It was about ten-thirty in the forenoon of the fifth of last November that I saw a torpedo heading straight for us at a distance of not over three hundred feet. It was painted a bright red, and therefore, in the clear water, even more conspicuous than the wake from its propellers and air exhaust. It struck the ship fairly amidships on the starboard side, and my first order was to lower away the boats to port. I was not even thrown from my feet by the shock, nor was there any sharp explosion audible. Had I not seen the torpedo, I should for the moment have been in some doubt as to what had actually happened.
My men were already standing by their gun, and the instant the submarine put up its "eye" we took its range and opened fire. At least one shell cracked right over the periscope, causing it to disappear at once, and we did not see it again until salt water had stopped the mouth of our little rapid-firer.
The Tara, her engines still running, continued for some distance on a perfectly even keel, the boats meanwhile being safely launched with the surviving members of the crew. Eleven had been killed by the explosion. Then, all of a sudden, she began settling aft, and finally went down like a sounding-lead, throwing her bows high in the air. My gun crew and I were caught beneath the for'ard awning, and owed our lives to the fact that we had no lifebelts on, and were therefore able to dive and clamber clear.
The submarine—the U35—rose to the surface and came nosing into the wreckage before we had all been picked up by our boats, but the fellows on the deck of it contented themselves with covering us with their revolvers—a precautionary measure, doubtless—and not interfering with the work of rescue. I asked the commander of the submarine if we might be allowed to proceed to X——, an Egyptian port at which a small British force was stationed, and which we should have had no trouble in making in a few hours. He replied, in excellent English, that this would be impossible, as it was necessary for him to deliver us to the Turks as prisoners.
The submarine then took our three boats in tow, and headed for Port Sulieman, where we were landed at about three in the afternoon. I made a part of the passage on the deck of the U boat, and had some little chat with its commander. He admitted that we had nearly put his "eye" out with one of our shells. He said that he had been often to England before the war, and even confessed to a visit to the Isle of Wight. He could not, of course, be blamed for wanting to prevent our getting back to a British port to report the probable existence of a German submarine base on the Cyrenaican coast; the callousness of his action only transpired later, when it became evident that neither the Turks nor the Arabs were able to house or feed us.
II—HELD PRISONERS BY THE ARABS
The Turkish officers at Port Sulieman were very courteous, especially Nouri Pasha, who is a brother of Enver Pasha, but palpably perturbed at the prospect of caring for us. They were short of food themselves apparently, and that region, like all the rest of Eastern Tripolitana, is an almost absolute desert. Since their German masters had decreed the thing, however, there was nothing more to be said, and so, in the true Oriental fashion of following the line of least resistance, they passed us on to the Senussi. Since the Senussi had no one else to pass us along to, they had to shoulder the burden themselves and trudge on with it as best they might.
The ship's cook, who had died from his wounds in one of the boats, we buried soon after landing, breaking an oar to form a rude cross above his grave. That night, still in our wet garments, we spent huddled together upon some rocks by the shore. The next morning we were given a small quantity of rice, which we had to cook as best we could in some beef tins and eat with our fingers. There was less than a handful of the tasteless, unsalted mixture to each man. We were terribly cold, hungry, and thirsty; indeed, for the next four months and a half, there was hardly an hour in which we were not suffering a good deal from one, and usually all three, of these causes.
After a couple of days we were moved back from the coast to a primitive village where the people and animals alike lived in dug-outs in the rocks. A "stable" which had been occupied by goats, donkeys, and pigs was cleared for us, and there, living in indescribable filth, we were kept for four days. We had been forced to carry with us on a stretcher, a quartermaster of the Tara who had sustained a double fracture of one of his legs. At this juncture, between filth and vermin, infection set in, and the only chance of saving his life appeared to be amputation. This—I will spare you the harrowing details—was finally accomplished with no other instruments than a pair of old scissors and a drop of whisky—our last—to steady the poor fellow's nerves. Of course, he died.