I believe, the submarine that fought the Turkish cavalry
on the beach. And in addition to matters much
more marvellous than any I have hinted at, the reports
deal with repairs and shifts and contrivances carried
through in the face of dangers that read like the
last delirium of romance. One boat went down
the Straits and found herself rather canted over to
one side. A mine and chain had jammed under her
forward diving-plane. So far as I made out, she
shook it off by standing on her head and jerking backwards;
or it may have been, for the thing has occurred more
than once, she merely rose as much as she could, when
she could, and then “released it by hand,”
as the official phrase goes.
And who, a few months ago, could have invented, or
having invented, would have dared to print such a
nightmare as this: There was a boat in the North
Sea who ran into a net and was caught by the nose.
She rose, still entangled, meaning to cut the thing
away on the surface. But a Zeppelin in waiting
saw and bombed her, and she had to go down again at
once—but not too wildly or she would get
herself more wrapped up than ever. She went down,
and by slow working and weaving and wriggling, guided
only by guesses at the meaning of each scrape and
grind of the net on her blind forehead, at last she
drew clear. Then she sat on the bottom and thought.
The question was whether she should go back at once
and warn her confederates against the trap, or wait
till the destroyers which she knew the Zeppelin would
have signalled for, should come out to finish her
still entangled, as they would suppose, in the net?
It was a simple calculation of comparative speeds
and positions, and when it was worked out she decided
to try for the double event. Within a few minutes
of the time she had allowed for them, she heard the
twitter of four destroyers’ screws quartering
above her; rose; got her shot in; saw one destroyer
crumple; hung round till another took the wreck in
tow; said good-bye to the spare brace (she was at
the end of her supplies), and reached the rendezvous
in time to turn her friends.
And since we are dealing in nightmares, here are two
more—one genuine, the other, mercifully,
false. There was a boat not only at, but in
the mouth of a river—well home in German
territory. She was spotted, and went under, her
commander perfectly aware that there was not more
than five feet of water over her conning-tower, so
that even a torpedo-boat, let alone a destroyer, would
hit it if she came over. But nothing hit anything.
The search was conducted on scientific principles
while they sat on the silt and suffered. Then
the commander heard the rasp of a wire trawl sweeping
over his hull. It was not a nice sound, but there
happened to be a couple of gramophones aboard, and
he turned them both on to drown it. And in due
time that boat got home with everybody’s hair
of just the same colour as when they had started!
