“My first plan proved too primitive by far. I reckoned that the ‘blowing-up’ touch might be provided by dropping a depth-charge, and that of ‘burning up’ by playing my searchlight on the surface of the water on the side the approach was to be expected from. Neither was good enough. The ‘can’ might have been set to explode on the surface, but that could not be affected without running the chance of blowing in my own stern. But the bing of a depth-charge detonating well under
the water is quite unmistakable, and the first U-boat I tried to lure with one made off forthwith, plainly under the impression that it was the object of an active attack. As for the searchlight, I saw that it wouldn’t do the first time I went down and took a peep at a trial of it through the periscope of one of our own submarines. The beam did cast a patch of brightness discernible through the upturned ‘eye’ at a depth of from sixty to eighty feet, but it was neither red enough nor fluttery enough to suggest anything like a burning ship. I set to work to devise something more life-like, without ever waiting for a chance to draw a Fritz with it.
“First and last, I tried a goodly variety of ‘fire’ experiments,” D—— continued, snuggling down for a moment with both arms under the blankets, “and I don’t mind admitting that I’d like to have a few of ’em, smoke and all, flaming up all over this refrigerator right now. The thing I finally decided to try consisted of nothing more than a light, shallow tank of ordinary kerosene—paraffin oil, I believe they call it here—made fast to a small, roughly built raft. The modus operandi was as simple as the contrivance itself. As soon as a U-boat was sighted, the raft was to be launched on the opposite side, and kept about thirty feet out by means of a light boom. The next move was to be up to Fritz, and it was fairly certain he would do one of two things—submerge and make off, or remain
on the surface and begin to shell us. In the latter case we were to start firing in reply, of course; but that was only incidental to the main plan. This was to wait until we were hit, or, preferably, until he fired an ‘over,’ the fall of which, on account of his low platform, he could not spot accurately, and then to fire the tank of kerosene. A line to a trigger, rigged to explode a percussion-cap, made it possible to do this from the rail. As the flames, besides giving off a lot of smoke, would themselves leap high enough to be seen from the other side, it was reasonable to suppose that Fritz would be deluded into thinking we were burning up, and make his approach a good deal more carelessly than otherwise. If he persisted in closing us on the surface, there would be nothing to it but to make what fight we could with our fo’c’sl’ gun, and try to make it so hot for him that he would have to go down before his heavier shells had done for us. But if, following his usual procedure, he made his approach submerged, then there were two or three other little optical and aural illusions prepared for his benefit. I will tell you of these in describing how we actually used them.”
D—— lay quiet for a minute, the wrinkles of a baleful grin of reminiscence showing on both sides of the aperture of the Balaclava. “The first chance we had to try the thing out it nearly did us in,” he chuckled presently. “No, Fritz had nothing to do with it. He, luckily for us, submerged and beat it
off after firing three or four shots—probably through mistaking the smoke of a couple of trawlers just under the horizon for that of destroyers. It was all due to bad luck and bad judgment—principally the latter, I’m afraid. It was bad luck to the extent that the U-boat was sighted down to leeward, so that there was no alternative but to put over my ‘fire-raft’ on the windward side. The bad judgment came in through my underestimating the force of the wind and the fierceness with which the kerosene would burn when fanned by it. Scarcely had it been touched off before there was a veritable Flammen-werfer playing against thirty or forty feet of the windward side, and in a way which made it impossible for a man to venture there to cast off the wire cables which moored the raft. As this class of M.L.s have wooden hulls, you will readily see that this was no joke.
“The splash of the beam seas proved an efficacious antidote, so far as the hull was concerned, however; but how some other highly inflammable material I was carrying ’midships escaped being fired in the minute or more that I was swinging her through sixteen points to bring the raft to the leeward of her—— Well, I can only chalk that up to the credit of the special Providence that is supposed to intervene especially to save drunks and fools. You can bet your life I never let myself be tempted into making that break again, though it involved a trying exercise of self-restraint when it
chanced that the very next Fritz I sighted also bore down the wind.
“The two or three U-boats which were sighted in the course of the next five or six weeks ducked under without firing a shot, and I was beginning to think that perhaps they had somehow got wind of my little plan and were taking no chances in playing up to it. Then, one fine clear morning, up bobs a Fritz about six thousand yards to windward, and begins going through his part of the show almost as though he was one of our own submarines with which I had been rehearsing. His firing at us was about as bad as mine at him; but he finally lobbed one over that was close enough, so I knew he couldn’t tell whether it was a hit or not, and on that I touched off the fire-raft, which was soon spouting up a fine pillar of flame and smoke. To discourage his approach on the surface, I kept up a brisk firing to give him the impression that we were going to live up to British Navy traditions by going down fighting, and to convince him that it would be much safer to close under water. This came off quite according to plan, and presently I saw the loom of his conning-tower dissolve and disappear behind the spout of one of our shells, which looked to have been a very close thing.
“I stood on at a speed of five or six knots, but on a course which I reckoned he would anticipate and allow for. When I figured that he was not