The Diary of a U-boat Commander - Sir King-Hall Stephen (best novels to read txt) 📗

had had more practice. I bit his head off. I can’t stand this hail-fellow-well-met attitude in these U.C. boats, from any lout dressed in an officer’s uniform. They wouldn’t be holding commissions if it wasn’t for the war, and they should remember that fact. I suppose they think I’m stand-offish. Well, if they had my family tree behind them they would understand.

We dived to sixty feet, and then came up to twenty. Alten looked through the periscope, and then invited me to look. Curiosity impelled me to accept this favour and, putting the focussing lever to “skyscrape” I swept round the sky.

At last I saw him; he was a small gas-bag of diminutive size, beneath which was suspended a little car, the most ridiculous little travesty of an airship I have ever seen. He was nosing along at about 800 feet and making about 40 knots.

Suddenly he must have seen the wake of our periscope, for he turned towards us. Simultaneously Alten, from the conning tower (I was using the other periscope in the control room), ordered the boat to sixty feet, and put the helm hard over.

We had turned sixteen points, [1] and in about two minutes heard a series of reports right astern of us. It was evident that our ruse had succeeded and that he had overshot the mark.

[Footnote 1: 180�]

Inside the boat one felt a slight jar as each bomb went off.

We gradually came round to our proper course, and cruised all day submerged at dead slow speed. Every time we lifted our periscope he was still hanging about sufficiently close to make it foolish for us to come to the surface.

Towards noon a group of trawlers, doubtless summoned by wireless, appeared, and proceeded to wander about. These seemed to concern Alten far more than the airship, and he informed me that from their, to me, aimless movements he deduced they were hunting for us by hydroplanes. Occasionally we lay on the bottom in nineteen fathoms.

By 4 p.m. the atmosphere was becoming rather unpleasant and hot, and gradually we took off more clothes. Curiously enough, I longed for a smoke, but wild horses would not have made me ask Alten for permission.

At 8 p.m. it was sufficiently dark to enable us to rise, which gave me great pleasure, though the first rush of fresh air down the hatch made me vomit after hours of breathing the vitiated muck. On coming to the surface we saw nothing in sight, but a breeze had sprung up which caused spray to break over the bridge as we chugged along at 9 knots.

Everyone was in high spirits, as always on the return journey, when the mind turns to the Fatherland and all it holds.

My mind turns to Zoe. I confess it to myself frankly. I hardly realized to what extent this woman had begun to influence me until we received the wireless signal ordering us to delay entering for twelve hours. The receipt of this news, trivial though the delay has been, threw a mantle of gloom over the crew. I participated in the depression and, upon thought, rather wondered that this should be so. Self-analysis on the lines laid down by Schessmanweil [1] revealed to me that the basis of my annoyance is the fact that my next meeting with Zoe is deferred! I feel instinctively that I shall have trouble here, and that I had better haul off a lee shore whilst there is manoeuvring room, and yet—and yet I secretly rejoice that every revolution of the propeller, every clank and rattle of the Diesels brings us closer together.

[Footnote 1: Apparently some German author, of obscure origin, as I cannot find him in any book of reference.—ETIENNE.]

Alten has just come down from the bridge, and we chatted for some moments; it is evident that he wishes to apologize for his rudeness over the smoking incident.

I was in error, I admit it frankly; at the same time I did not know that the battery was on charge, and to dash a match from my hand! I could have shot him where he stood. However, I am not vindictive, and as far as I am concerned the incident is ended.

One thing I find trying in this small boat, and that is that I can find no space in which to do half my M�ller exercises, the leg-and-arm-swinging ones. I must see whether I can’t invent a set of U-boat exercises!

Good! in two hours we reach the Mole-end light buoy.

 

*

 

Submarine Mess, Bruges.

 

It is midnight, and as I write in my room at the top of the house the low rumble of the guns from the southwest vibrates faintly through the open window, for it is extraordinarily warm for the time of year, and I have flung back the curtains and risked the light shining.

We spent the night at Zeebrugge and came up to the docks here next day. We shall probably be in for a week, and I am on four days’ “extended absence from the boat,” which practically means that I can go where I like in the neighbourhood provided I am handy to a telephone.

After a short inward struggle I rang Zoe up on the telephone; fortunately I did not call first.

A man’s voice answered, and for a moment I was dumbfounded. I guessed at once it was the Colonel, and I had counted so confidently on his being still away at the front.

For an instant I felt speechless, an impulse came to me to ring off without further ado, but I restrained myself, and then a fine idea came into my head.

“Who is that?” I said.

