He had been in two in the North Sea, he told me. "If you are on the surface, you fight with your guns," he said, "but, if you are under the surface, you go at it with torpedoes; there is not much chance with torpedoes, because you can only see the periscope and you have no idea which way the other fellow is going. Nothing happened in either fight I had. We both got off safely."
During this conversation both of us and four of the ship's officers had our glasses on the sea, watching for submarines. One of the ship's officers now announced a suspicious looking white wave on the port bow. It was suspicious because it moved, but it was a very tiny little wave, only about three feet long and the breadth of a carpenter's hand. No one would ever have suspected it without expert advice.
II—ON A SUBMARINE IN A ROUGH SEA
That, as I learned, is one of the greatest dangers of the submarine. Of course, we have all been told it many times, but when the thing is once experienced it is truly appreciated, and not until then. The approach of the submarine is more insidious than the taste for absinthe.
There is merely that little white wave only occasionally to be seen—the white water curling around the periscope—and with the sea running at all high there would be no white wave that could be distinguished from the white tops of the other waves. Then, if the submarine chooses to remain near the surface one can after a long time of very close study make out the periscope as a very small stick, like a piece of lath, poking up out of the water. But it only sticks up a little more than a foot when it is the most willing to be seen, while if, as in our case, it is not willing to be seen, the submarine, having located its prey, dives deeper and all trace of it is lost, the next thing being a torpedo coming from an entirely different point on the horizon.
Our officers were experts at watching for submarines, and though the little white wave made by the periscope disappeared, they caught the white wake of the torpedo coming toward the port quarter and sheered off to escape it. The torpedo passed harmlessly by our stern, but the adventure was not ended, for hardly a minute later we heard a shot from off the starboard quarter and, turning in that direction, saw that the submarine had come to the surface and was busily firing at us to bring us to.
We stopped without any foolish waste of time in argument. I asked if a boat would be sent to us, or if we would have to get our boat.
"They carry a small folding boat," said the officer to whom I had been talking, "but we will have to send our boat."
While we were getting our boat over the side, the submarine moved closer in, keeping her gun bearing on us all the time, most uncomfortably. The gun stood uncovered on the deck, just abaft the turret. It was thickly coated with grease to protect it when the vessel submerged. It is only the very latest type of submarines that have disappearing guns which go under cover when the vessel submerges and are fired from within the ship, which makes all the more surprising the speed with which a submarine can come to the surface, the men get out on deck, fire the gun, get in again and the vessel once more submerge.
III—IN THE SECRET CHAMBERS OF A SUBMARINE