Danger! and Other Stories, Arthur Conan Doyle [most life changing books .txt] 📗

the end of our boat, though with our Fleuss cylinders and electric lamps we should have found no difficulty in getting out at the air-lock and in walking ashore across the bed of the ocean.  As it was, however, I was able, thanks to our excellent charts, to keep the channel and so to gain the open straits.  There we rose about midday, but, observing a hydroplane at no great distance, we sank again for half an hour.  When we came up for the second time, all was peaceful around us, and the English coast was lining the whole western horizon.  We kept outside the Goodwins and straight down Channel until we saw a line of black dots in front of us, which I knew to be the Dover-Calais torpedo-boat cordon.  When two miles distant we dived and came up again seven miles to the south-west, without one of them dreaming that we had been within thirty feet of their keels.

When we rose, a large steamer flying the German flag was within half a mile of us.  It was the North German Lloyd Altona, from New York to Bremen.  I raised our whole hull and dipped our flag to her.  It was amusing to see the amazement of her people at what they must have regarded as our unparalleled impudence in those English-swept waters.  They cheered us heartily, and the tricolour flag was dipped in greeting as they went roaring past us.  Then I stood in to the French coast.

It was exactly as I had expected.  There were three great British steamers lying at anchor in Boulogne outer harbour.  They were the Cæsar, the King of the East, and the Pathfinder, none less than ten thousand tons.  I suppose they thought they were safe in French waters, but what did I care about three-mile limits and international law!  The view of my Government was that England was blockaded, food contraband, and vessels carrying it to be destroyed.  The lawyers could argue about it afterwards.  My business was to starve the enemy any way I could.  Within an hour the three ships were under the waves and the Iota was streaming down the Picardy coast, looking for fresh victims.  The Channel was covered with English torpedo-boats buzzing and whirling like a cloud of midges.  How they thought they could hurt me I cannot imagine, unless by accident I were to come up underneath one of them.  More dangerous were the aeroplanes which circled here and there.

The water being calm, I had several times to descend as deep as a hundred feet before I was sure that I was out of their sight.  After I had blown up the three ships at Boulogne I saw two aeroplanes flying down Channel, and I knew that they would head off any vessels which were coming up.  There was one very large white steamer lying off Havre, but she steamed west before I could reach her.  I dare say Stephan or one of the others would get her before long.  But those infernal aeroplanes spoiled our sport for that day.  Not another steamer did I see, save the never-ending torpedo-boats.  I consoled myself with the reflection, however, that no food was passing me on its way to London.  That was what I was there for, after all.  If I could do it without spending my torpedoes, all the better.  Up to date I had fired ten of them and sunk nine steamers, so I had not wasted my weapons.  That night I came back to the Kent coast and lay upon the bottom in shallow water near Dungeness.

We were all trimmed and ready at the first break of day, for I expected to catch some ships which had tried to make the Thames in the darkness and had miscalculated their time.  Sure enough, there was a great steamer coming up Channel and flying the American flag.  It was all the same to me what flag she flew so long as she was engaged in conveying contraband of war to the British Isles.  There were no torpedo-boats about at the moment, so I ran out on the surface and fired a shot across her bows.  She seemed inclined to go on so I put a second one just above her water-line on her port bow.  She stopped then and a very angry man began to gesticulate from the bridge.  I ran the Iota almost alongside.

“Are you the captain?” I asked.

“What the—” I won’t attempt to reproduce his language.

“You have food-stuffs on board?” I said.

“It’s an American ship, you blind beetle!” he cried.  “Can’t you see the flag?  It’s the Vermondia, of Boston.”

“Sorry, Captain,” I answered.  “I have really no time for words.  Those shots of mine will bring the torpedo-boats, and I dare say at this very moment your wireless is making trouble for me.  Get your people into the boats.”

I had to show him I was not bluffing, so I drew off and began putting shells into him just on the water-line.  When I had knocked six holes in it he was very busy on his boats.  I fired twenty shots altogether, and no torpedo was needed, for she was lying over with a terrible list to port, and presently came right on to her side.  There she lay for two or three minutes before she foundered.  There were eight boats crammed with people lying round her when she went down.  I believe everybody was saved, but I could not wait to inquire.  From all quarters the poor old panting, useless war-vessels were hurrying.  I filled my tanks, ran her bows under, and came up fifteen miles to the south.  Of course, I knew there would be a big row afterwards—as there was—but that did not help the starving crowds round the London bakers, who only saved their skins, poor devils, by explaining to the mob that they had nothing to bake.

