But, save our foes, speak up, who knows
The British Submarine?
PATROL
His Majesty’s Submarine ‘123’ lay alongside her depot ship Parentis, her lean, gray superstructure showing up ghostly white against the dark outline of the larger vessel.
The night was warm, though dark and overcast, and the light south-easterly breeze merely ruffled the waters of the harbour, causing a lap-lapping noise between the two vessels, the only sound that broke the intense silence of the summer night.
As the great fleet, anchored in the harbour, swung to the turn of the tide, ‘123’ exposed her broadside, a long low hull bulging outwards at the centre, and supporting the superstructure, on the fore part of which the gun was mounted. Amidships rose the conning-tower and the little bridge, the standard and the two periscopes, pointing up to Heaven like the fingers of an avenging angel.
The after deck was bare save for the dark rings of the hatches, leading down to her steel internals.
The anchored fleet showed up in dark blurs and splotches, as far as the eye could see. Line after line of battleships, battle cruisers, destroyers and torpedo boats, backed up by a host of merchant ships of every type and size.
A light gleamed suddenly from the submarine, faded away, flashed out, and disappeared. Figures moved quietly along the deck, and the sound of subdued voices rose, broken now and then by the clump of a wet rope’s end or the clang of a closing deck locker.
Then the conning-tower hatch opened and Lieut. Commander John Raymond, R.N., in command of H.M. Submarine ‘123,’ rose to view, heaving himself through the narrow opening by painful sections.