Chapter III: Friend or Foe?

Captain Bill of the Z3 was out on patrol. His vessel was running submerged. The air within, they had but recently dived, was new and sweet, and that raw cold which eats into submerged submarines had not begun to take the joy out of life. It was the third day out; the time, five o'clock in the afternoon. The outer world, however, did not penetrate into the submarine. Night or day, on the surface or submerged, only one time, a kind of motionless electric high noon existed within those concave walls of gleaming cream white enamel. Those of the crew not on watch were taking it easy. Like unto their officers, submarine sailors are an unusual lot. They are real sailors, or machinist sailors, boys for whose quality the Navy has a flattering, picturesque and quite unprintable adjective. A submarine man, mind you, works harder than perhaps any other man of his grade in the Navy, because the vessel in which he lives is nothing but a tremendously intricate machine. In one of the compartments the phonograph, the eternal, ubiquitous phonograph of the Navy, was bawling its raucous rags and mechano-nasal songs, and in the pauses between records one could just hear the low hum of the distant dynamos. A little group in blue dungarees held a conversation in a corner; a petty officer, blue cap tilted back on his head, was at work on a letter; the cook, whose genial art was customarily under an interdict while the vessel was running submerged, was reading an ancient paper from his own home town.

Captain Bill sat in a retired nook, if a submarine can possibly be said to have a retired nook, with a chart spread open on his knees. The night before he had picked up a wireless message saying that a German had been seen at sundown in a certain spot on the edge of his patrol. So Captain Bill had planned to run submerged to the spot in question, and then pop up suddenly in the hope of potting the Hun. Some fifteen minutes before sun down, therefore, the Z3 arrived at the place where the Fritz had been observed.

"I wish I knew just where the bird was," said an intent voice. "I'd drop a can right on his neck."

These sentiments were not those of anybody aboard the Z3. An American destroyer had also come to the spot looking for the German, and the gentle thought recorded above was that of her captain. It was just sun down, a level train of splendour burned on the ruffled waters to the west; a light, cheerful breeze was blowing. The destroyer, ready for anything, was hurrying along at a smart clip.

"This is the place all right, all right," said the navigator of the destroyer. "Come to think of it, that chap's been reported from here twice."

Keen eyes swept the shining uneasy plain.

Meanwhile, some seventy feet below, the Z3 manoeuvred, killing time. The phonograph had been hushed, and every man was ready at his post. The prospect of a go with the enemy had brought with it a keen thrill of anticipation. Now a submarine crew is a well trained machine. There are no shouted orders. If a submarine captain wants to send his boat under quickly, he simply touches the button of a Klaxon, the horn gives a demoniac yell throughout the ship, and each man does what he ought to do at once. Such a performance is called a "crash dive."

"I'd like to see him come up so near that we could ram him," said the captain, gazing almost directly into the sun. "Find out what she's making."

The engineer lieutenant stooped to a voice-tube that almost swallowed up his face, and yelled a question to the engine room. An answer came, quite unheard by the others.

"Twenty-four, sir," said the engineer lieutenant.

"Get her up to twenty-six," said the captain.

The engineer cried again through the voice tube. The wake of the vessel roared like a mill race, the white foam tumbling rosily in the setting sun.

Seventy feet below, Captain Bill was arranging the last little details with the second in command.

"In about five minutes we'll come up and take a look-see (stick up the periscope) and if we see the bird, and we're in a good position to send him a fish (torpedo) we'll let him have one. If there is something there, and we're not in a good position, we'll manoeuvre till we get into one, and then let him have it. If there isn't anything to be seen, we'll go under again and take another look-see in half an hour. Reilly has his instructions." Reilly was chief of the torpedo room.

"Something round here must have got it in the neck recently," said the destroyer captain, breaking a silence which had hung over the bridge. "Did not you think that wreckage a couple of miles back looked pretty fresh? Wonder if the boy we're after had anything to do with it. Keep an eye on that sun streak."

