We were running awash and the Commander himself had taken charge of the vessel from the conning tower, which he never left. No one breakfasted; and no one complained. Each man was at his post or on his way to it. A touch of liveliness had penetrated even to the torpedo compartment. I tried in vain to obtain an inkling of what was occurring. I could get no reply, but as there was a considerable flow of champagne I had to drink my share. These people seemed, to use a well-known French expression, as if they were “giving themselves heart.” I wondered in a state of deep anxiety whether we had already overtaken the “Vengeance.”
Suddenly we stopped and submerged. Now we continued our way under water for some time and then broke surface again. And now we slipped out of sight once more. Fritz, who was not far from me, repeated in a loud voice the various commands. The three superior officers — I mean the guests — stood near him, without saying a word, motionless, their arms folded, obviously in an attitude of expectancy.
It occurred to me that they were manoeuvring against some merchant vessel and were getting ready to sink her in accordance with their submarine campaign. A torpedo was launched. Immediately there was a deathlike silence in the submarine. At the end of a few minutes we heard the sound of an explosion. And a wild hurrah swelled the breasts and issued from the throats of officers and men. The submarine must then have risked showing her periscope, for there was a shout, a sort of yell, which came from the conning tower: “Hurrah! Gott mit uns.”
A second torpedo and a second explosion followed. And the assassin vessel, certain of the success of her terrible work and no longer fearing for her own skin, rose to the surface once again. There was a rush for the deck. I followed as soon as there was room for me to mount the ladder. And I saw everything.
In the pale sunlight I saw the most terrible spectacle that it has ever been my lot to witness. About a cable’s length away a large vessel was slowly sinking. She was crowded with passengers who were in the state of delirium which seizes masses of people on whom the ruthless hand of death has suddenly fallen.
The two torpedoes had struck her abreast of the foredeck, and the watertight bulkheads must have been smashed like matchwood. Indeed the huge ship was already settling down by the bows, and I could see her being engulfed by degrees in the abyss, at an angle which drove the shrieking multitude of passengers and crew towards the stern.
There was a considerable swell on, but the ship’s boats which were lowered by order of the Captain whom I descried holding on to the port side of his bridge, might have been able to live in the sea had they not been loaded to excess, which was nearly always the case. Nevertheless I shall never forget a long-boat which managed, by some miracle, to keep afloat.
Suddenly the submarine vibrated from an explosion and a shell from one of her guns cut the long-boat in two. We were firing on the survivors who had taken to the boats! When I say “we” you will readily imagine of whom I am speaking; and there is no need for me to describe the condition of furious indignation which shook my whole being.
The ship which was in her death-throes — I became aware of it from the shouts of wild delight around me — was one of the latest mail steamers built on La Gironde. She had sailed from Bordeaux and was on her way to Buenos Ayres.
Our submarine must have been informed by wireless of the exact route taken by her, and received instructions to sink her in this ruthless manner.
And thus was explained the fierce elation which had taken possession of the crew some hours before the event.... But what can I say now of the insults and calumnies, the triumphant mockery which went up from the deck of our submarine?... The superior officers displayed the most dreadful example of cynicism....
And while the ship, in the midst of the wreckage and the drowning, sank deeper and deeper, the submarine circled round her with the greater number of her crew on deck, the officers congratulating themselves on their work... according to their custom... according to their custom.
The sailors sang Deutschland ueber alles. Some of them fired their revolvers at the wretched creatures who fell out of the ship’s boats and swam towards us, or who crossed our path and begged for mercy. I saw two women and three children drowning a few yards away from me. And as I instinctively made a movement, uselessly for that matter, to rescue them, I was in turn threatened with death by a sub-lieutenant to whom, on the spot, I vowed eternal hatred; and I could not resist satisfying my feelings when, a few minutes later, the opportunity presented itself.
And this is how the thing happened. The tragedy was nearing the end. The vessel’s boilers blew up with a terrible convulsion, and the sea opened to receive its prey.
Suddenly from the distant skyline, on the murky sea, a shape loomed up and moved swiftly and threateningly towards us. A report sounded and a shell caused a volume of water to spurt up a few yards away. Orders were hastily shouted. I heard the officers’ whistles; and the upper works of the submarine cleared as if by magic.
The miscreants bundled themselves back into their den, cursing and swearing.
The hatches were closed with wonderful celerity. So much so that the sub-lieutenant to whom I have referred was not quick enough to descend below, owing in part to the fact that I was somewhat busily employed. Observing the turn which events had taken, I determined to risk being drowned rather than remain the prisoner of a gang compared to whom Captain Hyx’s crew now appeared to me to possess very meritorious qualities. Yes, I would rather die with the victims than continue to drink champagne with the assassins.
