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O de women an' de chilen dey sank in de sea, Roun' dat cole iceberg." Before he had finished a bugle blew in the distance. Everybody scattered. Fuselli and Bill Grey went silently back to their barracks. "It must be an awful thing to drown in the sea," said Grey as he rolled himself in his blankets. "If one of those bastard U-boats..."
It was an opening that would have admitted a half-dozen U-boats at one and the same time, roughly cylindrical in contour and dark as the pit of perdition. As I gave the command which sent the U-33 slowly ahead, I could not but feel a certain uncanny presentiment of evil. Where were we going? What lay at the end of this great sewer?
The American was naturally curious, and in reply to his questions the Briton went on to say that from certain intelligence quarters word had come that the trend of German U-boats back to their bases which had been noted for a week or so contained a grim meaning.
Whatever it is, they are dashing in and out over there on their job of convoying merchant ships and hunting U-boats. They expect to get their bumps, and they do; but so long as they get an even break they are not kicking. The chart-house gang on the 343 say that they are satisfied they get an even break all right.
Another of the lost steamship's boats was found, and in it there was another fragment of the torpedo. This fragment bore the mark of the German navy, telling just when the torpedo was made and to which of the U-boats it had been issued. With this bit of damning evidence in his bag a Dutch naval expert was sent to Berlin to get to the bottom of the crime and to demand justice.
Wondering, because more than 90 per cent of U-boat sinkings are of ships of less than 12 knots' speed; which means that these rusty old junk heaps, wheezing along at maybe 9 or 10, but more likely at 7 or 8 knots, furnish most of the sinkings. They surely must be having great old times getting by the U-boats, and their captains and crews must surely have a view-point of their own!
The world was electrified next morning by the news of a great battle between the Allied High Seas Fleet and the German submarine flotilla, in which the Germans, outnumbered and outgeneraled, were beaten off with the loss of several giant U-boats.
That was the firm belief in London; she would then, in a few years, have not 100, but 1,000, U-boats, and then England would be lost. Then England was also fighting for her own existence, and her will was iron. She knew the task would be a hard one, but it would not crush her. In London they cite again the example of the wars of Napoleon, and conclude with: "What man has done man can do again."
But two can play most games, and when the British Navy made it increasingly difficult for U-boats to operate in the waters near the British Isles, the German Foreign Office and the German Admiralty began to entertain divergent opinions concerning the advisability of pushing the submarine campaign to a point which would drag the United States into the war.
Of the scores of devices the fleet used to beat the U-boats on that run across, a man can say nothing here. But to get back: our naval officer stuck to his bridge until one most beautiful morning he took his ship into a most beautiful port on a most beautiful shore. I never before heard anybody so describe that same port, but the general verdict says it did look pretty good.
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