BEHIND THE VEIL.

Taranaki Daily News, 17 January 1919, Page 6

BEHIND THE VEIL.

THE STORY OF THE Q BOATS. ORDEAL BY FIRE. (By "Bartimer.s" in London Times.) Because man is mortal, not infallible, and Fortune at her brigliest a fickle jade, it was inevitable that sooner or later a day must come wlien a crippled German submarine would submerge beneath a hall of shells, miraculously succeed in patching up her damaged hull, and, under cover of darkness, crawl back to port. Word would then go out from Wilhelmshaven of a British man-of-war disguised as a lumbering tramp, with such and such a marking on her funnel, with stumpy masts and rusty deckhouses, who carried guns concealed in wheclhouse and hen-coops, whose bulwarks collapsed, and whose bridgescreens masked quick-firers and desperate men To approach such a vessel was to enter a death-trap, unless every precaution was first taken to ensure she had been abandoned. There would be only one precaution open to a German subinajinc, who might in duo course be expected to act accordingly. Such a day, in fact, came; misty, windless, with the aftermath of a great storm rolling eastward beneath a sullen swell. A vessel with the outward appearance of a merchantman, the fruits of whose labors for the past six months had doubtless perplexed that section of the WilhMmshaven bureaucracy, concerned' with the non-return of U-boat 3, sighted towards evening the perkeps and conning tower of a submarine a mile away on her beam.

The figure on 1 thet bridge of the tramp, who ea-rrisd, among other papers in. hia charge, his commission as a commander of the Royal Navy, took his pipe out oi his youth and laughed, as Drake might liave laughed when the sails of a Spanish galleon bwke the horizon. A 'tangle of flags appeared at the periscope of the submarine, and the tramp stopped obediently, blowing; off steam in groat cloud?. Her commander turned over the pafes of the International Signal Coda, smiling still. "Hoist: 'Cannot understand your signal,'" he said to the signalman, "I want to waste a few minutes," and 'moved to the engine-room voice-pipe. Obedient to his directions, the screws furtively jogged ahead under cover of the escaping steam, edging I the steamer towards the watching ene- | my. The latter, however, promptly manned her foremost gun, turned, and slowly steamed towards them; she opened firo at a range of half a mile, the shell passing over the funnel of the disguised man-of-war THE NEXT STEP

In the tense excitement of that moment, when men's nerves and faculties were stretched like banjo-strings, the report of the submarine's gun rang loud through the still air One of the man-of-war's gunlayers, lying concealed within his collapsible deck-house, heard the report, and thinking that the ship herself had opened fire without the customary warning gongs, flung down the screen which masked his weapon. Any further attempt at concealment was i useless. The lire gongs rang furiously at every gun position, the White Ensign was triced up to the mast-head in the twinkling of an eye, and the action started. After the first few hits the I submarine lay motionless, with her .'lows submerged and her stem in the air for" upwards of five minutes, while shells burst <il! °vcr her The heavy swell made siNjotiug difficult, but eventually she sank in a great commotion of the water and dense ctouds of vapour that hung over the surface for some minute?. Two depth charges were dropped over her, and if ever men had cause for modest self-congratulation on having ridded the sea of yet another scourge it would seem that the officers and crew of The King's Ship might have laid claim to their share. Yet, by ways unknown and incredible, it was rlaimed by the enemy that the submarine contrived to return, with sI?ot holes plugged ani her dishonored colors at half-mast, to tell the tale

Futujre success in operations of this nature, therefore,, depended no longer upon a mere ruse. It was obvious that thenceforward the enemy would not rise to the surface until his torpedo had found it mark; hence, although a torpedo seen approaching cannot infrequently be avoided, it became part of this grim km llo of bluff for the victim to ensure that she was hit. Then, when the ''panic party" had abandoned the ship, it behoved the remainder to wait concealed and unresponsive beside their hidden guns, while the submarine rive; td the surface and either closed within range or shelled them with sufficient thoroughness to convince him —who judged endurance and self-control by no mean standards—that the limit of | human courage had been reached: that | there could be no one concealed on board, and that he might with safety [.approach to loot and burn Now Ijhis, as Mr Kipling would put it, "was a damned tough 'bullet to chow." They were 1110 demi-gods, nor yet fanatics, these tlire? score or so wind-tanned sailormen. They were just ordinary human | beings, with the average man's partiality for life and a whole skin, and the I love of wife and bairn or sweetheart plucking at the heartstrings of most of them. But they shared what is not given to all men in this world of human frailty, a whole-souled confidence in a fallow-man, which, strengthened by utter devotion, would have carried them at his lightest nod through the gates of Hell. EON NERVE.

Under his command, then, they sailed with a carfio of timber in each hold and a faith in the good providence that came , very near to the faith of little children. 7jj due course, about 9.45 one morning, a torpedo was seen approaching the starboartf beam; observing his role as master of a careless tramp, with poor lookouts, the young commander held on his course. M the last moment, however, the helm wot imperceptibly altered to ensure the ship being struck aliaft the cn"ine-roota, where it might do, least damage Those whom fate has afforded the opportunity of studying the trail of an approaching torpedo will, if they recall their sensations, appreciate to some extent the iron nerve requisite to such a manoeuvre The torpedo burst abreast No. 3 hold, hurling a wall of water and wreckage to the height ot the mast, and blowing a hole in the ship s side 40ft. wide. Half-stunned and deafened by the concussion, ihe commander raised himself on his hands and knees, where he had been flung, and shouted to the navigator, "They've got us _ tins i time." The navigator, who was inside the chart-house, thrust his head out Jof a moment, moistening a lead pencil with his lips. "I reckon I've got time to imI reh working out this sight, Sir," he ve--««d with t withdrew hi* W":

