CHAPTER XXI
MY own anger with Count von Vennemann was as nothing compared with Jimmy's when I detailed to him the conversation which had taken place. "I wish we had a Whitehead torpedo aboard, and a tube," the engineer declared wrathfully.
"You don't mean to say that you would favor sinking him, do you?" I asked.
"Certainly I would; that's what he did to us aboard the Esperanza, wasn't it?"
"Yes, but to give the devil his due he didn't try to murder us until we proved to be armed and ready to fight."
"Then," said Jimmy, "I suppose we shall have to fight him with kid gloves, much as I should like to down him and his whole crew."
"Kid gloves, if you wish to call it that," I retorted, obstinately; "but I think I have a method which will effectually put him out of business, and at the same time will not leave us to feel that we have deliberately murdered any one."
"Well, fire away, and let's hear what your scheme is," Jimmy said, somewhat sullenly; but long before I had finished a discourse of my plans and proposals he was as enthusiastic as I.
"The scheme will work," he declared, "I know it will, and it has the advantage of giving us the opportunity to laugh at this fool who thinks he has got it all his own way, and has chased us off the ground. Can I talk to any of the men about it?"
"Certainly," I assented. "This expedition is being run more or less on shares, and the men should be told. We have not a man aboard whom we can't trust, for even that expert the Bellairs people gave us is just as eager to make money as any man I ever met."
After giving orders to keep a sharp lookout for the tug-boat with her convoy, I went below to my charts, and put in several hours laying my plans. When I returned on deck I knew by the hilarity of the entire crew that Jimmy had lost no time in imparting to them the details, not only concerning what had taken place, but all that we proposed to do. There was no mistaking the truth that I had their whole-hearted support in my enterprise.
We came up abreast the tug and barges at four o'clock in the afternoon, and directed them to run into the bay near the little village with which they were familiar, and where for so long we had been marooned after the loss of the Esperanza. We aboard the Hector hastened to a tiny bay which Jimmy and I had visited many times during our stay in Martinique. We reached there at low tide, ran gently up on a shallow, sloping, sandy bottom, let the water into our aft ballast tanks, thus bringing our forward gear into a surface reach, and made necessary adjustments. Under Jimmy's supervision, the entire crew of the submarine, myself included, worked like beavers to get the task accomplished before the rise of the tide, which must float us off. Darkness was almost upon us when we made our last adjustment and were in readiness. By this time the tide had lifted until the slight bumping of the bottom in the fore part of the Hector warned us that we must back off at once. With all on board we slowly gave her power from the Diesels, drew into the clear in an angular position, then emptied our ballast tanks, and running light, cruised westward until the lights of Count von Vennemann's ship had been picked up. We then ran submerged, directing our course through the periscope until we had reached a point where we feared we might be observed, after which we dropped into the sea to a depth of seven fathoms, and slowly crept forward upon our prey.
I have hitherto neglected to explain the alterations and improvements we had effected in the submarine under Jimmy's supervision.
The bow of the average submarine is nearly pointed. Ours partook more of the form of a cruiser. There was an interlocking false bow for the sole purpose of offering water cleavage and steerage when cruising. This was removable by the releasing of interior clutches in exactly the same way that the heavy keel of the regulation submarine may be released from inside in emergencies when the boat reaches too great a point of submergence, and must, therefore, relieve itself of all possible dead weight in order to recover its buoyancy.
This false prow, when released, left the Hector as blunt a fore-front as could have been found in any old-fashioned Dutch boat; not square, it is true, but so nearly so as to be semicircular. The dropping of this false prow also brought into exposure as adroit a mechanical appliance as had ever been conceived for such a purpose.
