buoy to mark the spot for “future reference,” the captain saw her headed off on the course she was to hold till daybreak, and then took me down to the Chart House for a bowl of ship’s cocoa before turning in. It was some question I asked about the practice of placing buoys over possible U-boat graveyards, to make it easy to resume investigations if desired, that started him on a train of anti-submarine reminiscence that led back to one of the smartest achievements of its kind in the whole course of the sea war.
“There are times,” he said, leaning back on the narrow couch that served as his “sea-bed,” and bracing with outstretched legs against the twisting roll, “that a Fritz will do things that would lead a superficial observer to think that he had a sense of humour. Of course, we know that he hasn’t anything of the kind (any more than he has honour, sportsmanship, decency, or any other of the attributes of a normal civilised human being). But the illusion is there just the same, especially when he tries on such little stunts as the one he incubated a couple of months ago in connection with a buoy I dropped to mark the spot where there was a chance that my depth-charges might have sent him to the bottom.
“It was just about such an ‘indeterminate’ sort of a strafe as the one we’ve just had—no chance for gun-fire, not much to go by for planting depth-charges, and, in the end, nothing definite to indicate
that any good has been done. So, in case it was decided that my report was of a nature to justify further looking into, I left a securely moored buoy to furnish a guide as to where to begin, quite as we have to-night. Well, it chanced that the S.N.O. at Base reckoned that there was just enough of a hope to warrant following up. Indeed, you may be sure there isn’t much that isn’t followed up these days, now that we’ve got our whole comprehensive plan into operation and adequate craft to support it with. So he sent out quite a little fleet of us—craft fitted to do all the various little odds and ends of things that help to make sure one way or the other what has really happened to Fritz. Luckily, Flash was able to return with them. If she had not—if someone who had not seen the lay of things after the strafe the night before had not been along to ‘draw comparisons’—Fritz’s little joke might have turned out a good deal more pointed than it did.
“We picked up the buoy without any difficulty, as the day was fine and the sea fairly smooth—just the weather one wanted for that kind of work. While we were still a mile or more distant, the lookout reported a broad patch of oil spreading out from the buoy for several hundred yards on all sides. This became visible from the bridge presently, and at almost the same time my glass showed fragments of what appeared to be wreckage floating both in and beyond the ‘sleek’ of oil. Now if there had
been any evidence whatever of either oil or wreckage the night before I should not have failed to hail this morning’s exhibit with a glad whoop and nose right in to investigate. But as, when I gave up the fight, I had dropped that buoy into an extremely clean patch of water—even after the stirring my depth-charges had given it—the plenitude of flotsam did not fail to arouse a certain amount of suspicion.
“Ordering the sloops and trawlers to stand-off-and-on at a safe distance, I went with the Flash to have a look at a number of fragments that were floating a couple of cables’ lengths away from the buoy. A piece of box—evidently a preserved fruit or condensed milk case—with German letters stencilled across one end was undoubtedly of enemy origin, as was also a biscuit tin with patches of its gaudy paper still adhering to it. I did not like the careful way the cover of the latter had been put on, however, and, besides, tins and cases are quite the sort of thing any submarine throws over just as fast as it is through with them. It was some real wreckage I was looking for, and this it presently appeared that I had found when the bow wave threw aside a deeply floating fragment of what—even before we picked it up—I recognised as newly split teak. Closer inspection revealed the fact that it was newly split all right, but also the fact that an axe or hatchet had had a good deal to do with the splitting. What had probably been a part of a
bunk or locker had apparently been prised off with a bar and then chopped up into jagged strips. Attempts to obliterate the marks of bar and axe by pounding them against some rough metal surface had been too hasty and crude to effect their purpose.
“‘That settles it,’ I said to myself. ‘Fritz is trying to play a little joke on us by making us think he is lying blown-up on the bottom, while, in fact, he is probably lying off somewhere waiting to slip a slug into one of the most likely looking of the salvage ships. Now that we’ve twigged the game, however, we’ll have to do what we can to defeat it.’ As senior officer, I ordered the three destroyers present to start screening in widening circles, while—on the off-chance that there really was a wreck on the bottom—a pair of trawlers were sent to drag about the bottom under the messy patch with an ‘explosive sweep.’
“My diagnosis was quite correct as far as it went, but it did not go quite far enough; still—by the special intervention of the sweet little cherubim who sits up aloft to keep watch o’er the life of poor Jack—my plan of operation was quite as sound as if I had all the facts of the case spread out before me. Had the U-boat really been lurking round waiting for a pot at some of the ships trying to save his supposed remains—something that we never gathered any definite evidence on—our screening tactics would probably have prevented his success;