The other nightmare arose out of silence and imagination.
A boat had gone to bed on the bottom in a spot where
she might reasonably expect to be looked for, but
it was a convenient jumping-off, or up, place for
the work in hand. About the bad hour of 2.30 A.M.
the commander was waked by one of his men, who whispered
to him: “They’ve got the chains on
us, sir!” Whether it was pure nightmare, an hallucination
of long wakefulness, something relaxing and releasing
in that packed box of machinery, or the disgustful
reality, the commander could not tell, but it had
all the makings of panic in it. So the Lord and
long training put it into his head to reply!
“Have they? Well, we shan’t be coming
up till nine o’clock this morning. Well
see about it then. Turn out that light, please.”
He did not sleep, but the dreamer and the others
did, and when morning came and he gave the order to
rise, and she rose unhampered, and he saw the grey,
smeared seas from above once again, he said it was
a very refreshing sight.
Lastly, which is on all fours with the gamble of the
chase, a man was coming home rather bored after an
uneventful trip. It was necessary for him to
sit on the bottom for awhile, and there he played patience.
Of a sudden it struck him, as a vow and an omen, that
if he worked out the next game correctly he would
go up and strafe something. The cards fell all
in order. He went up at once and found himself
alongside a German, whom, as he had promised and prophesied
to himself, he destroyed. She was a mine-layer,
and needed only a jar to dissipate like a cracked
electric-light bulb. He was somewhat impressed
by the contrast between the single-handed game fifty
feet below, the ascent, the attack, the amazing result,
and when he descended again, his cards just as he
had left them.
The ships destroy us above
And ensnare us
beneath.
We arise, we lie down, and
we move
In the belly of
Death.
The ships have a thousand
eyes
To mark where
we come ...
And the mirth of a seaport
dies
When our blow
gets home.
SUBMARINES
II
I was honoured by a glimpse into this veiled life
in a boat which was merely practising between trips.
Submarines are like cats. They never tell “who
they were with last night,” and they sleep as
much as they can. If you board a submarine off
duty you generally see a perspective of fore-shortened
fattish men laid all along. The men say that except
at certain times it is rather an easy life, with relaxed
regulations about smoking, calculated to make a man
put on flesh. One requires well-padded nerves.
Many of the men do not appear on deck throughout the
whole trip. After all, why should they if they
don’t want to? They know that they are
responsible in their department for their comrades’
lives as their comrades are responsible for theirs.
What’s the use of flapping about? Better
lay in some magazines and cigarettes.
Copyrights
Sea Warfare from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
