CHAPTER XVIII
AN OCEAN DUEL
"ACTION Stations!"
Billy Barcroft leapt from his bunk, labouring under the delusion that he had turned in only a few minutes before.
The deadlights screwed to the brass rims of the scuttles and the electric lights in the wardroom gave him the impression that it was still night, and it was not until he scrambled on deck that he was aware that grey dawn was breaking.
The wind had piped down considerably. The seas, still running high, no longer showed their teeth in the form of vicious, foam-crested breakers. Yet the decks of the "Audax" were at regular intervals ankle-deep in water, as the destroyer cut through the billows.
A cloud of steam, caused by showers of spray striking the hot, salt-encrusted funnel casings, drifted aft, temporarily obscuring the flight-sub's range of vision. As it cleared he could discern the greatcoated figures of Aubyn and his brother-officers on the bridge, and the indistinct forms of the men as they passed ammunition from the shell-hoists to the guns.
"Got her this time, sir," remarked a burly petty officer, the rotundity of whose figure was still further accentuated by the prodigious quantity of clothing he wore.
He pointed to a dark grey, indistinct object almost dead ahead, her outlines rendered almost invisible by the trailing clouds of smoke that poured from her funnels. Barcroft estimated her distance at two thousand yards. It was impossible to see whether she flew her ensign.
The vessel was a German ocean-going torpedo-boat, one of the nine which had stolen out of Zeebrugge. By sheer good luck she had gone northward over practically the extreme length of the North Sea without being sighted by the British patrols. An hour, or even half an hour earlier she might have slipped unobserved past the "Audax" without being seen by the latter. As it was, one of the British destroyer's look-out men "spotted" the strange craft in the deceptive half-light of the late autumnal dawn.
The "Audax" threw out her private signal by means of a flash lamp from the bridge. The stranger replied by an unintelligible jumble of long and short flashes.
"Either that is a Hun or her signalman is three sheets in the wind," declared Lieutenant-commander Aubyn. "Tell her to make her number, or we'll open fire. And wireless the 'Antipas'; give her our position, and say we are in touch with a suspicious craft."
Aubyn, though brave as a lion, was of a discreet and cautious nature. Dearly would he have liked to engage in an ocean duel with the hostile craft, for such, he now felt convinced she would prove to be. Both vessels were equally matched in the matter of armament, tonnage and number of complement: it was necessary only to again prove the moral and physical superiority of Jack Tar over Hans and Fritz, unless something in the nature of sheer ill-luck allowed the coveted prize to slip through his fingers. It was against the possibility that Aubyn had to guard. The fight had to end in only one way—annihilation to the foe. Hence the call to the destroyer "Antipas" to eliminate that element of chance.
"Let her have it!" shouted the skipper of the "Audax," just as Barcroft gained the bridge.
The four-inch gun on the fo'c'sle barked. It was still dark enough for the flash to cast a lurid glow upon the set faces of the British officers, who stood by with their glasses ready to bear upon the flying torpedo-boat the moment the acrid fumes from the burnt cordite drifted clear of the bridge.
The first shell struck the water close to the German vessel's port side, throwing up a column of water fifty feet in the air as it ricochetted and finally disappeared beneath the waves a mile or so ahead of the target.
Fritz replied promptly. He must have fired; directly the flash of the "Audax's" bow gun was observed. The projectile screeched above the heads of the men on the bridge, seemingly so close that Barcroft involuntarily ducked. It was quite a different sensation from being potted at by "Archibalds." Up aloft the roar of the seaplane's engines and the rush of the wind practically overwhelmed the crash of the bursting shrapnel. This weird moaning, as the four-inch shell flew by, was somewhat disconcerting as far as Billy was concerned, while to heighten the effect a rending crash accompanied the passing of the projectile.
"Our wireless top-hamper, dash it all!" exclaimed Aubyn, turning his head for a brief instant. "Starboard a little, quartermaster."
The slight alteration of helm enabled the midship quick-firer on the starboard side to bear upon the enemy. The latter, evidently with the idea of dazzling the British destroyer, had switched on a searchlight mounted on a raised platform aft. Probably the Huns might have derived advantage from the rays, that still held their own against the increasing dawn, had not a well-directed shell from the "Audax" fo'c'sle gun blown searchlight, platform, and half a dozen men to smithereens.
For the next ten minutes the adversaries were at it hammer and tongs. More than one shell got home on board the British craft, playing havoc with the after-funnel and deckfittings, while three badly wounded but still irrepressibly cheerful seamen were taken down below.
The German craft was being severely punished. The speed had fallen off considerably, while she was on fire fore and aft, although the for'ard conflagration was quickly got under by her crew. By this time she bore broad on the British destroyer's bow, the range having decreased to 1,500 yards.
Suddenly the Hun put her helm hard down. Either she saw that flight was no longer possible, or else her stern quick-firers had been knocked out, and she wished to bring her as yet unused guns to bear upon her foe.
As she turned Aubyn saw through his binoculars a gleaming object shoot over the German craft's side, quickly followed by another. Both disappeared in a smother of foam beneath the waves. "Hard a-port!" he shouted, knowing full well that at that moment a couple of powerful Schwarzkopft torpedoes, propelled by superheated compressed air, were heading towards the "Audax" at a rate of forty to fifty miles an hour.
Round swung the destroyer, listing under excessive helm until the deck on the starboard side dipped beneath the water. As she did so the two torpedoes could be distinctly seen, as, adjusted to their minimum depth to prevent them passing under the lightly draughted objective, they appeared betwixt the crests of the waves.
One passed fifty yards away; the other almost scraped the destroyer's quarter. Had the "Audax" not promptly answered to her helm both torpedoes would have "got home." Yet, not in the least perturbed, the British seamen continued their grim task of battering the Hun out of recognition. They worked almost in silence. Each man knew his particular job and did it. Time for shouting when the business was finished to their satisfaction.
Yet there was a regular pandemonium of noise. The hiss of escaping steam; the vicious thuds of the waves as the "Audax," at twenty eight point something knots, tore through the water under the action of engines of 14,000 horse-power; the rapid barking of the quick-firers; the sharp clang of the breech-blocks and the clatter of the ejected shell-cases upon the slippery decks—all combined to bear testimony to the stress and strain of a destroyer action. The "Audax" was the latest embodiment of naval science in that class of boat, yet without the intrepid energies of the men behind the guns, aided by the strenuous efforts of their mess-mates in the engine-room stokehold, that science would be of little avail in gaining the victory. Man-power still counts as much as it ever did, provided an efficient fighting machine is at their disposal. British Hearts of Oak are much the same as in Nelson's day—and yet the average pay of the Lower Deck ratings is about three shillings a day with no eight-hour shifts, risking life and limb for a wage at which a navvy would sneer.