Life at Zeebrugge was not lacking in excitement. Every time a U-boat returned there were demonstrations; every time a U-boat set out she departed in almost sullen silence. The men loathed their task—not on account of the craven nature of their work, but by reason of the peril it entailed. Dozens of Hun submarines had left Zeebrugge never to return. Of the manner of their loss, none on that side of the North Sea knew. They could only conjecture. The secret lay with the British Navy, and the very mystery that enshrouded the vanished unterseebooten added to the terror of the crews of those boats that had hitherto escaped destruction.
Occasionally, and it was a rare occurrence, German sea-going torpedo-boats would leave the harbour at sunset. Before dawn they would be back with riddled funnels and shell-swept decks. Fritz had learned that it was decidedly unhealthy to try conclusions with the Dover Patrol.
And the raids: rarely a day and night passed but sea-planes and aeroplanes, sometimes singly but more often in flights, soared over the pirates' lair. Unruffled by the lurid and discordant greetings of the German "antis", the airmen would hover over their objective, and then, to make doubly sure of their target, dive down to within two hundred feet of the ground.
Cheering was the sight to the captive Sub-lieutenant, but the experience was none the less nerve-racking. More than once heavy bombs dropped within fifty feet of Seton's cell. The massive masonry of the Mole trembled like an aspen leaf; the air was laden with pungent vapours that caused Alec to gasp for breath. At the spot where the heavy missile dropped a hole twenty feet in diameter had been made.
Seton had hoped that during one of these aerial visitations a portion of the wall of his cell might have been demolished, and that, during the confusion that followed the explosion, he might have been able to escape. But second thoughts "knocked his theory into a cocked hat". The concussion that would break down the granite wall would certainly "do him in". Even if it did not, and his senses were not temporarily stunned, his chances of getting away unnoticed were of the remotest nature.
Regularly, and as often as the rules set down by the Huns permitted, Seton wrote home, but no reply came. Reluctantly he was forced to come to the conclusion that the Germans were fooling him—the letters were never sent. This was the case, for, as in similar instances, Alec's name was never sent in as a prisoner of war. He was one of those reported "missing" whose fate remained a mystery to their friends, until, on rare occasions, the missing man was able to effect his escape and to return home, to the consternation and surprise of his relatives, who had long thought of him as dead.
It was during one of the raids that Alec witnessed a daring stunt on the part of a young R.A.F. pilot. All that morning the Huns had been loading mines on board three new mine-laying submarines, the work being performed under a camouflaged canvas screen. Either a Belgian had managed to send the information over to the British Admiralty, or else aerial observers had noticed a difference in their photographic views of the harbour during the last few days. In any case, the solitary airman knew of the operations in progress.
In the grey dawn the British machine swooped down from a bank of clouds. With his engine cut out, he dived steeply. Too late the German anti-aircraft guns opened their hymn of hate. At two hundred and fifty feet the pilot released his cargo of bombs. A miss was almost an impossibility.
With an appalling, deafening roar, the three U-boats disappeared, together with nearly two hundred Germans engaged in loading their dangerous cargoes. For a radius of a hundred yards the havoc was terrific. Far beyond that area the damage wrought was severe.
With the roar of the explosion still dinning in his ears, Alec saw the gallant airman disappear in a cloud of smoke mingled with far-flung debris. Hurled like a dried leaf in an autumnal gale the British biplane was seen to be turning over and over, in spite of the engines running all out, and the efforts of the pilot to keep his 'bus under control. Momentarily, through rents in the blast-torn cloud, Seton watched the man whose work had been accomplished, and whose efforts were now directed to save himself—if he could.