A battery of five hollow tubes, each operating independently and capable of being withdrawn or extended, with a play of four feet, were equipped on the ends with ingenious clutches, manipulated by latticed extensors in the centers of the tubes, and acting at their termini like pinchers which could be opened or shut at will. These in turn, by a manipulation of the rods controlling them, could at the ends be given a play of some inches in each direction. So perfect was their working that it was possible to perform even delicate manipulations, such as the tying of a knot or the unscrewing of a nut. Immediately above this battery of arms and fingers was a single shaft of finest steel, equipped at the end with a drill, and capable of being driven with the full force of our motors at very high revolutions. In our private tests we had actually drilled through a six-inch plate of semi-hardened steel in as short a time, as the operation could have been performed by a power drill in a machine-shop. The drill shaft was given greater play from the fact that it could be uncoupled from the engines and withdrawn almost its length. In actual operation it projected fully two feet beyond the battery of arms beneath it. A hawse hole led into a compartment immediately behind the central arm, and in this was coiled a heavy steel cable with an automatic clutch on the end, so that when bent into a loop the clutch, coming into contact with the cable, would automatically lock itself around it. Inside the compartment where the cable was coiled were two powerful shears, so arranged that in emergency, if it became necessary to release ourselves from the cable, it could instantly be cut. The levers and switches manipulating all these devices were in a tiny compartment immediately behind the bow. Directly above the battery of arms, and the drill shaft over them, was fixed Jimmy's submarine searchlight. This he had so improved that he was able to control its powers and at will obtain a beam of light that was dispersed at a distance varying from a few yards up to five hundred. The light did not penetrate through steel unless placed immediately against it. Hence an object even a few feet away became opaque. This light, as I have heretofore explained, was invisible to the eye unless the observer were equipped with glasses to provide the rays of the spectrum that had been eliminated by Jimmy's method of segregating rays of light into their component parts, and either reducing or intensifying certain colors.
We could not be certain that von Vennemann had not supplied himself with at least a few high-explosives depth bombs, and therefore knew the risk we were taking, and that everything depended on our ability to accomplish the work we had to do without being discovered; for the destructive radius of a modern depth bomb is seventy feet. In the event of such discovery our fate was practically determined, and it afforded us no satisfaction to feel that if he blew us up he also ran the risk of seriously damaging his own craft. Nor had I any hope that in case we were sunk, and succeeded in coming to the surface in our emergency suits, he would have the pity to rescue any of us from the sea. I was convinced that the man was more or less a modern German pirate, who thoroughly believed in the axiom of the ancient pirate that "dead men tell no tales." It might be conjectured, therefore, with what anxiety we men aboard the Hector took our stations for so hazardous an attempt.
We had dropped our false prow, with a buoy attached, in the tiny bay off Martinique, and were fully prepared for action. Jimmy and I took our posts in the forward compartment, Jimmy at the light, and I surrounded by the maze of levers and connections with which to manipulate the drill and fantastic arms in front of me. We moved at a snail's pace and with the utmost caution through the water, both Jimmy and I wearing the monstrous goggles that would enable us to see through the steel and follow the beam of light that directed our course. A weird and uncanny sight opened to our view. The searchlight appeared as a pillar of fluorescent green, pallid and ghostly in its effect. Looking immediately in front of me it did not appear that there were any connections at all, but out at the ends, rods, tubes, and shafts were visible like objects that swam perpetually ahead of us. Once or twice I had the unpleasant feeling that we, ourselves, were actually in the water with nothing to intervene and save us from drowning. On the little platform above me, where he knelt in front of his apparatus, I could hear Jimmy continually making adjustments with the sharp clicking of shutters and switches, each accompanied by a note as rasping and deafening as if we were surrounded by the crackling sounds of a thousand wireless instruments feverishly at work.
Although we were traveling at seven fathoms depth, it seemed impossible that this prodigious sound should not be audible to a watchman, though half asleep, aboard the craft which we were bent on attacking. Nor did I have any doubt that even the slow hum of our motors might be audible. Any man sitting at a submarine telephone aboard von Vennemann's boat could have picked up the sound of our approach; but, secure in his egotism and thereby rendered confident that he was far removed from danger, I am certain that nothing more than a careless watch was maintained by this ex-naval officer of the German Navy. It is very probable, too, that we were assisted in our attack by the earliness of the hour; for his ship, being lavishly lighted, was undoubtedly turning her dynamos with a hum that might have drowned any other noise in her engine-rooms. Of the light itself we had no fear, and although aware that when we came closer to the surface the extreme top of our conning-tower might show, we trusted to the enormous overhanging platform aft to assist us in avoiding detection.
