Sea-Hounds

he course of the next few minutes was absolutely nondescript, completely defying classification. A mile closer, however, it appeared to be as pl

intillant background against which she stood out as what she was-the sweetest-lined little steam yacht that ever split a wave. The fishing-boat effect had been obtained

h some kind of paint that was very easy to see, and covered the rest of her with a pa

hat gives a chance to follow her real lines at all. From the deck-and even more so from the bridge of a submarine, or through its periscope-it would be a lot easier to tell what she isn't than what she is. As a matter of f

it. Her present skipper's a Yank who came to her from a M.L. They say he's no end of a character, but right as rain on his job and with a natural nose for trouble. One of his hobbies is making his ship look what she isn't, and, in order to see her as she would appear to a U-boat, he goes out and studies her through the periscope of one of our own submarines. When one of these isn't handy, he sometimes goes out in a whaler and studies her through a stubby periscope p

y occasions I was free to go there, some weeks went by before I was able to carry out my plan of paying him a visit. Then, one morning, a nondescript craft, which might have been anything from a

er ferry-boat' this morning, or something of the kind; and he's going to get blown to sea in a 'sudden gale,' or something of the kind; an

urs, the doubters were, naturally, many; but it is pleasant to be able to record that those who came to scoff remained-to tea. Indeed, it was not until after tea that I had a chance for a

an recall having met, either on land or sea, was the grim work he was doing mor

oor little old girl into port under canvas after I had knocked out her propellers with one of her own depth-charges." It was a fantastically amusing tale, that last. "It was the culmination of my experiments in scientific camouflage," said K--, with a baleful smile. "Up to that time any contrivances to deceive the Hun were getting more and more intricate right along; since then they have tended more and more toward extreme simplicity. It was this way, you see, that I happened to work up to that depth-charge crescendo. From the first I had been striving to give the U-boat mixed impressions of me, especially on the score of which way I was going. This, as I soon found out from studying the thing in the proper way, is much easier to do in the case of a man whose observation is limited to a few feet above the water than in the case of one who h

irly satisfactory 'bow wave' aft, and I was endeavouring to supplement this by a scheme for making it appear as though the sky was moving past her funnel in the direction it wa

unning past the masts and funnels in the same direction she was going, only faster, it might create the illusion-in the distorted 'worm's eye' vision of the man at the per

cigar and resume

bout her is that she will turn in a smaller circle than most destroyers) and tried, first choice, to ram him, and, second choice, to drop a depth-charge down the hole he had ducked into. I was too late to ram by a few seconds, and there must have been a good fathom or two of clearance between my keel and the conning-tower I had driven for. The bridge and the two periscopes he had 'turtle-necked' in showed clean and sharp in the clear water as I leaned over the port side of the bridge-the easiest chance a man ever had for kicking off a 'can' just where it ought to go. As I turned to the depth-charge release I already had visions of him falling apart like a cracked egg, with b

of both propellers and all but blew in her stern. The depth-charge had fouled a trailing wire from some of my 'stage scenery sky' and been dragged along to detonate close astern. I saw her taffrail shiver and kick upwards, and the shock was strong enough to upset my balance even on the bridge. That last was the first thing that made me sure something had slipped up, for, ordinarily, the jolt from a properly set 'can' is no more than that from a s

n almost as near to him as it was to me when it exploded-may have done the submarine really serious injury, perhaps even sinking it. We never found any evidence, however, that this had been the case. Whether he was damaged or not, there is no doubt that his close call gave him a bad scare. There could have been nothing in the explosion to tell him that it did any harm to his enemy, and, since he did not have his periscope up, there was no way he could see what had happened. Doubtless expecting another 'can' any moment, and knowing well that it would be only a matter of an hour or two until there would be a lot more craft joining in the chase, it is probable that he followed the tactics which you can always count on a U-boat following when it knows a hunt is on-that is, to submerge deeply and lose no time in making itself just as scarce as possible in the neighbourhood where the hue-and-cry has started. That's the only

rudder, luckily, though a good deal bent and twisted, had not been blown away. It took a lot of nursing to turn it, and, when we finally got her off under mainsail, forestaysail and jib, the eccentricities it developed took a lot of getting used to. Although it was quite fortuitous on our part, the c

