COFFIN OF STEEL.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 December 1915, Page 12 (Supplement)

COFFIN OF STEEL.

GERMAN U BOAT. WAITING FOR DEATH. LAST MINUTES IN A SUNKEN SUBMARINE. The following grim story is from the pen of the well-known French author, Jean Constant. We take it from the Daily Express, f»r which journal the article was translated. Do you imagine, Gottlieb, that I am so wanting in common sense that I never thought of that means of escape? As soon as ever I recovered from the shock and realised that the U3B was sinking, my very first thought was to press the button which released the safety lines. Oh, no, nothing came of it. Probably their d—d torpedo, in ramming into us, managed to put the apparatus out of gear. What's to be done? Why, nothing. All that there's left for us to do now,is to toss on this delicious champagne, which my cousin lileist sent me from Rheims—and commend our noble souls to God. Of course I know very well that, for Gottlieb von Lienthal and for Otto von Shirmeck, this slow asphyxiating death in a coffin of steel is not exactly the glorious end of which they dreamed. Never mind. We are giving our lives for our Kaiser and furthering the glory of Germany. I only ordered the manoeuvre to occupy the men's minds. • As soon as ever the truth dawns on them that it is no good, I will distribute alcohol among them—lots of alcohol. It would be absurd to give those brutes time to reflect; they would only disturb our last moments on earth by their futile regrets. In a few hours the accumulators will be played out—the lights will be extinguished, we shall be in the darkness —and night. TORPEDOED. Do be sensible, Gottlieb. We have been torpedoed off the Scilly Islands, there or somewhere about. Well, this very excellent map, published by the British Admiralty, gives a depth of about 200 feet to these waters. In ordinary times, even in spite of divers, and floating docks, we should be lost to a dead certainty. How do you think, then, that any one is going to 'trouble about us now? Who'll do it? Not the British Navy, I'll wager.

Just so. You are right there. God punish England! If it liftd not been for England's Navy, ours would have played a glorious role. Now tha't we are talking face to face, friend, I am going to confide something to you—something I never dared tell you before. You are just like a brother to me. But, with all the spying there is about, who can be sure —even of his own brother? Often a thoughtless word has been quite enough to ruin a career. Well, what I have to tell you is this —for them to give us that general order systematically to destroy everything that floats on the sea, friend or foe, from the tiny, inoffensive fishing smack.jip-'tß the great ocean liner, for them to give us orders to sink neutrals as well as enemies, makes me think that things are not going too well with Germany. I know lam right. The same idea has struck both of us. They are nothing but acts of piracy—the word is not too strong. And what is the good of them, except to excite the hatred of the whole world against us, and to tarnish for ever the good name of the Vaterland? You agree with me, don't you?

TH, JOY OF KILLING. . . . I call "Haiti" there. It is not for a soldier to discuss the commands of kis chief. No; I was never one to evade the orders given by my superiors in command; all the same, there is nothing to prevent my being inwardly disgusted at having to carry out such frightful commands. Now —yes, I'm almost aßhamed to confess it—there was a time I used to delight in the work. I took a sort of Satanic pride in being utterly merciless, in outraging the simplest laws of humanity in killing for nothing—nothing but the mere pleasure of killing. I used to say to myself, "All the ships that sail round those coasts of England, little fishing smacks as well as the great leviathans of the deep—all—ali of them fly like the wind at the very sight of my periscope, just like a flock of buffaloes before the tsetse fly. Their captains tremble as they eagerly scan the horizon through their glasses, their sailors are for ever straining their eyes for any trace of my secret path, their passengers all shiver if anyone so much as whispers the word 'submarine.'" I liked the power I had given me. I'd rise—rise—and like lightning I'd fly along between two waters, and when I heard our men singing on the bridge our "Deutschland über Alles," I'd feel myself some brave hero of the Nibelungen, some cruel king ruling a great sea. And if, at times, just a little spark of pity managed to glimmer through the blackness of my soul, to ease my conscience I'd repeat to myself the famous word of our field-marshal, "Warfare is not a 5 o'clock tea." Yes, I'll confess it all. Every bit of my enthusiasm in the work has quite dis> appeared ever since we sank the great Atlantis. That's quite true. You never saw anything of it. You were so tired out< after your long night-watch, and I haC not the heart to awaken you. As ror me—as for me. God! how can I ever blot out the memory of it! Oh, it was terrible! If you'd seen that great ship with her hundreds of drowning men and women and children get drawn down under the waves! I can still hear the dismal waitings of the passengers, and the weeping women and children all huddled up together on the bridge—(heir useless appeals for mercy. GALL OF THE DEAD. Then—they are all swept off into the sea, struggling, striving, snatching at •anything, anything, anything at all; then being sucked down for ever, dragged down into the whirlpool of the great sinking ship. Then nothing on the sea. 0 Gottlieb! to escape from that terrible nightmare I gave the order to plunge, and for several hours we remained hidden beneath the sea. When we came up again at last what do you think was the first thing I saw? The corpse of a woman, almost naked, holding tightly pressed against its breast a little child of two or three years old. Round her neck was one of the lifebelts of the Atlantis. And so, at first, I could not understand why that dead woman should be there, for we were miles away from the scene of the catastrophe. Then 1 noticed that her glorious golden hail had become entagled in one of our grap.pling chains, so we had pulled her down with us. In spite of her long stay beneath the water she was not at all disfigured, Her features were of the AngloSaxon type of beauty. But one thing 1 can never forget—the expression in tha eyes. I swear to tou that the.T I seemed to be alive. '