Thinking over all the risks we ran, and the possibility that our intricate appliances, when put to the actual test, might fail us, I was staring ahead, absent-mindedly, into that pallid, constantly shifting and advancing pathway of green, when we sighted our prey. At the same moment I felt Jimmy's hand reach down and pinch me on the shoulder to give me warning, for verbal communication between us was impossible. My instructions to the man at the controls had been complete, and I knew that he was sitting in front of his levers and gauges with the two telephone-receivers to his ears, alert and expectant. I therefore spoke into the telephone transmitter in front of me, and instantly felt a change in the vibrations of the boat. The floor beneath us took on an acute angle, and I knew that we were rising on a long plane, slowly but surely, as the hydroplanes forward fought the water's resistance. We stopped our engines and moved forward sedately under our own way, for all the world as easily as an aeroplane alters its course through the air. The gauges in front of me indicated that our periscope, had we not collapsed it, would now be protruding above the water, and that the top of our conning-tower must be within no more than a fathom from the surface. Ahead of us and above us loomed the ungainly hull, broad and massive, of the wrecking ship. So tideless was the sea that she had no anchors down. Fortunately for us we were coming up- ward astern and had no need to start our motors to attain a fair position. A single little kick of the propellers gave us way enough, and anxiously we waited for the Hector to come to a stop. She did so, neatly, as if endowed with intelligence and cognizant of our plans. Details of the structure of the hull above us came into view. We were now lying at a very acute angle with our stern low down in the water, and our blunt prow with its mechanism pointed upward. Directly in front of us could be seen the rudders of the wrecker, and on each side her two propellers, the bronze of which gleamed dully in the rays of light that were thrown full upon them. Another single cautious turn of our own propellers brought us to a halt before we came in collision and left us almost in contact with the first screw. It had now come my turn to act with the machinery, to which I had accustomed myself while making our preliminary preparations in that quiet little cove on Long Island Sound, now so far away. It was a new experience, and somewhat nervously I caught the screws and clutches that would thrust forward the sharp, diamond-pointed drill. It did not come true to the mark and for a moment I fumbled with other adjustments before catching the right one, and then saw the drill slowly press forward until it caught the propeller keys, against which it thrust savagely. I called to the engine-room for power, and instantly the polished steel shaft in front of me responded and the drill began to bite. It took but a few minutes, driven by the slow pressure of our screws behind, to rip through the toughened bronze above, and yet in that time it seemed to me incredible that an untoward sound should not penetrate through to the ears of some watchful engineer aboard von Vennemann's boat. I withdrew the drill, and sought its second mark, which would make the unshipping of the propeller certain, and with frantic haste drove it home, while it seemed ages before it accomplished its work. Staring in front of me, I saw the two great holes that would so weaken the clutches of the propeller upon its shaft that it must either break or fall off the instant power was applied to it, and was conscious of reckless exultation. From the little platform above me a hand reached down and patted my shoulder, proving to me that Jimmy had endured as nervous an interval as I, and was equally elated. Cautiously we manœuvred again down there in the depths astern, and repeated our performance, fearing every moment lest we be discovered and defeated; but nothing disturbed us, and there was not a sign of alarm. Yet, as we destroyed the second propeller of Count von Vennemann's boat, there was the same dread, constant and almost overpowering, that there might come a sudden explosion from without to end at least the lives of Jimmy and myself, for we two were in the position of greatest hazard. Nothing could save us, although the others might stand some chance of escape. I had one flashing thought of the suspense of all those men crowded aboard the Hector behind us, prepared for swift death or a desperate struggle to escape annihilation. We at least had the advantage of occupation and activity, whereas they must stand and wait.
It was not necessary to alter our position for the rest of our task, which was to securely fasten the cable through the rudder chains and posts of the wrecker that loomed above us; but in this I bungled so badly through excitement that the inventor himself came to my rescue, dropped down to the pit beside me, crowded me out of the way, and with his own hands manipulated the flexible fingers with which I had struggled so aimlessly. I stood erect behind him, staring over his shoulder as his hands moved definitely and purposely, without loss of motion, direct to each of the appliances which he had created. I saw the central arm, which held the end of the cable with its automatic lock, force the end behind the rudder chain, withdraw, catch it from the other side, carry it forward to a rudder post, thence onward to another rudder post, withdraw it, catch it in its steel fingers, pull it farther around another chain and then back to the cable itself, where for a time it fumbled clumsily before reaching its appointed place and clasping down, after which the huge, tempered, and waiting jaws of the lock came to direct contact and snapped viciously shut as if clutching hold forever. Twisted Jimmy straightened up with as triumphant an air as was ever portrayed upon a man's face and looked at me; but I saw that drops of sweat were trickling down his face and that his lips were twitching from the strain he had undergone. To him it had meant either failure or success in a vital degree, and failure would have been to him almost as great a catastrophe as paralysis of his own hand. For an instant we stood thus, by our looks congratulating each other, and then he leaped to the little platform above, switched off the light, and removed the deafeners from his ears. I did likewise.