nce, for me, not for the trawlers, there was a spanking breeze on the port quarter (for the mean course to base, I mean); and it wasn't long before the little old girl, even under the comparatively light spread of sail on her, was slipping away at close to nine miles an hou

oing to do next, how was I going to signal it to them, will you tell me? About every other time that they tried to anticipate my course they guessed wrong, and were worse off than before as a consequence. They must have been a very thankful pair when one of the two destroyers which finally came up took them off to hunt the submarine. The other destroyer stood by to escort m

y free from wheels within wheels to leave the mind clear for the real work in hand, which, after all, is putting down the Hun, not merely deceiving him as to what you are. You see how simple a setting our present one is; yet it is very complete in its way, and I have rea

'Q' yarns that the law allows. The Hun is dead wise to the game on principle, so there can't be any point in keeping mum any longer on stunts that he

ed his "business headquarters," and as I had naturally expected that she would have played many and diverse parts i

s good a chance as ever to make good with it under favourable circumstances. For that reason, the less we say about it for the present the better. That's in regard to this particular stunt, I mean. As for the rest of the 'Q' stuff that we've brought off, or tried to bring off, during the last three years-I'm at you

ng which is correct about that account is the statement that a U-boat was sunk. It wasn't an armed M.L. that surrendered to Herr Ober-Lootenant-armed M.L.'s don't do that sort of thing, take my word for it-but an unarmed, or practically unarmed, pleasure yacht, which had apparently become disabled and blown to sea. And the trusting U-boat did not come alongside to put aboard a prize crew to navigate its captive to a German port as they'd try

ling you that I'm not wearing any crepe on my sleeve on that account, either. Do you know"-K--'s face flushed red and his brow contracted in the anger the thought aroused-"that those -- pirates were going right ahead to sink what they thought was nothing but a pleasure yacht, with a number of women and children in i

pile-built factory at Ciudad Bolivar, on the upper Orinoco. And the coffee that same genial bon vivant had had blended and sealed in glass by an old Arab merchant at Aden, while the Benedictine had cost him a climb on foot through an infernally hot August afternoon to an ancient monastery inl

select list of private customers in various parts of the world; "and in the several letters he has written begging me to make free with them he has told me most of the yarns. The consequence was that, while the good things lasted-they're most of them finished now-I was ge

ng new in the idea, for it is precisely the same stunt the old pirate of the Caribbean was on when he concealed his gun-ports with strips of canvas and approached his victims as a peaceful merchantman. As a matter of fact, I think it was the Hun himsel

e punishing power to harmlessness of appearance. A light gun or two is about as far as you can go in the way of shooting-irons, and even these are very

ower freighter type, with a rather powerful gun mounted for'ard and conc

y doubts as to whether an old cargo boat would prove tempting enough bait to put a Fritz in the proper mental state for a real 'rise'-one in which he

tself to being rammed by a destroyer, when it could have avoided the attack entirely by foregoing the pleasure of a Parthian shot at a lifeboat which was already half-swamped in the heavy seas. That was the little trait of the Hun's that I reckoned on playing up to when I began to figure on taking the '--' out U-boat strafing without any

g it home' has always been the great difficulty with the lance-bomb, and up to that time the only chap to have any luck with it was the skipper of a M.L.-another Yank, by the way, who came over and got into the game in the same way, and about the same time, that I did. He had been the champion sixteen-pound hammer-th

e a chance at him. They were rather inclined to scoff at the plan at first, principally on the ground that the enemy, knowing that there was no pleasure yachting going on in the North Sea, would instantly be suspicious of a craft of that character. I pointed out that there was still a bit of yachting going on in the Norfolk Broads, which the Hun, with his comprehensiv

ally received somewhat grudging authorisation to go ahead with it. It was not till the whole show was over that I learned from the laughing admission of the officer who helped secure that authorization, that the

gave them plenty of liberty of action. Most of them (as there was nothing much below the waist going to show anyway) simply rolled up their sailor breeches and went barelegged, and one who went in for white stockings and tennis shoes was considered rather a swanker. Their millinery was somewhat variegated, the only thing in common to the motley units of h

