Chapter XVIII: An Ocean Duel

"ACTION Stations!"

Billy Barcroft leapt from his bunk, labouring under the delusion that he had turned in only a few minutes before.

The deadlights screwed to the brass rims of the scuttles and the electric lights in the wardroom gave him the impression that it was still night, and it was not until he scrambled on deck that he was aware that grey dawn was breaking.

The wind had piped down considerably. The seas, still running high, no longer showed their teeth in the form of vicious, foam-crested breakers. Yet the decks of the "Audax" were at regular intervals ankle-deep in water, as the destroyer cut through the billows.

A cloud of steam, caused by showers of spray striking the hot, salt-encrusted funnel casings, drifted aft, temporarily obscuring the flight-sub's range of vision. As it cleared he could discern the greatcoated figures of Aubyn and his brother-officers on the bridge, and the indistinct forms of the men as they passed ammunition from the shell-hoists to the guns.

"Got her this time, sir," remarked a burly petty officer, the rotundity of whose figure was still further accentuated by the prodigious quantity of clothing he wore.

He pointed to a dark grey, indistinct object almost dead ahead, her outlines rendered almost invisible by the trailing clouds of smoke that poured from her funnels. Barcroft estimated her distance at two thousand yards. It was impossible to see whether she flew her ensign.

The vessel was a German ocean-going torpedo-boat, one of the nine which had stolen out of Zeebrugge. By sheer good luck she had gone northward over practically the extreme length of the North Sea without being sighted by the British patrols. An hour, or even half an hour earlier she might have slipped unobserved past the "Audax" without being seen by the latter. As it was, one of the British destroyer's look-out men "spotted" the strange craft in the deceptive half-light of the late autumnal dawn.

The "Audax" threw out her private signal by means of a flash lamp from the bridge. The stranger replied by an unintelligible jumble of long and short flashes.

"Either that is a Hun or her signalman is three sheets in the wind," declared Lieutenant-commander Aubyn. "Tell her to make her number, or we'll open fire. And wireless the 'Antipas'; give her our position, and say we are in touch with a suspicious craft."

Aubyn, though brave as a lion, was of a discreet and cautious nature. Dearly would he have liked to engage in an ocean duel with the hostile craft, for such, he now felt convinced she would prove to be. Both vessels were equally matched in the matter of armament, tonnage and number of complement: it was necessary only to again prove the moral and physical superiority of Jack Tar over Hans and Fritz, unless something in the nature of sheer ill-luck allowed the coveted prize to slip through his fingers. It was against the possibility that Aubyn had to guard. The fight had to end in only one way--annihilation to the foe. Hence the call to the destroyer "Antipas" to eliminate that element of chance.

"Let her have it!" shouted the skipper of the "Audax," just as Barcroft gained the bridge.

The four-inch gun on the fo'c'sle barked. It was still dark enough for the flash to cast a lurid glow upon the set faces of the British officers, who stood by with their glasses ready to bear upon the flying torpedo-boat the moment the acrid fumes from the burnt cordite drifted clear of the bridge.

The first shell struck the water close to the German vessel's port side, throwing up a column of water fifty feet in the air as it ricochetted and finally disappeared beneath the waves a mile or so ahead of the target.

Fritz replied promptly. He must have fired; directly the flash of the "Audax's" bow gun was observed. The projectile screeched above the heads of the men on the bridge, seemingly so close that Barcroft involuntarily ducked. It was quite a different sensation from being potted at by "Archibalds." Up aloft the roar of the seaplane's engines and the rush of the wind practically overwhelmed the crash of the bursting shrapnel. This weird moaning, as the four-inch shell flew by, was somewhat disconcerting as far as Billy was concerned, while to heighten the effect a rending crash accompanied the passing of the projectile.

"Our wireless top-hamper, dash it all!" exclaimed Aubyn, turning his head for a brief instant. "Starboard a little, quartermaster."

The slight alteration of helm enabled the midship quick-firer on the starboard side to bear upon the enemy. The latter, evidently with the idea of dazzling the British destroyer, had switched on a searchlight mounted on a raised platform aft. Probably the Huns might have derived advantage from the rays, that still held their own against the increasing dawn, had not a well-directed shell from the "Audax" fo'c'sle gun blown searchlight, platform, and half a dozen men to smithereens.