By this time I was becoming rather anxious, as you can imagine, to know what was going on in the world and what England was thinking about it all.  I ran alongside a fishing-boat, therefore, and ordered them to give up their papers.  Unfortunately they had none, except a rag of an evening paper, which was full of nothing but betting news.  In a second attempt I came alongside a small yachting party from Eastbourne, who were frightened to death at our sudden appearance out of the depths.  From them we were lucky enough to get the London Courier of that very morning.

It was interesting reading—so interesting that I had to announce it all to the crew.  Of course, you know the British style of headline, which gives you all the news at a glance.  It seemed to me that the whole paper was headlines, it was in such a state of excitement.  Hardly a word about me and my flotilla.  We were on the second page.  The first one began something like this:—

CAPTURE OF BLANKENBERG!

* * * * *

destruction of enemy’s fleet

* * * * *

burning of town

* * * * *

trawlers destroy mine field
loss of two battleships

* * * * *

is it the end?

Of course, what I had foreseen had occurred.  The town was actually occupied by the British.  And they thought it was the end!  We would see about that.

On the round-the-corner page, at the back of the glorious resonant leaders, there was a little column which read like this:—

HOSTILE SUBMARINES

Several of the enemy’s submarines are at sea, and have inflicted some appreciable damage upon our merchant ships.  The danger-spots upon Monday and the greater part of Tuesday appear to have been the mouth of the Thames and the western entrance to the Solent.  On Monday, between the Nore and Margate, there were sunk five large steamers, the Adela, Moldavia, Cusco, Cormorant, and Maid of Athens, particulars of which will be found below.  Near Ventnor, on the same day, was sunk the Verulam, from Bombay.  On Tuesday the Virginia, Cæsar, King of the East, and Pathfinder were destroyed between the Foreland and Boulogne.  The latter three were actually lying in French waters, and the most energetic representations have been made by the Government of the Republic.  On the same day The Queen of Sheba, Orontes, Diana, and Atalanta were destroyed near the Needles.  Wireless messages have stopped all ingoing cargo-ships from coming up Channel, but unfortunately there is evidence that at least two of the enemy’s submarines are in the West.  Four cattle-ships from Dublin to Liverpool were sunk yesterday evening, while three Bristol-bound steamers, The Hilda, Mercury, and Maria Toser, were blown up in the neighbourhood of Lundy Island.  Commerce has, so far as possible, been diverted into safer channels, but in the meantime, however vexatious these incidents may be, and however grievous the loss both to the owners and to Lloyd’s, we may console ourselves by the reflection that since a submarine cannot keep the sea for more than ten days without refitting, and since the base has been captured, there must come a speedy term to these depredations.”

So much for the Courier’s account of our proceedings.  Another small paragraph was, however, more eloquent:—

“The price of wheat, which stood at thirty-five shillings a week before the declaration of war, was quoted yesterday on the Baltic at fifty-two.  Maize has gone from twenty-one to thirty-seven, barley from nineteen to thirty-five, sugar (foreign granulated) from eleven shillings and threepence to nineteen shillings and sixpence.”

“Good, my lads!” said I, when I read it to the crew.  “I can assure you that those few lines will prove to mean more than the whole page about the Fall of Blankenberg.  Now let us get down Channel and send those prices up a little higher.”

All traffic had stopped for London—not so bad for the little Iota—and we did not see a steamer that was worth a torpedo between Dungeness and the Isle of Wight.  There I called Stephan up by wireless, and by seven o’clock we were actually lying side by side in a smooth rolling sea—Hengistbury Head bearing N.N.W. and about five miles distant.  The two crews clustered on the whale-backs and shouted their joy at seeing friendly faces once more.  Stephan had done extraordinarily well.  I had, of course, read in the London paper of his four ships on Tuesday, but he had sunk no fewer than seven since, for many of those which should have come to the Thames had tried to make Southampton.  Of the seven, one was of twenty thousand tons, a grain-ship from America, a second was a grain-ship from the Black Sea, and two others were great liners from South Africa.  I congratulated Stephan with all my heart upon his splendid achievement.  Then as we had been seen by a destroyer which was approaching at a great pace, we both dived, coming up again off the Needles, where we spent the night in company.  We could not visit each other, since we had no boat, but we lay so nearly alongside that we were able, Stephan and I, to talk from hatch to hatch and so make our plans.

He had shot away more than half his torpedoes, and so had I, and yet we were very averse from returning to our base so long as our oil held out.  I told him of my experience with the Boston steamer, and we mutually agreed to sink the ships by gun-fire in future so far as possible.  I remember old Horli saying, “What use is a gun aboard a submarine?”  We were about to