“There was a bit of a disappointment when an armed trawler, which was evidently searching for survivors, passed within a mile without sighting us or hearing our shouts, but with the life-boat of one
of the sunk Norwegian steamers we had better luck. She came bowling along under sail about ten o’clock in the morning, and, on sighting the black silk handkerchief we hoisted at the end of a paddle-blade, eased off her sheet and stood over to pick us up. As there were only six men in her, we were not badly off for room, while the store of biscuit and potted stuff—to say nothing of smokes—they had managed to throw aboard before their ship sunk was more than enough for the two days that it took us to row and sail to Bergen.”
CHAPTER XIII
ROUNDING UP FRITZ
There are only two or three conditions under which a destroyer can hope to surprise a U-boat on the surface, and none of these is approximated at the end of a clear North Sea summer afternoon with the stalking craft trying to approach from a direction which silhouettes its leanly purposeful profile against the golden glimmer of the sunset clouds. This particular capsule of Kultur, rising with typical Hunnish effrontery for his evening constitutional in an especially well-watched area while it was yet broad daylight, still had the advantage of visibility sufficiently on his side to make the thing a good deal less risky than it looked. The skipper, doubtless coolly puffing his pipe as he lounged over the rail of the bridge and filled his lungs with fresh air, must have seen the masts and funnels of the speeding Flash for a good half hour before the latter’s look-out sang out that he had picked up the conning-tower of what looked to be a U-boat two points off the starboard bow; so that all that was needed was the change of course which followed that report to give Fritz fair warning that it was
time to hide his head for a while. Indeed, he must have been going down even as he was sighted, for it was the matter of but a very few seconds more before the Flash found herself tearing at upwards of a thousand yards a minute into an empty sea.
Under the circumstances, it is probable we gave that Fritz a fairly good run for his money in showering the spot where he had disappeared with what depth-charges we could spare, and then, like a fox-terrier after a rat, standing by and “watching the hole.” Unluckily, we had used a good part of our stock of “cans” the day before, when a rather more promising opportunity for attack had offered itself, while as for “watching the hole,” this particular patch of the North Sea chanced to be one in which that way of playing the game was fraught with special difficulties because it was sufficiently shallow for a submarine to lie doggo on the bottom without danger of having its shell crushed in by the pressure of the water. This defeated the uncannily sure way of tracking the U-boat down by “listening,” and demanded another form of special treatment, which we were not, however, at the moment prepared to administer.
Slim as the chance was, the captain was reluctant to leave while any hope remained, and it was only a signal ordering the Flash to join in some other work that had turned up (a destroyer is subject to as many kinds of summons as a country doctor) that took him off in the end. Mooring a