For the next ten minutes the adversaries were at it hammer and tongs. More than one shell got home on board the British craft, playing havoc with the after-funnel and deckfittings, while three badly wounded but still irrepressibly cheerful seamen were taken down below.

The German craft was being severely punished. The speed had fallen off considerably, while she was on fire fore and aft, although the for'ard conflagration was quickly got under by her crew. By this time she bore broad on the British destroyer's bow, the range having decreased to 1,500 yards.

Suddenly the Hun put her helm hard down. Either she saw that flight was no longer possible, or else her stern quick-firers had been knocked out, and she wished to bring her as yet unused guns to bear upon her foe.

As she turned Aubyn saw through his binoculars a gleaming object shoot over the German craft's side, quickly followed by another. Both disappeared in a smother of foam beneath the waves. "Hard a-port!" he shouted, knowing full well that at that moment a couple of powerful Schwarzkopft torpedoes, propelled by superheated compressed air, were heading towards the "Audax" at a rate of forty to fifty miles an hour.

Round swung the destroyer, listing under excessive helm until the deck on the starboard side dipped beneath the water. As she did so the two torpedoes could be distinctly seen, as, adjusted to their minimum depth to prevent them passing under the lightly draughted objective, they appeared betwixt the crests of the waves.

One passed fifty yards away; the other almost scraped the destroyer's quarter. Had the "Audax" not promptly answered to her helm both torpedoes would have "got home." Yet, not in the least perturbed, the British seamen continued their grim task of battering the Hun out of recognition. They worked almost in silence. Each man knew his particular job and did it. Time for shouting when the business was finished to their satisfaction.

Yet there was a regular pandemonium of noise. The hiss of escaping steam; the vicious thuds of the waves as the "Audax," at twenty eight point something knots, tore through the water under the action of engines of 14,000 horse-power; the rapid barking of the quick-firers; the sharp clang of the breech-blocks and the clatter of the ejected shell-cases upon the slippery decks--all combined to bear testimony to the stress and strain of a destroyer action. The "Audax" was the latest embodiment of naval science in that class of boat, yet without the intrepid energies of the men behind the guns, aided by the strenuous efforts of their mess-mates in the engine-room stokehold, that science would be of little avail in gaining the victory. Man-power still counts as much as it ever did, provided an efficient fighting machine is at their disposal. British Hearts of Oak are much the same as in Nelson's day--and yet the average pay of the Lower Deck ratings is about three shillings a day with no eight-hour shifts, risking life and limb for a wage at which a navvy would sneer.

And why? It is the call of the sea--a call that appeals to Britons more than to any other nation under the sun. In the piping times of peace the Navy offers unrivalled facilities for poor men to travel and see the world, it responds to their love of adventure. In wartime it calls for hard and often unappreciated work with the chance of a glorious scrap thrown in; and right loyally the Navy answers to the call to maintain the freedom of the seas and to guard our shores against the King's enemies.

By the time that the opposing vessels had steadied on their respective helms the "Audax" was steaming obliquely on her foe's broadside, sufficiently to enable three of her four guns to bear.

The Hun's fire was now slackening, and in spite of the shortness of the range, decidedly erratic. Her hull was perforated in several places, her funnels were riddled to such an extent that it seemed remarkable that they had not already collapsed. Her masts had vanished, also a portion of her bridge, while her deck was littered with smoking debris.

"Cease fire!" ordered Lieutenant-commander Aubyn as the German no longer replied to her severe punishment. What was more, her Black Cross ensign, which she had hoisted after the commencement of the engagement, was no longer visible.

Aubyn's chivalrous instincts were ill-repaid, for a couple of shells screeched through the air from the vessel which he thought had surrendered. One went wide; the other penetrated the ward-room of the "Audax," fortunately without exploding. Simultaneously a German bluejacket held aloft the tattered Black Cross emblem of unholy kultur.

In an instant the British tars reopened fire; while to make matters worse for the Huns, the "Antipas," racing up under forced draught, let fly a salvo from the three guns that could be brought to bear ahead. That settled the business. The hostile craft, literally battered out of recognition, began to founder.

"Cease fire!" Aubyn ordered for the second time within two minutes. Then, "Out boats."

