" order.
"We were heading into Falmouth with a cargo of steel and barbed wire. I had a lot of special supplies which I bought myself in New York, some sugar, two very nice 'ams and one of those round Dutch cheeses. I was always thinking to myself how glad my old woman would be to see all those vittles. Just as we got off the Scillies, one of those bloody swine hit us with a torpedo between the boiler room and the thwart ship bunker, forward of the engine room, and about sixteen feet below the water line. Understand? I was in the boiler room. Down came the bunker doors, off went the tank tops in the engine room, two of the boilers threw out a mess of burning coal, and the water came pouring in like a flood. Let me tell you that cold sea water soon got bloody hot, the room was filled with steam, couldn't see anything. I expected the boilers to blow up any minute. I yelled out for my mates. Suddenly I heard one of 'em say: 'Where's the ladder?' and there was pore Jem with his face and chest burned cruel by the flying coal, and he had two ribs broke too, though we didn't know it at the time. Says 'e, 'Where's Ed?' and just then Ed came wading through the scalding water, pawing for the ladder. So up we all went, never expecting to reach the top. Then when we got into a boat, we 'eard that the wireless had been carried away, and that we'd have to wait for somebody to pick us up. So we waited for two days and a Yankee destroyer found us. Yes, both my mates are getting better, though sister 'ere tells me that pore Ed may lose his eye."