"Tommy, old boy," he shouted, exultantly, "we have got him! Got him just as sure as anything could ever be got! It worked! Worked, I tell you, just as I said it would. It is the greatest invention of its kind that has ever been made in this world. Its only failure is—"
I surmised that he was on the verge of leading into a long technical criticism of his work and the possibilities of improvement thereon, regardless of the fact that at any moment some one above might by accident discover our presence, and immediately take steps to exterminate us.
"For Heaven's sake," I exclaimed, "we are not out of it yet! Wait until we get into the clear to tell me all this stuff." And I left him standing there in the midst of the maze of equipment and ran back to the control station, where with my own hands I opened the valves of the forward ballast tanks, those amidships, and the equalizers astern, until we were submerged to full thirty fathoms, at which depth we should be in comparative safety. Instructing Binks, the expert, to back off, maintaining that depth for full thirty yards, I returned to the compartment forward where I could hear the steady unwinding of the steel towline from its shell. With a smooth, pleasant evenness, it passed through the hawse hole with never a kink or tug, and I signaled again to continue our progress more slowly until it had reached its length. I stood there until I felt the first pull of the Hector, as she took the strain, and then both Jimmy and I hurried amidships, where I set the pumps working and stood in front of the gauges until we emerged.
We were compelled to undergo another critical moment in which we must learn whether or not Count Vennemann had armed his ship. Under the newly imposed international laws this should have been impossible; but his lawlessness, as expressed to me in conversation, led me to fear the possibility that he might be carrying guns aboard that would prove extremely hazardous to us in case he used them while we were on the surface. I therefore put the Hector awash with nothing more than her conning-tower exposed and gave the signal to move ahead. The sea was still very smooth when I opened the conning-tower hatch and looked through it. The night above us was a pit of blackness, dimly illuminated by stars. Count von Vennemann's ship lay exactly as I had last seen her, like a huge black reef, or a tiny island, projecting above the water. She was yet a very well-lighted island, on the top of which men passed lazily to and fro before retiring. Jimmy crowded up the side of the conning-tower, and I made room for him on the tiny ladder, where we stood with our heads exposed and observing our prey. There was not a sound to be heard from the depth of the Hector below us, and the night was very still. Floating across the quiet water we could actually hear the guttural conversation of two men who passed aft until they stood on the overhanging platform so curiously constructed above the stern of the wrecker. One of them laughed boisterously, and the night was so calm that when he struck a match to light his pipe he did not have to shield it with his hand. I hoped very fervently that it was Count von Vennemann himself, whom I was about to surprise by the unexpected. Very careless they must have been; for otherwise I didn't well see how, being trained men, they could have escaped discovering the menacing shape that lay astern of them, prepared for most unusual hostilities.
"Hadn't you better go below, Jimmy?" I asked. "If they have a gun aboard we shall find it out within a few minutes, and if they make a fluke hit the first shot might catch us before we could submerge."
"Go below? Not me, Tommy," he replied, with total disregard of my position as his superior officer, and using the diminutive with an affectionate familiarity. "We started together, more or less, we have stuck together more than less, and I'll be hanged if I am not going to stick it out by your side and see what happens."
"All right," I said, "here goes." And turning my head I called to the man at the controls below for quarter speed astern.
Running under power from our accumulators I knew that we could not exert our full force nor anything comparable to that which we could utilize once we dared to run light and use the Diesels. But in the latter case I knew that the horse power we were able to employ would probably be equivalent if not superior to anything that Vennemann's ship might turn out. I heard from beneath me the moaning hum of the motors and then we took the full strain. For a moment I felt the Hector swinging her head this way and that, as if eager to be off, and impatient of the burden behind her, and then called for full speed. The strain increased until I could feel her hull vibrate with hampered energy. Then, quite gradually it eased off, gave, and I knew that we were under way, and heading toward water so deep that our victim's anchors could not save her if she let them go. The two men who had been taking a short promenade backward and forward on the aft deck of the wrecker were plainly visible and for a few minutes no one aboard the captured craft seemed aware that she was in tow.