“Colonel Stein!” replied the voice, and my fears were confirmed, but my plan of campaign held good.

“I am speaking,” I continued, “on behalf of Lieutenant Von Schenk–-”

“Ah, yes!” growled the voice, and for an instant a panic seized me, but I resumed:

“He met Madame Stein at dinner some days ago, and she kindly asked him to call; he has asked me to ring up and inquire when it would be convenient, as he would like to meet you, sir, as well. He has been unable to ring up himself, as he was sent away from Bruges on duty early this morning.”

I smiled to myself at this little lie and listened.

“Your friend had better call tomorrow then, for I leave tomorrow evening for the Somme front; will you tell him?”

I replied that I would, and left the telephone well satisfied, but cursing the fates that made it advisable to keep clear of No. 10, Kafelle Strasse for thirty-six hours. Needless to say next day I rang up again in order to tell the Colonel that Lieutenant Schenk had apparently been detained, as he was not yet back in Bruges, and how I felt sure that he would be sorry at missing the Colonel, etc., etc., but all this camouflage was unnecessary, as she herself came to the ‘phone. I could have kissed the instrument when I told her of my stratagem and heard her silvery laughter in my ear.

“It is arranged that tomorrow, starting at 10.30, we motor for the day to the Forest of Meten, taking our lunch and tea with us—pray Heaven the weather holds.”

Tonight in the Mess it is generally considered that U.B.40 has been lost; she is ten days overdue and was operating off Havre, she has made no signal for a fortnight. Such is the price of victory and the cost of war—death, perhaps, in some terrible form, but bah! away with such thoughts, tomorrow there is love and life and Zoe!

 

*

 

Once more it is night, still the guns rumble on the same old dismal tones, and as it is raining now it must be getting bad up at the front. Except for the rain it might have been last night, but much has happened to me in the meanwhile.

To-day in the forest by Ruysslede I found that I loved Zoe, loved her as I have never yet loved woman, loved her with my soul and all that is me.

The day was gloriously fine when we started, and an hour’s run took us to the forest. We left the car at an inn and wandered down one of the glades.

I carried the basket and we strolled on and on until we found a suitable place deep in the heart of the forest.

I have the sailor’s love for woods, for their depths, their shadows, their mysteries, which are so vivid a contrast to the monotony of the sea, with the everlasting circle of the horizon and the half-bowl of the heavens above.

In the forest to-day, though the leaves had turned to gold and red and brown, the beeches were still well covered, and overhead we were tented with a russet canopy.

I say, at last we found a spot, or rather Zoe, who, with girlish pleasure in the adventure, had run ahead, called to me, and as I write I seem to hear the echoes of “Karl! Karl!” which rang through the wood. When I came up to her she proudly pointed to the place she had found.

It was ideal. An outcrop of rock formed a miniature Matterhorn in the forest, and beneath its shelter with the old trees as silent witnesses we sat and joked and laughed, and made twenty attempts to light a fire.

After lunch, a little incident happened which had an enormous effect on me; Zoe asked me whether I would mind if she smoked.

How many women in these days would think of doing that? And yet, had she but known it, I am still sufficiently old-fashioned to appreciate the implied respect for any possible prejudices which was contained in her request.

After lunch, I asked her a question to which I dreaded the answer.

I asked her whether, now that the old Colonel had gone to the Somme, whether that meant that she would be leaving Bruges.

She laughed and teasingly said: “Quien sabe, se�or,” but seeing my real anxiety on this point, she assured me that she was not leaving for the present. The Colonel, she said, had a strange belief that once a man had served on the Flanders Front, and especially on the Ypres salient, he always came back to die there.

It appears that the Colonel has done fourteen months’ service on the salient alone, and is firmly convinced he will end his career on that great burial ground. As we were talking about the Colonel I longed to ask her how she had met him, and perhaps find out why she lives with him, for I cannot believe she loves him, but I did not dare.

Strangely enough I found that a curious shyness had taken hold of me with regard to Zoe.

I said to myself, “Fool! you are alone with her, you long to kiss her; you have kissed her, first at the dinner-party, secondly when you said goodbye at her flat,” and yet to-day it was different.

Then I was kissing a pretty woman, I was on the eve of a dangerous life, and I was simply extracting the animal pleasures whilst I lived.

To-day it was a case of Zoe, the personality I loved; I still longed to kiss her, but I wanted to have the unquestioned right to kiss her, as much as I wanted the kisses.

I wanted to have her for my own, away from the contaminating ownership of the old Colonel, and I determined to get her.

I think she noticed the changed attitude on my part, and perhaps she felt herself that a subtle change in our relationship had taken