But fate, as you will guess, had no intention of giving up the game so easily, and at 6.45 P.M. our wire broke at the ‘nip.’ The ‘I-told-you-so’s’ were in evidence.
We had now no other wire strong enough to tow by, and so, to the disappointment of us all, another cruiser was detailed to take on the job. Disappointing as it was to us, it must have been far more than that to the destroyer. For thirty-six hours she had lain helpless, with alternate fears of being captured or of breaking up, and that after a sudden collision which would have been sufficient to shake the nerves of many. Four times had she hauled in towing wires, and on each occasion they had parted soon afterwards. Pitched and tossed about in the North Sea swell, tired and wet and with a good deal of their kit gone under, I should think that many of her crew were in that state of mind which is called ‘fed up.’ And now she had to start the game again.
But, profiting by our experience of how great the strain was under the particular conditions, the new cruiser took special precautions, the which I will not detail lest the Bosches benefit. By very clever seamanship and after over three hours’ hard work, mostly in the dark, the destroyer was again in tow, this time more securely; and so we started again on our journey home.
There is not really much more worth relating, for the wind, sea, a couple of snowstorms, our anxious lookout at daylight next morning to see if any enemy were about, and our precautions against submarine attack—these are everyday war events, and make dull reading.
Suffice it to say that our command of the sea was a sufficiently real factor to allow the cripple to be towed home unmolested a few hundred miles, and we came to our base as if no enemy fleet were within a thousand miles—who can accuse the Teuton of no sense of humour when he designated the water we steamed over the ‘German Ocean’?
So, comparatively tamely, concluded a trip which had at one time promised unusual excitement, but which anyhow gave us for four days some interest out of the ordinary, besides to some a fair measure of anxiety.
But wouldn’t Old Tirpitz be peevish if he knew of the chance he had missed?
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