of a game in makes all the difference in the world in its success, and these lads-and, indeed, the whole lot of us-were like children playing house. All of them were blondes-even a boy born in Durban, who

brass polishing and deck-scrubbing, with the result that the little old '--' regained, outwardly at least, much of her

id ready, and these were to be worn more or less indiscriminately by any of the regular crew not on watch. Their r?le was simply to loll on the quarterdeck with the 'l

nd to have a real steadying effect on the missile, on the same principle that 'streamers' act to bring an air-bomb down nose-first. Of course, a child in arms, like this one was to be, wasn't just the kind of thing one would take pleasure yachting; but I k

ept a jewel-case that a panicky woman in fear of being torpedoed would stick to.

'lady.' As one of the seamen put it, it was only 'nateral that the nipper's daddy 'ud be lookin' arter 'im in time of danger,' and I had read of sailors being entrusted with children on sinking ships. The man I picked for

had volunteered for miscarried. He had just the touch of the histrionic desirable for the intim

three months," he said, "that always seem to hang fire; and there are others where, from first to last, everything comes up to the scratch on time, just like a film drama. That first o

I wanted to make a good excuse for a dinky little pleasure boat being out in the middle of the North Sea.

rizon, we picked up a Fritz running brazenly on the surface the first morning. That was first blood for my harmless appearance right there, for he must ha

affords usually is, but, at about three thousand yards, he put a shell through the fo'c'sl', luckily above the water-line. The next minute or two was the mo

s juncture convinced him finally that the yacht had no fight in her, and it may well be that the temptation to loot had something to do with his decision. I could never make quite sure on those points, for Herr Skipper never confided what was in his mind to the one officer who survived him. At any rate, h

hat what he was witnessing was a genuine piece of 'abandon.' One of the girls-it was the blonde 'Brunnhilde,' I believe-not wanting to miss any of the fun, started to hang back and tried to bluff them into letting her stay by swearing that she'd rather face the Hun than desert her child. As a matter of fact, the 'Gainsborough' had more claim on the kid than 'Brunnhilde,' for she-I mean he-had cadged its clothes from a sweetheart who work

t she turned a complete flip-flop in the air, and that there was a display of-well, if a Goerz prism binocular won't reveal the difference between a pair of blue sailor's breeches and French lingerie at under a mile, all I can say is that we've much ove

atter to follow them up for a look-see at closer range. The boat had orders to pull astern for a while, and then, if the Hun was observed to come alongside the '--' as hoped, to turn eigh

much trouble was superfluous. He had only one gun, it was evident-the gunners kept sweeping it back and forth to cover from about the bridge to the engine-room as they drew nearer-and presently I saw men, armed with short rifles, coming up through both fore and after hatche

as probably some kind of warning or other. I don't think I saw any of my crew exactly 'Kamerading', but I needn't tell you that every man in sight was doing his best to register 'troubled passivity', or something like that. I had anticipated that I might not be in a position to signal his cue to R--, and so had arranged that he should keep watch from a cabin port, and to u

he dashed out of the port door of the saloon-that one just behind you-but lowered the muzzles again when they saw it was apparently only a half-distracted parent trying to signal for the boat to come back for him and his babe. I have no doub

ning-tower. That rotary upward and backward swing was absolutely necessary for getting distance with, and without it there was no way that forty or fifty pound infant could have been hurled the fifteen feet or more which still intervened. As it was, it landed, fair and square, in the angle formed by the after end of the conning-tower and the deck. At the same instant our mach

xplanation of this from any of the survivors we fished up out of the water, but everything points to the probability that the skipper-perhaps inadvertently, as the up-kick of the bomb blew him overboard-pulled the diving klaxon, and the officer in the central control room, not knowing just how things stood above, proceeded to submerge as usual. Doubtless the men who should have been standing by to close the hatches in such an emergency had be

k to tell what happened to them, so that this identical stunt was left open for use again. As a matter of fact, variations of it were used a number of times, by one kind of craft or another, before an unlucky slip-up-the one which finished poor R--, by the way-gave the