The alarm gong? had already sent the guns' crews to their invisible guns, and immediately alter the explosion "Panic Stations" was ordered, followed in due course by "Abandon ship." The navigator, having finished his "sight," and now acting as "master," abandoned ship with the "panic party." No sooner had the boats boon lowered and shoved oil' from the ship's side, however, than the chief engineer rang up from below and reported that the after bulkhead had gone and that the engine-room was filling fast. Peering, on all fours, through a slit in the bridge-screen, waiting for the inevitable periscope to appear, the commander bade him hold on as long as lie could and keep enough steam to work the pumps, when the water had extinguished the fires, and then only, the engines were abandoned and the" staff remained concealed. This they did, crawling eventually 011 to the cylinders to escape from the rising flood. t

TENSION. Shortly after the torpedo struck the ship the periscope of a submarine broke tho surface a couple of hundred yards distant, evidently watching proceedings with a deliberate, cautious scrutiny. Moving slowly through the water, like the fin of a waiting shark, the sinister object came gradually down the ship's side, Within live yards of the breathless •boats, and not 10 yards from where the commander lay, his pipe between his teeth, beside the voice-pipes that connected him with tho assistant pay-mas-ter, R.N.R., who, concealed in the gun control position, was awaiting the order to open fire. From the altitude of the •bridge, the submerged whale-back hull was plainly'visible to the figure crouched behind the bridge-screens, and the temptation to yield to the impulse of tlie moment, to open fire and end the suspense, shook even his iron nerves A lucky shot might pierce the lead-grey shadow thai moved 15ft. beneath the surface; but water plays strange tricks with projectiles, deflecting them at unexpected ricochets, at angles no man can foretell: moreover, the submarine was in diving trim The odds against a -broad-1 side overwhelming her before she could plunge- into the depths and escape were too great. So the commander waited, with self-control that was almost superhuman, and, prone beside their guns, unseeing and unseen, his men waited, too, with teeth clenched and sprawling limbs rigid in the mastery of discipline. The ship had then sunk by the stern until it was awash, and the crew of the gun masked by tlie wlieelhouse were crouched up to their knees in water. A Mack cat, tlie ship's mascot, that had been blown overboard by the explosion of the torpedo, swam aft arid in over tho stern, whose counter rose normally 20ft. above the surface. Stii} the periscope continued its unhurried observation; it travelled past the ship, across the bow, and then slowly moved away, as if content that tho task was done. For the space of nearly a minute fitter disappointment and mortification rose and swelled to bursting point in the commander's heart- His ship had been torpedoed, and was sinking. Their quarry had all but been within their grasp, and was now going to escape unscathed. Then, when hope was flickering to extinction. the submarine rose to the surface 301) yards on the port bow, and came slowly back towards the ship. Up to this juncture, although the ship was seHling deeper every moment, the commander had purposely refrained from summoning assistance by wireless, lost interruption should come before his grim work was done. Now, however, he saw of one quick glance that the Lord had indeed "placed the enemy upon his lee bow " and the rest was only a matter of a few bloody moments. Accordingly he gave orders for an urgent wireless signal to be sent out forthwith summoning assistance, and waited until the submarine was on a line when all his guns would bear She reached the desired spot at Ihe moment when the German commandei was complacently emerging from the conning tower; up went, tlie White Ensign, and the first shot beheaded him; he dropped back into the interior of the submarine, and his wholly unexpected reappearance imparted a shock of surprise to the remainder of the inmates from which they never recovered. The submarine lay motionless as a dead whale, while the avenging broadside shattered the hull, and the grizzled pensioner inside a hencoon scientifically raked her deck with a Jfaxim to prevent her gun from being manned. She finally sank with her conning tower open and the crew pouring shrieking out of the hatchway.

OIL AND BLOOD From the sv.irling vortex of oil and blood and air bubbles in which the majority vanished, two dazed prisoners were, rescued by the exultant "panic )tarty" in the boats, n:»l brought back (0 the ship Once 011 board, however, the imperious necessities of the moment overwhelmed even the elation of victory. Bulkheads were shored in all compartments still accessible, confidential documents destroyed in anticipation of the worst, and then all but the commander and a handful of men took to the boats and awaited succour. It came at noon in the guise of a congratulatory and businesslike destroyer, and was augmented later by a couple of sloops. By 5 p.m. the water had ceased to gain and the ship was in tow, heading for port; there she arrived, and was safely beached after dark the following day Iler crew had faced the ordeal and emerged triumphant, adding to the last a feat of seamanship which saved the ship. Tlfose who go down to the sea in ships for the express purpose of being torpedoed require no great power ot imagination to foretell what lav ahead. when the time came for a fresh venture, for such weal or woe as it might Isold, they sailed with light hearts and unafraid. They were under the command of the man who had brought them victorious through the ordeals that were past, and tliev loved him, these men of Devon and the ft est, with the lovo which "casteth out fear." As if for a pledge of that devotion, he wore thenceforward, on the left breast of his ancient monkey-jacket, the scrap of ribbon which it is the King's pleasure men shall wear for valour.

[lt is probable that the commander in question was Lieut. Sanders. V.C, D.5.0.. of Auckland. At any rate, tlic deed that won for liim the coveted Cross was precisely the same as the one so graphically deecribed above. Ed.]