It was about an hour or two later that the wireless winged word that seemed at last to herald the real thing. It was the S.O.S. of a steamer, and conveyed merely the information that she had just been torpedoed, with her latitude and longitude. The position given was only thirty or forty miles to the northward, and though the name in the message—it was Namoura or something similar—could not be found on any of our shipping lists, the Zop, as senior ship, promptly ordered course altered and full speed made in the hope of arriving on the scene in time to be of some use. With every minute likely to be of crucial importance, it was not an occasion to waste time by waiting or asking for orders. A swift exchange of signals between ships, a hurried order or two down a voice-pipe, an advancing of the handle of the engine-room telegraph, a throwing over of the wheel, and we had spun in the welter of our tossing wake and were off on a mission that might prove one of either mercy or destruction, or, quite conceivably, both. The formation in which we had been cruising when
the signal was received gave the Zip something like a mile lead at the get-away, and this—though one of the others was a newer and slightly faster ship—she held gallantly to the end of the race. By a lucky chance, though there was a snoring wind and a lumpy sea running, the course brought both abaft the beam and permitted us to run nearly “all out” without imposing a serious strain on the ship. The difference between running before and bucking into seas of this kind I was to learn in a day or two. For the moment, conditions were all that could be asked to favour our getting with all dispatch into whatever game there was to be played.
Many a so-called express train has travelled slower than any one of those three destroyers was ploughing its way through solid green water. For a few seconds after “Full speed!” had been rung down to their engine-rooms, swift-spinning smoke rings had shot up from their funnels and gone reeling off down to leeward; then, with perfect synchronisation of draught and oil, the duskiness above the mouths of the stumpy stacks had cleared, and only the mirage on the horizon astern betrayed the up-spouting jets of hot gases. Only the vibrant throb of the speeding engines—so pervading that it seemed to pulse like heart-beats through the very steel itself—gave hint of the mightiness of the effort that speed was costing. With that throb stilled—and the mounting wake quenched—the progress of that thousand tons or so of steam-driven
steel would have seemed scarcely less effortless than that of an aeroplane.
An order from the Commander-in-Chief—which was picked up presently—to go to the assistance of the torpedoed ship and to “hunt submarine” had been anticipated; but the real name of the steamer—finally transmitted correctly—brought to me at least a distinct shock. It was H.M.S. Marmora, and the Marmora, the former P. & O. Australian liner, was an old friend. To anyone who loves the sea a ship, no matter of what kind, has a personality. But in the case of a ship in which he has sailed—lived in, worked and played in, been happy in, perhaps gone through certain dangers in—has more than a personality, it has a place in his heart. Many and many a morning since the first U-boat campaign was started I had read—and never without a lump rising in my throat—of the passing of just such a friend, of the going out of the world of something—almost of “some one”—which I had always looked forward to seeing again. Afric, Arabic, Aragon, I knew their names well enough to compile the list alphabetically. It would have run to some score in length, and from every name would have led a long train of treasured memories. But the blow had never come quite this way before, never fallen quite so near at home. An especially dear friend had just been stricken less than a degree of latitude away; but the poignancy of that realisation was tempered by the thought that I was
in a ship rushing to her assistance, a ship that could be as swift to succour as to avenge.
I must confess to a queerly mixed state of mind that next half-hour. Consumed as I was with interest in our terribly purposeful progress leading up to the entrance into that grim drama approaching its climacteric act just beyond the sky-line, there were also vivid flare-backs of memory to the days of my friendship with the Marmora, arresting flashlights of the swift refreshing morning dive into the canvas pool on her forecastle, of lounging chairs ranged in long rows ’twixt snowy decks and awnings, of a phosphorescent bow-wave curling back and blotting the reflections of stars in a tropical sea. There was a picture of the clean sweet lines of her as—buff, black, and beautiful—she lay at the north end of the horseshoe of the Circular Quay at Sydney, with a rakish Messageries liner moored astern of her and a bluff Norddeutscher Lloyd packet ahead. It was her maiden voyage, and Australia, which had never seen so swift and luxurious a liner before, was receiving her like a newly arrived prima donna. I took passage in her back as far as Colombo. That fortnight’s voyage had been diverting in a number of ways, I recalled, but most of all, perhaps, as a consequence of the throwing together of a large party of Wesleyan missionaries from Fiji and the members of a London musical comedy company returning from its Australian “triumphs.” I was
just beginning to chuckle inwardly at the recollection of what one of the missionary ladies had said to a buxom chorus-girl who tripped out to the fancy dress cricket-match in her pink tights and a ballet skirt, when the ting-a-ling of a bell brought the captain to the radio-room voice-pipe. “Message just received,” I heard him repeat. “All right. Send it up.” He slapped down the voice-pipe cover, and a messenger had handed him the signal before he had paced twice across the bridge.
“Marmora just sunk,” he read; “survivors picked up by P.B.’s X and Y.”
The sinking made no immediate change in our plans. There was still a chance we might be of use with the survivors, and also the matter of the U-boat to be looked after. With no abatement of speed, all three destroyers drove on. The navigating officer reckoned that in another fifteen minutes we should be sighting the rescuing craft, and probably wreckage; but when twice that time still left a clear horizon ahead, it began to appear as though there had been a mistake of some kind. And so there had, but it was a lucky mistake for us. It was some time later before they figured just how it had chanced, but what had happened was this. The Marmora’s last despairing call—doubtless sent out by a breaking-down radio—gave her position as some ten or twelve miles out from what it really was. The consequence was that, heading somewhat wide of the sinking ship, to which, however,