Dave Darrin and the German Submarines. Or, Making a Clean-up of the Hun Sea Monsters

CHAPTER XVIII – DANNY GRIN PROVES HIS METTLE

With her boats secure, and all hands, including the recent “lady passengers,” on board once more without loss, the battered-looking “Prince” turned on her way.

All that day she sailed, yet found no submarine confiding enough to rise and take a chance at her shabby-looking hull.

“Of course there is one big chance you have to take,” said Darry, at dinner in the ward-room that night, “and that is the danger that a submarine will think this old hulk worthy of sinking by means of a torpedo.”

“No sub will shoot a torpedo at us,” rejoined Dalzell, “if she once gets a look at us. A torpedo costs a small fortune, while a shell or two cost nothing by comparison. The idea in sending out a trap-craft like the ‘Prince’ is that no German naval officer would think of throwing away a torpedo on her.”

“Of course,” Dave admitted, “the greatest danger is that a German shell, fired above water, will cripple you and put you out of business.”

“It’s a sporting chance, to be sure,” Dan admitted.

“If your engines were stopped by a shell, and you couldn’t maneuver for position, and therefore couldn’t use your guns, and a German submarine crew took you prisoners, the sight of your guns would insure that all hands on board would die painful but sure deaths.”

“It’s that sporting element of risk that makes the game so pleasant,” Dan retorted.

His junior officers chuckled.

“I’m glad you all take it the way you do,” was Dave’s cordial rejoinder. “It adds a lot to your chances of success.”

“And just what do you think our chances are?” Dan pressed home. At this the junior officers listened eagerly, for Darrin’s sound judgment was fast becoming a tradition in the Navy.

“Your chances,” Dave declared, “are that you probably will sink several submarines. Then, one of these days, you’ll either get the unlooked-for torpedo, or else you’ll meet a master in strategy or gunfire, and you’ll go to the bottom – and another bright plan will be given up by the Allies. But I hope you’ll do a huge lot of damage before the probable end comes.”

That night the “Prince” prowled the seas, and when Darrin awoke in the morning she was headed toward her home port, that time might not be wasted to the westward of the locality where German submarines were likely to operate against merchantmen.

Nor had Dave taken more than one look overboard before he discovered that the “Prince” now lay much lower in the water.

“Our water ballast tanks are filled,” Dan explained. “That gives us the appearance of being heavily loaded, as with American wheat, for instance.”

“Soldiers, wheat and ammunition are the things the Germans most enjoy sending to the bottom,” Dave nodded. “Really, it is too bad that this seeming old tub doesn’t look good enough to carry troops.”

“Oh, I think that even as a cargo tramp we’ll draw the fire of any submarine whose commander gets a glimpse of us,” Dan replied.

Within ten minutes after he had said it a submarine rose, fifteen hundred yards away, and, without firing, signalled to the “Prince” to lie to.

Almost instantly “Abandon ship” shrieked from the steam whistle, and the early performance of the day before was gone through with. After the boats had started away, bearing sailors and men and “women” passengers, the submarine came up closer.

All in a jiffy the ports were opened and all three shells from the starboard battery landed in the enemy hull. There was no fight after that, the submersible sinking before any of the crew could get clear to save themselves.

“Do you begin to see the joke?” demanded Danny Grin, grimly. “Are you prepared to join in the laugh at the Germans?”

“If the ‘Prince’ continues her good work for a fortnight,” smiled Dave Darrin, “the ocean will be a lot safer place for American troopships.”

“I’m beginning to feel,” Dan remarked, “that I can highly endorse the intelligence of those who sent me out on this errand.”

“The errand is a good one, anyway,” Darrin laughed, teasingly.

The rest of the day passed without other incident than the appearance of two destroyers, one British and one American. Each of these war craft signalled to ask if convoy were desired, to which Dan signalled a courteous, “No, thank you.”

“Won’t those chaps feel sold when they learn, if they ever do, what kind of an outfit they wanted to protect?” Dan chuckled.

Just before dawn, next morning, Dalzell was roused from a nap and called to the bridge.

“Gun-fire dead ahead, sir,” reported Ensign Stark. “Don’t you make out the flashes, sir?”

