“In the end, because I was afraid that none of the feminine make-ups was quite good enough not to awaken suspicion at close range—I decided that the heaving over of the ‘baby’ should be done by a ‘gentleman’ instead of by a ‘lady.’ As one of the seamen put it, it was only ‘nateral that the
nipper’s daddy ’ud be lookin’ arter ’im in time of danger,’ and I had read of sailors being entrusted with children on sinking ships. The man I picked for the job—the ‘father of the che-ild,’ as he soon came to be called—was not the one who had proved the best in distance throwing in the trials, but rather one on whose cold-blooded nerve I knew I could count in any extremity.
“He was a Seaman Gunner, named R——, and was lost a year ago when a rather desperate ‘Q’ stunt he had volunteered for miscarried. He had just the touch of the histrionic desirable for the intimate little affair in question, and the way he played his part fully justified my selecting him.”
K—— leaned back in his chair and blew smoke rings for a minute before resuming his story. “There are some kind of stunts, like this one I’ve been trying to bring off for the last two or three months,” he said, “that always seem to hang fire; and there are others where, from first to last, everything comes up to the scratch on time, just like a film drama. That first one I’m telling you about was like that, everybody—even to the U-boat—coming on to its cue. Indeed, when I think of it now, the whole show seems more like a big movie than anything else.
“By the time we were letter perfect in our parts, there came two or three days of just the kind of a storm I wanted to make a good excuse for a dinky little pleasure boat being out in the middle of the North Sea. I took care, of course, to be ‘blown’
to the last position at which an enemy submarine had been reported.
“Then, where a destroyer or a M.L. might have cruised round for a month without sighting anything but fog and the smoke of some of our own ships on the horizon, we picked up a Fritz running brazenly on the surface the first morning. That was first blood for my harmless appearance right there, for he must have seen us some time previously of course, and had we looked in the least warlike, would have submerged before even our lookout spotted his conning-tower.
“As it was, he simply began closing us at full speed, firing as he came. It was rotten shooting at first, as shooting from the very poor platform a submarine affords usually is, but, at about three thousand yards, he put a shell through the fo’c’sl’, luckily above the water-line. The next minute or two was the most anxious time I had, for, if he made up his mind to do it that way, there was nothing to prevent his sticking off there and putting us down with shell-fire.
“Perhaps if the two or three shots which followed had been hits, that is what he would have done. It was probably his disgust at the fact that they were all ‘overs’ that determined him to close in and finish the job with bombs. Possibly, also, the fact that I appeared to be starting to abandon ship at this juncture convinced him finally that the yacht had no fight in her, and it may well be that
the temptation to loot had something to do with his decision. I could never make quite sure on those points, for Herr Skipper never confided what was in his mind to the one officer who survived him. At any rate, he came nosing nonchalantly in and did just what I had been praying for the last month he would do—poked right up alongside. The heavy sea that had been running for the last two or three days had gone down during the night, so that he was able to stand in pretty close without running much danger of bumping.