“Now that chap took a real sporting chance, and got his reward for it—both ways. I mean to say, that he sunk the ship he went after all right—which was his reward one way; and that we then sunk him—which was his reward the other way. There was a funny coincidence in connection with that little episode which might amuse you. We were——”
He paused for a moment while he spelled out for himself the “Visual” which one of the escorting destroyers was flashing to the convoy leader, but presently, with a smile of pleased reminiscence, took up the thread of his yarn. This is the story that young Sub-Lieutenant P——, R.N.R., told me the while we leaned on the lee rail of the bridge and watched the passing of those miles-long lines of packed troopers as, silently sure of purpose, superbly contemptuous of danger, they steamed steadily on to deliver their cargoes of human freight one step further towards the fulfilment of its destiny.
“It was Christmas Day, as I told you,” he said, bracing comfortable against the roll, “and a cold, blustering, windy day it was. Several days previously we had picked up a small slow convoy off a West African port, and were escorting it to a port on the West Coast of England. The escort consisted only of the Whack and the Smack, the skipper of the latter, as the senior officer, being in command. None of the ships—they were mostly slow
freighters—had had much convoy experience to speak of at the time, and we were having our hands full all the way keeping them in any kind of formation. They seemed to be getting worse rather than better in this respect as we got into the waters where U-boat attacks might be expected, but this may have been largely due to the weather, which was—well, about the usual mid-winter brand in those latitudes. In fact, we were just becoming hopeful that the rising wind and sea, both were about ‘Force 6,’ might make it impossible for submarines to operate during the day or so that still must elapse before reaching port, when trouble began.
“All the morning the Plato, which had been a bad straggler throughout, had been falling astern, and finally the Smack ordered Whack back to prod her on and do what could be done in the way of screening her. She still continued to lose distance, however, so that, at noon, we were nearly out of sight of the main convoy, of which little more than smoke and topmasts could be seen on the northern horizon.
“At that hour the Smack, doubtless because he had received some report of the presence of U-boats in his vicinity, ordered us to rejoin the convoy. We left an armed trawler to do what it could for the loitering Plato, and started off at the best rate the weather would allow to make up the distance lost. It was at this juncture that the
amusing little coincidence I mentioned a while ago occurred.
“A patrol-boat, of course, does not carry a padre, any more than it does a number of the other comforts and luxuries provided in cruisers and battleships, and for that reason we hadn’t been able to do very much in the way of a Christmas service. Several of the ship’s company were somewhat religiously inclined, however, and these, in lieu of anything better, had asked for and received permission to hold a bit of a song service, in case there was opportunity for it, during the day. As the morning had been a rather full one, no suitable interval offered until their rather poor apology for a Christmas dinner was out of the way, and we were headed back to join the convoy. Then they went to it with a will, and for the next hour or more fragments of Yuletide songs came drifting back to my cabin to mingle with a number of other things conspiring to disturb the forty winks I was trying to snatch while the going was good. After a while, it appears, having run through their repertoire of Christmas songs, they started in on Easter ones, ‘Bein’ that they was mo’ or less on the same subject,’ as one of them explained to me later. They had just boomed the last line of a chorus which concluded with ‘We shall seek our risen Lord,’ when a signal was received stating that a periscope had been sighted by some ship of the convoy, and, sure enough, off they had to go to
seek—well, I wouldn’t take the Hun quite so near his own valuation of himself to put it as the song does, but all the same that quick new kick of the screws told me as plain as any words, even before I read the signal, that the old Whack was jumping away to seek something that had risen.
“The convoy was dead ahead of us at a distance of about seven miles when I reached the bridge, and, the visibility being unusually good for that time of year, I could see all of the ships distinctly, as they steamed in two columns of three abreast. I was even able to recognise the Amperi in the centre of the leading line. We were just comforting each other with the assurance that it was getting too rough for a U-boat to run a torpedo with any chance of finding its mark, when a huge spout of water jumped skyward right in the middle of the convoy. When it subsided, the Amperi, with a heavy list to port, could be seen heading westward, evidently with her engines and steering gear disabled, while the rest of the convoy, smoke rolling from their funnels, were ‘starring’ on northerly courses.