“Yes,” nodded Dalzell, after he had taken and used the proffered glass. “Some one is catching it, but is the victim a steamship, or is it a submarine that some destroyer has overhauled? Oh, for just sixty seconds I’d like to have our wireless rigged!”

Ensign Stark had already ordered the speed increased, and so reported, but Danny Grin, as he heard the firing, seized the engine-room telephone and ordered all speed possible crowded on.

Thus he swept along, without lights, until within a mile of the bright-red flashes, which he could now see without the aid of a glass.

At this point speed was reduced to eight knots and the “Prince” moved along more moderately.

“What is it ahead?” asked Dave Darrin, who had just turned out and come briskly up to the bridge.

“It’s a one-sided fight,” Dan answered, “but I don’t know the kind of craft. Undoubtedly one is a submarine. She can’t have been very seriously hit, either, or the firing would be ended.”

“You have a searchlight?”

“Yes, but with the strictest orders not to use it except to save ship and crew,” was Dan’s answer.

Soon after, despite the darkness, the chums were able to make out a steamship ahead, heeled well over to port. And the flashes of a gun were so close to the water as to indicate that a submarine was firing, even before its outlines could be made out.

“The cowardly hounds!” blazed Dave, indignantly. “They’ve got that ship sinking, and all they’re doing is terrorizing the poor wretches aboard by slow, systematic murder!”

“I’ll get them as soon as I have light enough for a gunner’s sight,” muttered Dan Dalzell. Calling a boatswain’s mate under the bridge, he directed him to hoist a Norwegian flag at the stern, and to bend and hoist the signal:

“We wish to save crew and passengers.”

“And that’s the truth, too, though perhaps not all of it,” snorted Dalzell, all of whose fighting blood had been aroused by the cowardly proceeding going on ahead.

In hoisting the Norwegian flag he was wholly within his rights as a naval commander. Under international law a naval commander is entitled to hoist any neutral or belligerent flag, including even that of the enemy, in order to maneuver into fighting position. But, before he can fire a shot, the commander must hoist the flag that he actually sails under.

In this instance Dan would give the “Prince” the assumed character of a neutral merchant ship that desired to play a humane part. No real Norwegian skipper would have been likely to take such a chance, as it would only have invited the destruction of his craft.

Dawn came quickly now. With the first streaks Dan ran up the signal and sailed daringly in. The submarine, which lay ahead, had ceased firing. The doomed ship took the plunge and vanished, but in three boats and on six rafts a frightened lot of men and women were seeking to get away from Death.

“Lie to and abandon ship!” signalled the German commander, as soon as the presence of the “Prince” was made out.

But Dan, with the range, took the bull boldly by the horns. Opening ports in a jiffy, and with gun crews at quarters on both starboard and port, he gave the firing order.

“Give ’em ‘Chermany over all,’ and put it all over them!” commanded Danny Grin savagely.

Three shells left the starboard battery before the astounded German commander had realized that it was a fighting craft that menaced him.

Two of the shells flew over, striking the water beyond, but the third crashed through the plates of the conning tower, exploding inside and blowing off part of the top of the tower.

No sooner had the guns been fired than Dalzell changed the course to bring the port battery into play.

“Give ’em ‘Chermany over all’ all over again!” roared Danny Grin’s voice. “Oh, it’s a great game, don’d it?”

A laugh rose from below, but that laugh was drowned by the joint crash of all the guns of the port battery. Another shell entered the submarine’s tower, and two struck the hull, inflicting more deadly damage.

And now a machine gun began to play over the hull of the sea monster, sending such a storm of bullets that one had to admire the courage – or was it despair? – of a German officer who dared the leaden tempest and sprang from the tower with a white flag, signalling surrender.

“Cease firing!” roared Dalzell through a megaphone. “But load and stand by ready for some German brand of treachery.”

Undoubtedly the German officer knew that he stood under the muzzles of loaded guns. His face white and set, he signalled his offer to surrender.

“We’ll accept you as prisoners if you act honestly,” was signalled back by Dan’s order. “But we’ll blow you into the air if you try to play a single trick on us.”

