In an hour or two the submarine landed a shot that seemed to have done serious damage. At least huge clouds of steam arose from the engine-room, furnishing external evidence that the engines or boilers had been disabled. The submarine commander did not know that this was a trick; that the vessel was fitted with a specially arranged pipe around the engine-room hatch which could emit these bursts of steam at a moment's notice, all for the purpose of making him believe that the vitals of the ship had been irreparably damaged. The stopping of the ship, the blowing off of the safety valve, and the appearance of the "panic party" immediately after this ostensible hit made the illusion complete. This "panic party" was particularly panicky; one of the lifeboats was let go with a run, one fall at a time, thus dumping its occupants into the sea. Ultimately, however, the struggling swimmers were picked up and the boat rowed away, taking up a position where a number of the Dunraven's guns could get a good shot at the submarine should the Germans follow their usual plan of inspecting the lifeboats before visiting the sinking merchantman.
So far everything was taking place according to programme; but presently the submarine reopened fire and scored a shot which gave the enemy all the advantages of the situation. I have described in some detail the stern of the ship—a variegated assortment of depth charges, shell, guns, and human beings. The danger of such an unavoidable concentration of armament and men was that a lucky shot might land in the midst of it. And this is precisely what now happened. Not only one, but three shells from the submarine one after the other struck this hidden mass of men and ammunition. The first one exploded a depth charge—300 pounds of high explosive—which blew one of the officers out of the after-control station where he lay concealed and landed him on the deck several yards distant. Here he remained a few moments unconscious; then his associates saw him, wounded as he was, creeping inch by inch back into his control position, fortunately out of sight of the Germans. The seaman who was stationed at the depth charges was also wounded by this shot, but, despite all efforts to remove him to a more comfortable place, he insisted on keeping at his post.
"'Ere I was put in charge of these things," he said, "and 'ere I stays."
Two more shells, one immediately after the other, now landed on the stern. Clouds of black smoke began to rise, and below tongues of flame presently appeared, licking their way in the direction of a large quantity of ammunition, cordite, and other high explosives. It was not decoy smoke and decoy flame this time. Captain Campbell, watching the whole proceeding from the bridge, perhaps felt something in the nature of a chill creeping up his spine when he realized that the after-part of the ship, where men, explosives, and guns lay concealed in close proximity, was on fire. Just at this moment he observed that the submarine was rapidly approaching; and in a few minutes it lay within 400 yards of his guns. Captain Campbell was just about to give the orders to open fire when the wind took up the dense smoke of the fire and wafted it between his ship and the submarine. This precipitated one of the crises which tested to the utmost the discipline of the mystery ship. The captain had two alternatives: he could fire at the submarine through the smoke, taking his chances of hitting an unseen and moving target, or he could wait until the enemy passed around the ship and came up on the other side, where there would be no smoke to interfere with his view. It was the part of wisdom to choose the latter course; but under existing conditions such a decision involved not only great nerve, but absolute confidence in his men. For all this time the fire at the stern was increasing in fierceness; in a brief period, Captain Campbell knew, a mass of ammunition and depth charges would explode, probably killing or frightfully wounding every one of the men who were stationed there. If he should wait until the U-boat made the tour of the ship and reached the side that was free of smoke the chances were that this explosion would take place before a gun could be fired. On the other hand, if he should fire through the smoke, there was little likelihood of hitting the submarine.
