THE WAR OF ATTRITION.
A wonderfully deep-blue sea stretched away to meet a light-blue sky, which was dotted with soft wool-like patches of cloud. There was a slight smooth swell from the south-west, and the air was cool and salt-laden. Looking from the conning-tower the hull of the boat could be clearly seen as she rose and fell to the waves, the sunlight flashing back steel-blue from her grey side six feet below the surface. It was a day that showed the sea at its best—a high Northern latitude in June, and a high barometer producing conditions under which it seemed to be a shame to be at war.
There were two men on the submarine's conning-tower. The smaller of the two was her captain, a fair-haired man with a Prussian name which seemed hardly to fit in with his Norse features. The other man hailed from Bavaria—a tall, thin, large-headed individual, with wide-set eyes and a nose and lower lip that hinted of Semitic ancestry. The big U-boat jogged along at half speed, beating up and down in erratic courses—keeping always to a water area of perhaps ten miles square.
The two officers leaned against a rail, their heads and shoulders twisting and turning continuously as they watched the distant horizon. Each carried heavy Zeiss glasses slung round the neck, and from time to time one of them would search carefully the western sea and sky, his doing so invariably infecting his companion into doing the same. The U-boat was running with a little less than half her normal cruising buoyancy—for speed of diving and not surface speed was the important qualification for her for that day. From the open conning-tower lid came the dull hum of the engines; while as the boat rolled, a shaft of sunlight, shining down the tower itself, sent a circle of yellow light swinging slowly from side to side across the deck beneath the eye-piece of the periscope.
"Is it a big convoy this time, sir?" The First Lieutenant spoke without checking his continual twisting and turning as he glanced at every point of the skyline in turn.
"Yes, it is a big convoy. But there is no doubt of their course or their speed. We shall be among them before the sunset."
"You would not then dive now? That is, if you are sure——"
"I do not dive till I am sure. And also we will want all the battery power we have before the dark. Did I not say it was a big convoy?"
"You think there will be a big escort?"