Acting under further orders a collapsible boat was put over the side of the submarine. The captain, the second-in-command and the engineer officer came over to the “Prince” on the first trip, two men returning with the boat to bring other prisoners. In the meantime the rafts and boats from the sunken ship were turning back to the rescuer.

Barely more than half of the Germans had been gotten clear of the submarine when that unlucky craft foundered. Two survivors were picked up from the sea, but the rest went down into the great salt-water grave.

“Periscope on the port quarter!” rang a lookout’s hail.

Dalzell rushed to the port end of the bridge, glass to his eyes.

Yes, there was the tell-tale tube above water, some eight hundred yards away, the sun shining on the water drops that clung to it.

“Periscope on the starboard quarter!”

Dan performed a sprint to the starboard end of the bridge, to find the news only too true, though the periscope vanished within a second or two after he had sighted it.

“’Ware torpedo, on port quarter!”

Moving like a jumping-jack, Dan’s right hand reached for the lever of the engine-room telegraph. Half-speed ahead! Full speed!

“’Ware torpedo on starboard quarter!”

There was no time to observe the torpedo wake traveling toward the “Prince.” Dalzell’s orders were based on what he had seen of the locations of the two periscopes.

A sharp, oblique turn to starboard, then a further turn just as the propellers began to kick at full speed.

Both torpedoes passed astern, their courses crossing. The maneuver brought the tramp around so that the starboard battery could now be trained on the submersible to the southward.

Her commander, taking desperate chances, rose to the surface to open with his forward gun.

Fatal mistake! Only one gun barked from the “Prince’s” starboard battery, tearing a hole in the Hun’s hull. And now Dalzell completed the turn to give his full attention to the remaining submarine. She, commanded by a more cautious man, had vanished.

Not for long, however, for a line on the water revealed the wake made by the conning tower as she headed straight for the “Prince.”

Again Dan’s orders rapped out. The seeming tramp steamer, developing a speed that could not have been looked for, maneuvered so as to run, bow-on, at the submersible.

The craft to the southward was sinking, but the one to the northward was coming straight. A light streak on the water shot out in advance of her while the “Prince” was making her turn. Seeing that he was bound to miss, the Hun commander let loose with his other tube. The “Prince” completed her maneuver, and now showed only her bow to the enemy, her hull standing away in a straight line between the courses of the two torpedoes, which dashed on by her and were lost in the distance.

As the craft were rapidly nearing each other, Dan, by the aid of his marine glass, located exactly the beginning, or nearer end, of the conning tower’s wake.

“She may submerge and come up astern of you!” muttered Dave Darrin.

“We’ll see!” ground out Dalzell, between his teeth, still holding the glass to his eyes.

There was no question of getting the range, for the two craft were lessening the distance, altering it, every second that passed.

Still Dan headed on, knowing that the enemy could submerge and change her course at greater depth.

“I’ve got only one chance in a million to get that rascal!” Dalzell growled to his chum.

“And apparently the enemy has all the other chances in the million – but it’s a great game!” cried Dave Darrin.

Dan held on steadily, his motto “Win or sink!”

CHAPTER XIX – A GERMAN VIEW OF SUBMARINES

Suddenly the Hun craft, as indicated by the trail of bubbles in her wake, made an oblique turn, going off to Dan’s port. But Dan kept on, shouting down to the spar deck:

“Stand by the port guns! Not a shot unless ordered!”

A moment or two and the submersible, as indicated by the bubbles on the water, had turned head-on again coming close to the surface. She was now in position to deliver two torpedoes.

It was the moment for which Dan had waited.

“Let go with all three guns, port battery!” he yelled. “Rapid fire.”

Three jets of smoke and flame shot out from as many muzzles. The gun crews rushed to reload.

“One hit!” shouted Dan. “Again!”

“Two hits – and she’s done for!” yelled Dan, joyously, as he scanned the water. “Good work, men!”

The hits had been made by guess, except for the guidance of the wake, while the submarine ran barely submerged. Even Dalzell’s report of hits had been based on appearances. But now the “Prince,” plowing on her way, steamed into a patch of oil-strewn water and out of it again.

