“The extent of my abandoning ship had been to follow the old sea rule of saving the women and children first. Or rather, we put the women off in our only boat; the baby, I won’t need to tell you, was somehow ‘overlooked.’ The boat was lowered in full view of the Hun, who was about fifteen hundred yards distant at the moment, and there was a little unrehearsed incident in connection with it that must have done its part in convincing him that what he was witnessing was a genuine piece of ‘abandon.’ One of the girls—it was the blonde ‘Brunnhilde,’ I believe—not wanting to miss any of the fun, started to hang back and tried to bluff them into letting her stay by swearing that she’d rather face the Hun than desert her child. As a matter of fact, the ‘Gainsborough’ had more claim on the kid than ‘Brunnhilde,’ for she—I mean he—had cadged its clothes from a sweetheart who worked in a draper’s shop. If I had been there
personally, I’m afraid ‘Brunnhilde’s’ little bluff would have won through, for a man whose wits are keen enough to spring a joke at a crisis has always made an especial appeal to me. To the bo’sun, however, orders were orders, and his answer to the recalcitrant blonde’s insubordination was to rush her to the rail by the slack of her middy jacket, and to help her over it with the toe of his boot.
“The ‘K——’s’ low freeboard made the drop a short one, and, luckily, ‘Brunnhilde’ missed the gun’nel’ of the whaler and landed gently in the water, from where she was dragged by the ready hands of her sisters a few moments later. They do say, though, that she turned a complete flip-flop in the air, and that there was a display of—well, if a Goerz prism binocular won’t reveal the difference between a pair of blue sailor’s breeches and French lingerie at under a mile, all I can say is that we’ve much overrated German optical glass. As I learned later, however, the Huns, observing only the fall and missing the revealing details, merely concluded that the Englanders were jumping overboard in panic, and dismissed their last lingering doubts and suspicions.
“The girls were already instructed that they were to lie low and keep their peroxide curls out of sight as long as they were within a mile or so of the submarine, so as not to tempt the latter to follow them up for a look-see at closer range. The
boat had orders to pull astern for a while, and then, if the Hun was observed to come alongside the ‘——’ as hoped, to turn eight or ten points to port and head up in the direction from which he had appeared. The reason for this manœuvre, which was carried out precisely as planned, you will understand in a moment.
“On came Fritz, coolly contemptuous, and on went the show, like the unrolling of a movie scenario. For a while I was fearful that he might order back my boat to use in boarding me with, but as soon as he was close enough to be sure that I had no gun he must have decided so much trouble was superfluous. He had only one gun, it was evident—the gunners kept sweeping it back and forth to cover from about the bridge to the engine-room as they drew nearer—and presently I saw men, armed with short rifles, coming up through both fore and after hatches. Far from exhibiting any signs of belligerency, I still kept three or four of my ’flannelled fools’ mildly panicking. Or, rather, I ordered them to panic mildly. As a matter of fact, they did it rather violently—a good deal more like movie rough stuff than the real thing.
“Little difference it made to Fritz, though, who seemed to take it quite as a matter of course that the British yachtsman should show his terror like a Wild West film drama heroine. On he stood, and when he came within hailing distance, a burly ruffian on the bridge—doubtless the skipper—shouted
something in guttural German-English which I never quite made out, but which was probably some kind of warning or other. I don’t think I saw any of my crew exactly ‘Kamerading’, but I needn’t tell you that every man in sight was doing his best to register ‘troubled passivity’, or something like that. I had anticipated that I might not be in a position to signal his cue to R——, and so had arranged that he should keep watch from a cabin port, and to use his own judgment about the time of his ‘entrance.’ I was afraid to have him on deck all the time for fear the ‘che-ild’ might be subjected to too careful a scrutiny. R—— was just in flannels, understand, so there was nothing suspicious in his own appearance. He did both his play-acting and his real acting to perfection, neither overdoing nor underdoing one or the other.
“The U-boat was close alongside, rapidly easing down under reversed propellers, before R—— appeared, just as natural an anguished father with a child as you could possibly ask for. Two or three of the Huns covered him with their carbines as he dashed out of the port door of the saloon—that one just behind you—but lowered the muzzles again when they saw it was apparently only a half-distracted parent trying to signal for the boat to come back for him and his babe. I have no doubt that there were some very sarcastic remarks passed on that U-boat at this juncture about the courage of the English male. If there were, the next act of
the coolest and bravest boy I ever knew literally forced the words down their throats.