"And what might she represent, sir?" I asked, my mind still engrossed with the intricate strategy of the "battle" into which we were rushing at twenty knots an hour.
The Admiral had turned to read a second signal—this one from the Flagship—after which he was busy giving some orders on his own account. My very natural query would have remained unanswered had it not been overheard by the Commander, who had just come up from below.
"Officially," he said with a laugh, "she probably represents the Kaiser, or Von Tirpitz, or whoever stands sponsor for the Huns' 'ruthless' submarine war. That signal refers to a U-boat, not to any of the craft playing in our little game." He paused for a moment as a detonation of terrific force rumbled distantly, and a shock like that of a blow from a mighty wave shook the ship from bow to stern, and then resumed with a grim smile: "But if that charge came anywhere near her, by this time she probably represents—well, a tired lily folding up and going to sleep for the night would probably be about as near it as anything in Nature."
Eight or ten times, with short intervals between, those thunderous under-sea detonations—each followed by its own shuddering jar—came over and through the water to us. Whitish perpendicular bars, dimly guessed in the mist, revealed what might have been high-tossed foam-geysers four or five miles away, but it was almost inconceivable that explosions at that distance could reach us with such staggering force. Indeed, I have since talked with officers from a number of different squadrons—seasoned veterans of many big gun battles, all of them—who, experiencing the shocks from 'tween decks, felt certain that their own ships had been mined or torpedoed.
While the muffled booms of the depth-charges were still sounding we saw one of the "enemy" ships—apparently a battleship of the "Queen Elizabeth" class—which had been manœuvring for a position from which she could deliver an effective "broadside" at us, suddenly alter course eight points to port and head directly away at right angles to our extended line. As the raking this would have exposed her to was about the last thing in the world she would have risked had she been still playing the "make believe" battle, it hardly needed the far-borne and faint but still unmistakable shriek of a syren to tell us there was another game afoot. Presently she altered back to her original course, and all we ever heard of what happened was a signal, received shortly afterwards, saying that the Valiant had attempted to ram the periscope of a hostile submarine.
From first to last this little by-play had taken but a very few minutes, and, absorbed in the drama being played out on the fringes of the mist curtain, I quite neglected to take account of what was going on in our immediate vicinity. When I looked again the disposition of the units of the Grand Fleet—both battleships and screening destroyers—had completely altered. The battle formation had melted as by magic into one which offered the maximum of protection against submarine attack. Shortly we went down to lunch, where the only allusion I recall being made to the episode was something Admiral Sturdee said about how discouraging it must have been to the U-boat skipper to bob up right in the middle of the Grand Fleet, and then not have an opportunity to fire a single torpedo. In the afternoon we crept upon the "skeleton" fleet of the "enemy" in the mist and gave it the trouncing the U-boats were responsible for our failing to complete in the morning. The next day the Grand Fleet was lying quietly at its anchorage.
FOOTNOTES:
[B] The reference is to the ships of the ——th or American Battle Squadron, which went to sea with the Grand Fleet for the first time on this occasion.