An order was given in the Z3. It was followed instantly by a kind of commotion, sailors opened valves, compressed air ran down pipes, the ratchets of the wheel clattered noisily. On the moon-faced depth gauge with its shining brazen rim, the recording arrow fled swiftly, counter clockwise, from seventy to twenty to fifteen feet.... Captain Bill stood crouching at the periscope, and when it broke the surface, a greenish light poured down it and focussed in his eyes. He gazed keenly for a few seconds, and then reached for the horizontal wheel which turns the periscope round the horizon. He turned ... gazed, jumped back, and pushed the button for a crash dive.

"She was almost on top of me," he explained afterwards. "Coming like H--l. I had to choose between being rammed or depth bombed."

There was another swift commotion, another opening and closing of valves, and the arrow on the depth gauge leaped forward. Captain Bill was sending her down as far as he could as fast as he dared. Fifty feet, seventy feet, ... ninety feet. Hoping to throw the destroyer off, the Z3 doubled on her track. A hundred feet.

Crash! Depth charge number one.

According to Captain Bill, who is good at similes, it was as if a giant, wading along through the sea, had given the boat a vast and violent kick, and then leaning down had shaken it as a terrier shakes a rat. The Z3 rocked, lay on her side, and fell through the depths. A number of lights went out. Men picked themselves out of corners, one with the blood streaming down his face from a bad gash over his eye. Many of them told later of "seeing stars" when the vibration of the depth charge travelled through the hull and their own bodies; some averred that "white light" seemed to shoot out of the Z3's walls. Each man stood at his post waiting for the next charge.

Crash! A second depth charge. To every one's relief, it was less violent than the first. A few more lights went out. Meanwhile the Z3 continued to sink and was rapidly nearing the danger point. Having escaped the first two depth charges, Captain Bill hastened to bring the boat up to a higher level. Then to make things cheerful, it was discovered that the Z3 showed absolutely no inclination to obey her controls.

"At first," said Captain Bill, "I thought that the first depth bomb must have jammed all the external machinery, then I decided that our measures to rise had not yet overcome the impetus of our forced descent. Meanwhile the old hooker was heading for the bottom of the Irish Sea, though I'd blown out every bit of water in her tanks. Had to, fifty feet more, and she would have crushed in like an egg shell under the wheel of a touring car. But she kept on going down. The distance of the third, fourth and fifth depth bombs, however, put cheer in our hearts. Then, presently, she began to rise. The old girl came up like an elevator in a New York business block. I knew that the minute I came to the surface those destroyer brutes would try to fill me full of holes, so I had a man with a flag ready to jump on deck the minute we emerged. He was pretty damn spry about it, too. I took another look-see through the periscope, and saw that the destroyer lay about two miles away, and as I looked she came for me again. Meanwhile, my signal man was hauling himself out of the hatchway as if his legs were in boiling water."

"We've got her!" cried somebody aboard the destroyer in a deep American voice full of the exultation of battle. The lean rifles swung, lowered.... "Point one, lower." They were about to hear "Fire!" when the Stars and Stripes and sundry other signals burst from the deck of the misused Z3.

"Well what do you think of that?" said the gunner. "If it ain't one of our own gang. Say, we must have given it to 'em hard."

"We'll go over and see who it is," said the captain of the destroyer. "The signals are O.K., but it may be a dodge of the Huns. Ask 'em who they are."

In obedience to the order, a sailor on the destroyer's bridge wigwagged the message.

"Z3," answered one of the dungaree-clad figures on the submarine's deck. Captain Bill came up himself, as the destroyer drew alongside, to see his would-be assassin. There was no resentment in his heart. The adventure was only part of the day's work. The destroyer neared; her bow overlooked them. The two captains looked at each other. The dialogue was laconic.

"Hello, Bill," said the destroyer captain.

"All right?"

"Sure," answered Captain Bill, to one who had been his friend and class mate.

"Ta, ta, then," said he of the destroyer, and the lean vessel swept away in the twilight.

Captain Bill decided to stay on the surface for a while. Then he went below to look over things. The cook, standing over some unlovely slop which marked the end of a half dozen eggs broken by the concussion, was giving his opinion of the undue hastiness of destroyers. The cook was a child of Brooklyn, and could talk. The opinion was not flattering.

"Give it to 'em, cooko," said one of the crew, patting the orator affectionately on the shoulder. "We're with you."

And Captain Bill laughed.