It was an easy matter to order the boats away, but a most difficult task to carry the instructions into effect. The gig had been completely pulverised, while the other boats were in a more or less unseaworthy condition.

"Look alive, lads!" exclaimed a petty officer of the carpenters' crew. "T'other blokes'll be there first if we don't look out."

Hastily the holes in the bottom strakes of that particular boat were plugged, and, quickly manned, the leaky craft pushed off, the men urged by her coxswain to "pull like blazes an' get them chaps out o' the bloomin' ditch."

By this time the German torpedo-boat had vanished beneath the waves, leaving a rapidly-dispersing cloud of smoke and steam to mark the spot where she had disappeared and the heads of about twenty swimmers--the survivors of her complement.

In twos and threes the war-scarred and nerve-shattered Huns were hauled into safety, for other help from both destroyers was now upon the scene, and deeply laden the boats returned to their respective parents.

Suddenly Barcroft, who was watching the arrival of the sorry-looking crowd of German prisoners, gave vent to an uncontrolled shout of joyous surprise, for huddled in the stern sheets of the whaler were Flight-lieutenant-John Fuller and his comrade in peril, Bobby Kirkwood.

"There's precious little of report," said Fuller in reply to the skipper of the "Audax", when the two rescued officers were snugly berthed in the ward-room--warm in spite of the additional ventilation in the shape of a couple of neatly-drilled holes marking the place of entry and the point of departure of the ill-advised German "dud" shell. "We had to make a forced descent, got collared by a strafed U-boat just as we had effected repairs. The U-boat rattled herself to bits, so to speak, and had to be abandoned. I've had quite enough submarining, thank you. Give me a seaplane any day of the week, Sunday included. Then that torpedo-boat--V198's her designation--picked us up. They stowed us in the forehold and forgot to let us out when she went under. Suppose they had quite enough on their hands and clean forgot about us," he added generously, giving the kapitan-leutnant of the V198 the benefit of the doubt.

"Anyhow, there we were," continued the flight-lieutenant. "We knew the rotten packet was going, and although we yelled the racket on board prevented them hearing us, I suppose. Still, our luck was in, for a shell burst in her fo'c'sle, ripping up the deck and bursting the cable-tier bulkhead. It was pretty thick with the smoke, but we groped for'ard----"

"You hauled me for'ard, you mean," interrupted the A.P.

"Shut up!" said Fuller reprovingly. "Well, by standing on the edge of the manger we managed to haul ourselves on to the mess-deck. There we stuck till the firing ceased, and the boat's stern was well under water. Then--it was quite time for us to go, and we dived overboard. The rest you know."

"And what might you be doing on board, old bird?" asked Kirkwood addressing the overjoyed Billy.

"Passenger for the 'Hippodrome,'" replied the flight-sub.

"And it strikes me very forcibly," added Aubyn, "that at this rate I'll find all the 'Hippodrome's' birds on board this hooker. The trouble now is: how can I deliver the goods? We'll have to ask permission to quit station and return for repairs and overhaul. Another three weeks in dockyard hands, I suppose, and the fun only just beginning. Just my luck."

The skipper went on deck. There was much to be done. Although the "butcher's bill" was light, and the destroyer had sustained no serious damage to her hull--thanks to the defective German shells--the loss of the tophamper was considerable. In her present state she was unable to carry out her duties as an efficient patrol boat. With her wireless out of action she was impotent to perform the vital function of communicating with her invisible consorts. For centuries the British Navy had done very well without the aid of wireless telegraphy, but, like many other things, Marconi's discovery had come to stay. Its use enabled fewer vessels to effectually do the work that hitherto required more to perform, owing to the necessity of keeping within visible signalling distance; and a destroyer without wireless was a "dead end," in modern naval warfare.

But Lieutenant-commander Aubyn was not a man who would willingly miss the opportunity of doing his friends a good turn, provided the exigencies of the Service permitted.

Before parting company he signalled the "Antipas," which was still standing by the injured destroyer, with the result that a boat put off from the latter and came alongside.

"Look alive, you fellows!" shouted Aubyn down the ward-room companion. "If you want to get on board the 'Hippodrome' within the next few hours now's your chance. Tressidar, of the 'Antipas,' will give you a passage. That's all right: stick to that gear till you find the old 'Hippo.' I've had to borrow a kit myself before to-day."