Those who are acquainted with the practical philosophy which directed operations in this war will readily foresee the choice which was now made. The business of mystery ships, as of all anti-submarine craft, was to sink the enemy. All other considerations amounted to nothing when this supreme object was involved. The lives of officers and men, precious as they were under ordinary circumstances, were to be immediately sacrificed if such a sacrifice would give an opportunity of destroying the submarine. It was therefore Captain Campbell's duty to wait for the under-water boat to sail slowly around his ship and appear in clear view on the starboard side, leaving his brave men at the stern exposed to the fire, every minute raging more fiercely, and to the likelihood of a terrific explosion. That he was able to make this decision, relying confidently upon the spirit of his crew and their loyal devotion to their leader, again illustrates the iron discipline which was maintained on the mystery ships. The first explosion had destroyed the voice tube by means of which Captain Campbell communicated with this gun crew. He therefore had to make his decision without keeping his men informed of the progress of events—information very helpful to men under such a strain; but he well knew that these men would understand his action and cheerfully accept their rôle in the game. Yet the agony of their position tested their self-control to the utmost. The deck on which they lay every moment became hotter; the leather of their shoes began to smoke, but they refused to budge—for to flee to a safer place meant revealing themselves to the submarine and thereby betraying their secret. They took the boxes of cordite shells in their arms and held them up as high as possible above the smouldering deck in the hope of preventing an explosion which seemed inevitable. Never did Christian martyrs, stretched upon a gridiron, suffer with greater heroism.
V
It was probably something of a relief when the expected explosion took place. The submarine had to go only 200 yards more to be under the fire of three guns at a range of 400 yards, but just as it was rounding the stern the German officers and men, standing on the deck, were greeted with a terrific roar. Suddenly a conglomeration of men, guns, and unexploded shells was hurled into the air. The German crew, of course, had believed that the vessel was a deserted hulk, and this sudden manifestation of life on board not only tremendously startled them, but threw them into a panic. The four-inch gun and its crew were blown high into the air, the gun landing forward on the well deck, and the crew in various places. One man fell into the water; he was picked up, not materially the worse for his experience, by the Dunraven's lifeboat, which, all this time, had been drifting in the neighbourhood. It is one of the miracles of this war that not one of the members of that crew was killed. The gashed and bleeding bodies of several were thrown back upon the deck; but there were none so seriously wounded that they did not recover. In the minds of these men, however, their own sufferings were not the most distressing consequences of the explosion; the really unfortunate fact was that the sudden appearance of men and guns in the air informed the Germans that they had to deal with one of the ships which they so greatly dreaded. The game, so far as the Dunraven was concerned, was apparently up. The submarine vanished under the water; and the Englishmen well knew that the next move would be the firing of the torpedo which could confidently be expected to end the Q-boat's career. Some of the crew who were not incapacitated got a hose and attempted to put out the fire, while others removed their wounded comrades to as comfortable quarters as could be found. Presently the wake of the torpedo could be seen approaching the ship; the explosion that followed was a terrible one. The concussion of the previous explosion had set off the "open-fire" buzzers at the gun positions—these buzzers being the usual signals for dropping the false work that concealed the guns and beginning the fight. The result was that, before the torpedo had apparently given the Dunraven its quietus, all the remaining guns were exposed with their crews. Captain Campbell now decided to fight to the death. He sent out a message notifying all destroyers and other anti-submarine craft, as well as all merchant ships, not to approach within thirty miles. A destroyer, should she appear, would force the German to keep under water, and thus prevent the Dunraven from getting a shot. Another merchant ship on the horizon might prove such a tempting bait to the submarine that it would abandon the Dunraven, now nearly done for—all on fire at one end as she was and also sinking from her torpedo wound—and so prevent any further combat. For the resourceful Captain Campbell had already formulated another final plan by which he might entice the submarine to rise within range of his guns. To carry out this plan, he wanted plenty of sea room and no interference; so he drew a circle in the water, with a radius of thirty miles, inclosing the space which was to serve as the "prize ring" for the impending contest.
His idea was to fall in with the German belief that the Dunraven had reached the end of her tether. A hastily organized second "panic party" jumped into a remaining lifeboat and a raft and rowed away from the sinking, burning ship. Here was visible evidence to the Germans that their enemies had finally abandoned the fight after nearly four hours of as frightful gruelling as any ship had ever received. But there were still two guns that were concealed and workable; there were, as already said, two torpedo tubes, one on each beam; and a handful of men were kept on board to man these. Meanwhile, Captain Campbell lay prone on the bridge, looking through a peephole for the appearance of the submarine, constantly talking to his men through the tubes, even joking them on their painful vigil.
"If you know a better 'ole," he would say, quoting Bairnsfather, "go to it!"
"Remember, lads," he would call at another time, "that the King has given this ship the V.C."