Woven Twine Versus Submarine M-9
But between them and his wolf lay the net buoys, dotting all the surface, in and out as if they had been laid by some laboring artist to make a maze.
The sea-wolf went slowly nearer. With its tanks full of water, it lay so far submerged that the sea washed the coaming around the manhole hatch. The Lieutenant was like a man wading breast-high in the ocean. It would be hard to see him from any distance.
He studied the traceries of buoys. There were spaces between them, that betokened gaps in the fences. One might find a gap and go through.
But to find a gap, the submarine must raise her periscope above water, and look around. But at each gap, sweeping incessantly to and fro, like galloping cavalry, were destroyers.[33]
Could one dive and go through blind? The Lieutenant knew the limitations of his terrible little animal. Its kiss could draw a twenty thousand ton ship into the abyss, but the woven twine would laugh at it.
Its nose could cut through them like the threads that they were. But the torn ends would catch conning tower and masts and periscope tubes. Even if it tore away from them, the whirl of the propellor remained to renew the danger, sucking the trailing cords to itself and in one instant switching them around and around the spinning shaft.
With the propellor blocked, the submarine must rise; for only with its propellor thrusting and its horizontal fins set to hold it down, can the submarine stay under. It submerges, not by sinking but by diving with main strength.
Another rather vivid picture flashed into the Lieutenant’s mind. It was not a picture, this time, of a wolf among sheep. It was a picture of a sudden enormous commotion among those quiet net-buoys, as of something struggling down below; and then of a violent surge as the tangled nets were dragged to and fro by a helpless submarine, held fast by the tail.[34]
A breeze arose with the rising sun, and the water roughened. The submarine stopped. It could not meet rough water while it was awash. Although its buoyancy when it was sealed was such that its propellor had to thrust full speed to make it dive, yet with its hatches open two hundred gallons of water, far less than is contained in a single big wave, would send it down like a tin can.[35]