“I’ll be satisfied if there is no more fighting in this day’s work,” Dan confessed, mopping the icy perspiration from his forehead.

“Danny-boy, you’ve done a big enough day’s work to satisfy the greediest of fighters!” cried Dave, gripping his chum’s hand.

“Now we’ll look after the prisoners, and pick up the survivors from the wrecked steamship,” proposed Dan.

Then, as he glanced out forward, where a small, sullen German mob stood scowling under guard of armed sailors, he added:

“In view of what we’ve seen to-day I’m sorry we have so many prisoners.”

“Dan, that’s not humane,” rebuked Dave.

“I don’t feel humane,” Dan admitted, simply. “What I’ve seen to-day has made my blood hot. I’d be willing to let go, with both batteries, at the whole German people.”

“Thank goodness you can’t do it,” laughed Darrin. “You’ll cool down soon, Danny.”

Putting back, Dan ran the “Prince” toward the boats and rafts from the sunken steamship. While overhauling them he went down from the bridge and approached the German prisoners.

“Who was the commander of this outfit?” Dalzell inquired, in English, of course.

“I was, and am,” replied a scowling German officer.

“Your name?”

“Sparnheim!”

“Then, Sparnheim, all I have to say to you is that you may have been commander, but now you’ll take orders, instead of giving them. Do you feel any shame for what you did to that steamship?”

“I don’t,” was the frowning answer. “I attacked enemies of Germany and of the Kaiser!”

“What did the women in the boats yonder do to Germany, or the Kaiser?” Dan demanded.

“They sailed the sea, at least,” retorted Sparnheim.

“Is that a crime?”

“But the German government had warned all passengers from the sea!”

“Under the impression that the German government owned the sea?” Dalzell demanded, ironically. “To-day’s work, so soon after light and sunrise, must have shown you that others have something to do with the control of the sea. Three of your accursed submarines have gone to the bottom.”

“Yes, through your treachery!” hissed the German officer.

“Treachery?” Dan asked, with a hard smile.

“Yes; you hoisted a flag that does not belong to you.”

“We fired under our own flag. That is a right recognized by the nations.”

“It was treachery, just the same,” insisted the German. “You were afraid of us, so you took a cowardly advantage.”

“Treachery! Cowardly advantage!” Dalzell repeated, in disgust. “We destroyed your craft. But did you not try to destroy ours? Cowardly advantage? Of what use would submarines be to your people if you scorned taking cowardly advantage? Sparnheim, you are paid as a German officer?”

“To be sure,” admitted the other.

“Then you are making your living as an assassin – as a cowardly murderer. And the nation that employs you is no better than you are, but a partner in your crimes.”

“It is not true! We are not murderers, not criminals!” raged the prisoner. “We fight that Germany may live!”

“If she must live by such cowardly work as is done by her submarines, then she does not deserve to live,” Dan retorted. “I am not going to take advantage of your helplessness. I regard you as a man with a lost soul, and to that extent I am sorry for you. I wanted your view of your crimes, and could not forbear to express my own opinions. We know each other’s views, and do not need to talk further.”

The “Prince” had lain to again, for now she had overtaken the first of the boats from the foundered steamship. A gangway had been lowered and the men and women who had taken to the small boats were now coming up over the side.

“Which animal among them commanded the craft that sunk our ship?” demanded a woman hoarsely, as she eyed the sullen Germans. Dan pointed out Sparnheim.

“You killed several men and two women and a baby!” cried the woman, pointing an accusing finger at the quivering Sparnheim. “The baby was mine! One of the men that you murdered was my husband! May you never know another moment of happiness!”

Beside herself, she tried to spring past the sailor guards to attack the fellow with her own hands.

Darrin came along just in time to take hold of one of her arms.

“Come, madam,” he urged, soothingly, “do not foul your hands by touching such a beast.”

“I wish I could have him hanged – the murderer!” cried the woman, passionately.

“I am more cruel than you, then, madam,” Dave continued, as he led her away step by step, “for I would have the wretch live a long life. No matter how long he lives his ears must be filled with the shrieks of dying women and children. He must hear the cries of the drowning and th