There was despair -in them, and scorn end anger. They looked into mine with a terrible stare; they seemed to menace me with an undying vengeance. I remember thinking at the time that the eyes of the Medusa must have been like that! Hans was very deeply impressed, and hi gently 'disentangled the floating hair fr mi the chains, and the two bodies floated i way. I know you'll laugh at mo wliei' J tell you, but just at that moment ,X distinctly heard a voice cry out, "Assassin!" Trembling all over, I went downstairs, and to steady my nerves I dranlc off at one gulp a whole bottle of champagne. Quite right, Gottlieb. There is really nothing supernatural at all 111 it. Ail the sam?, you'll never convince me that that fair drowned woman did not bring us bad l^ck. Gottlitb! I have just been having a last loofc at our men. They are all huddled |up together—inanimate—at the other sipe of the partition. They hav« been trying to break it down Yes, indeed, our turn next. We are just coming to the end of the last tub# of comjjressed air. The oxygen will certainly give out before the light does. I I, too, feel its getting very difficult to breathe. It's awful, isn't it, to be sjo young, so full of life and health and strength, and to have to—to stay down here—with our arms crossed—and wait for death. Gottlieb! I'm afraid to die.j Are you ? Oh, Gottlieb! They are there! Don't you understand?—they are all therewatching us. They are waiting for us. Who's watching? Who's waiting? You ask that? Why, those that we murdered, all those innocent victims of our shells and our torpedoes. Those poor sailors in their frail little fishing-boats up in the North Sea; those French sailors in the Espere en Dieu, the Danish ones ia the Elisnore, the Dutch ones in the Bats|via, the Norwegian ones in the Bergen, the—the fifteen hundred drowned souls in the. Atlantis. REMORSE. Do you remember the Swan, Gottlieb —the little boat we sank off Grimsby? \ou remember, they had only two tiny life-|boats, were nutshells, in which to lieb) that morning. The captain, an old ™an, had his four suns on board with They all clasped their hands—they stretched them out to us—they entreated us to save them. Don't -you remember, Gottlieb?—we laughed; we insulted the old man and told him to address his prayers to the English Admiralty. Then, don't you remember how clumsy we were. Gottlieb—somehow we upset those two little lifeboats, and we all laughed!

The horror of it! The old man! I see him! He's here! He's mocking us in ihe shadows with the others. They are all dancing in a row and holding one another's hands. The women and the little children are in the front. I recognise the one who leads the infernal dance. It is the drowned woman of the other day, the one with a look of Medusa in her eyes.

See, Gottlieb, she is making signs to them. She knows we cannot escape! Her eyes are wild, like balls of fire; the locks of her golden hair are floating on the waves, all scattered about like the tentacles of an octopus. They are going to clutch me! Help, Gottlibe! Help, help! Kamerad! Kamerad!