“There had been a mad lot of rushes for the ladders and hatches, but the skipper, it appears, got up first, through the conning-tower to the bridge,
as the official leader of the ‘Kamerad Parade.’ He was just in time to connect with the first shell from our foremost six-pounder, and that, or one of the succeeding projectiles which were fired before it was evident they were trying to surrender, accounted for several others in the van of the opening rush. The officer in charge of the whaler reported seeing several dead bodies lying on the deck and floating in the water, among these being that of the captain, which was taken back to Base and given a naval funeral. There were also two or three wounded. Of unwounded there were fifteen men and two officers, out of something like twenty-four in the original crew. One of the officers claimed to be a relation of Prince Henry of Prussia, but why he didn’t claim the Kaiser himself, who is full brother to Prince Henry, I could never quite make out. As this was the same officer I told you of as not being able to see a joke, I didn’t think it worth while to try to follow the ramifications of his family tree any farther. The engineer asserted that he had already been in eight warships which had been destroyed, these including a battleship and two or three cruisers and motor launches. I did the best I could to comfort him by telling him that, in case the Flash wasn’t put down by a U-boat in the three or four hours which would elapse before we made Base, he need have no further worries on the sinking score for some time to come. Just the same,” he concluded, with a shake of the head,
“I was glad to see that chap safely over the side. No sailor likes to be shipmates with a ‘Jonah,’ especially in times like these.
“By the time we had finished transferring the prisoners the Splash had joined us, and her captain, being my senior, took charge of the rest of the show. On my reporting that I had several severely wounded Huns aboard, he ordered me to return to Base with them.
“I think that’s about all there is to the yarn,” said the captain, rising and starting to pull on his sea-togs preparatory to going up for another “look-see” before turning in. Then something flashed to his mind as an afterthought, and he relaxed for a moment, red of face and breathless, from a struggle with a refractory boot.
“There was one thing I shall always be glad about in connection with that little affair,” he said thoughtfully, a really serious look in his eyes for almost the first time since I had seen him directing the dropping of the depth-charges early in the evening; “and that is that I didn’t know in advance that those two British merchant marine officers were imprisoned in the U.C. ‘——’ with the Huns when we came driving down to drop a ‘can’ on her. My duty would have been quite clear, of course, and, as you doubtless know, some of our chaps have faced harder alternatives than that without flinching or deviating an iota from the one thing that it was up to them to do; but, just the same, I’m not
half certain that the instinct, or whatever you want to call it, which seemed to jog my elbow at the psychological moment that charge had to be let go to do its best work—I’m not at all sure that instinct would have served me so well had I known that success might have to be purchased by sending two of my own countrymen—yes, more than that, two sailors like myself—to eternity with the pirates who held them as hostages. Yes, it was a mercy that I didn’t have that on my mind at the moment when I needed all the wits and nerve I had to get that ‘can’ off in the right place.”
Visibly embarrassed at having allowed his feelings to betray him—a British naval officer—into a display of something almost akin to emotion, the captain stamped noisily into the stuck sea-boot and disappeared, behind a slammed door, into the night.