way I can account for the fact that this particular pirate didn’t have a revenge after his own Hunnish heart. We were about evenly matched for guns probably, and doubtless I would have had rather better than an even break on that score, because a surface craft can stand more holing than a submarine. But there was nothing to prevent his taking a sneaking sight through his periscope from a safe distance and then slipping a mouldie at us, which, helpless as we were for a while, there would have been no way of avoiding. A moving ship of almost any class, provided it has a gun to make him keep his distance, has a good fighting chance of saving herself from being torpedoed by the proper use of her helm; a disabled ship, though she has all the guns in the world, has no show if the Fritz really thinks she’s worth wasting two or three torpedoes on. If he has his nerve, and any luck at all, he ought to finish the job with one.
“So I think you’ll have to admit,” said K—— with a whimsical smile, “that, under the circumstances and considering what might have happened, I felt that I had no legitimate kick coming in having to take her home under sail. Fact is, I considered myself in luck to have a ship to take home at all. The rudder, luckily, though a good deal bent and twisted, had not been blown away. It took a lot of nursing to turn it, and, when we finally got her off under mainsail, forestaysail and jib, the eccentricities it developed took a lot of getting
used to. Although it was quite fortuitous on our part, the course we steered during the thirty hours we put in returning to base was the most complex and baffling lot of zigzagging I ever had anything to do with. If a U-boat skipper lying in wait for us could have told what she was going to do next, I can only say that he would have known a lot more than I did.
“At the end of an hour or two a couple of trawlers hove in sight and closed us to be of what help they could in screening. They made a very brave show of it until we got under weigh, and then they were led just about the wooziest dance you ever heard tell of. By a lucky chance, for me, not for the trawlers, there was a spanking breeze on the port quarter (for the mean course to base, I mean); and it wasn’t long before the little old girl, even under the comparatively light spread of sail on her, was slipping away at close to nine miles an hour. That won’t surprise you if you noticed the lines of her. I’ve turned back in her log and found where she’s run for thirty-six hours at fourteen miles, even with the drag of her screws, which always knock a knot or two off the sailing speed of a yacht with auxiliary power.
“Well, that nine miles an hour was a good bit better than those trawlers could do under forced draught, and after falling astern for a while, they started to catch up by shortening their courses by cutting my zigzags. That was where the fun came
in. It would have been easy enough if I had been zigzagging according to Hoyle. But where I didn’t know myself just what she was going to do next, how was I going to signal it to them, will you tell me? About every other time that they tried to anticipate my course they guessed wrong, and were worse off than before as a consequence. They must have been a very thankful pair when one of the two destroyers which finally came up took them off to hunt the submarine. The other destroyer stood by to escort me in. Her skipper offered me a tow, but I was anxious to save face as much as possible by returning on my own, and so declined. In case of an attack it would have been better to have him screening than towing anyhow. In the end, when we got in to where the sea room was restricted, I was glad to take a hawser from a tug they sent to meet me to keep from putting her on the mud.
“You may well believe that effectually put an end to my experiments with ‘movable sky,’ and other similar mechanical complexities,” K—— continued with a laugh. “Indeed, from that time on I have been inclining more and more to simpler things, rig outs that are sufficiently free from wheels within wheels to leave the mind clear for the real work in hand, which, after all, is putting down the Hun, not merely deceiving him as to what you are. You see how simple a setting our present one is; yet it is very complete in its way, and I
have reasonable hopes of success with it. No, I can hardly tell you just what I am driving at with it, or just how I am going to go about it. In a month or two, when its possibilities have been exhausted and it has become a wash-out perhaps I shall be a bit freer to talk about it.
“Come and spend a day or two with me at the end of about six weeks, when my present round of stunting will probably be over, and I’ll tell you all the ‘Q’ yarns that the law allows. The Hun is dead wise to the game on principle, so there can’t be any point in keeping mum any longer on stunts that he’s twigged a year or so ago, and which you’d have about as much chance of taking him in with as you’d have in trying to sell a gold brick on Broadway.”