Thus I let the crew disappear in a frantic rush in front of me. But when the sub-lieutenant laid hold of the main hatch, which was being closed, I laid hold of him, and he had to stay behind, for already we could hear the sound of the water pouring into the ballast tanks, and the submarine was plunging down under our feet.
I was much stronger than the sub-lieutenant who had made the mistake of returning his revolver to its holster. I seized him round the waist and deprived him of all power of movement; and we were in the water together.
When you are, like me, one of the champion swimmers on the Moselle — I was a champion swimmer when I was a boy of eight — it is, truth to tell, child’s play to drown a nice little Hun lieutenant like that particular specimen. The thing was soon over, and I really believe that I was not content to drown him but that I added to the drowning some measure of strangulation. But if that were so, it was done in the excitement of the moment. True, I cast aside my neutrality by that action, and may Heaven forgive me. But I was in the mood when I would have drowned all Von Tirpitz’s sailors and Von Treischke into the bargain if I had had the opportunity....
I was so fully intent on my work that I had no time to swim outside the eddies which were whirling above the submarine. Fortunately the thing did not last long, nor did I lose my presence of mind. When I came to the surface again, I was only a few strokes from the small vessel which had scared the submarine so quickly and effectively. The newcomer was devoting her attention to the rescue of the survivors who were still alive, and I was not the last to be picked up.
It was not long before I recognised that I was on board one of those French trawlers which carried on a ruthless warfare against submarines, either by means of steel nets, or by firing on them as soon as they came within range, or simply by steaming full speed at them in the hope of ramming them before they had the chance of crashing out of sight.
But what was my amazement and my delight when I recognised in the captain standing on the poop Gabriel himself — Dolores’ fiancé! I should hear news of Amalia.
CHAPTER XI
THE TRAWLER
I WAS EXHAUSTED and I fainted.
As soon as I opened my eyes again, I declared that I felt so well that I wanted to assist in the rescue work. The man who was bending over me, and who must have been an army surgeon, informed me that there was nothing further to be done, and that the trawler was already making for the coast so as to land the survivors of the catastrophe at one of the por
ts.
I asked to see the captain. But I was told that he was too much engaged at the moment to receive me. Accordingly, I went a few steps on the deck intending to offer my services to the wounded among the survivors. What a mournful spectacle it was!
The “Anne Marie,” for such was the trawler’s name, and she was stationed to Saint Jean-de-Luz, was crowded with a hopeless mass of shipwrecked humanity escaped from death. What a flow of tears! Into what depths of despair were plunged the hapless creatures who had lost someone dear to them — a child, a mother, a wife, a husband! And what maledictions on the Huns! It was in vain that I endeavoured to offer a consoling word. They did not listen. And, after all, what could be said to them that it would have been worth while to open one’s lips? They gave ear only to those who vowed eternal vengeance on their enemies.
I threaded my way as best I could to the ladder which led to the poop, hoping to hasten the moment when I should see Gabriel again and make myself known to him. I sat down on a step and while the crew were serving out hot drinks to the casualties around me, I was joined by the army surgeon. He was a man from Dinant, in Belgium, and had seen so much with his own eyes and heard so much with his own ears, that he had nothing to learn about the Hun character. As may readily be imagined the latest outrage of which he was a spectator in no way astonished him. He had seen what they were capable of doing on dry land before he became a witness of their atrocities on the sea.
At that moment he was in a state of exhaustion as a result of the attentions that he had lavished on the shipwrecked party, and he had just torn himself away from the harrowing cries of a mother who could not be induced to leave the bodies of her two young daughters, and who implored him to bring them back to life again, swearing that they were not dead and that he knew nothing about it....
“The most frightful thing,” said this man to me with tears in his eyes, “is that this hideous outrage will fill the world with horror for a few days, and afterwards, some people will ask: ‘Is there anything in what we hear about Hun atrocities?’”
When I learnt that over eight hundred passengers had perished through these felon blows I could not refrain from crying aloud to the astonishment of those who were near me:
“Captain Hyx is right.”
“I am beginning to think with you, my dear Monsieur Herbert of Renich,” said a voice behind me. I turned round and found myself in the presence of Gabriel, who asked after my health with the most friendly solicitude.
“Were you on board the ‘Lot-et-Gironde,’ my dear fellow?” he enquired as he warmly shook me by both hands. “I must confess that for a neutral you don’t seem to have much luck.”
“I have had much less luck than you imagine,” I replied in a low voice, “for I was not on board the ‘Lot-et-Gironde’ but, as a fact, on the submarine that torpedoed her.”
“That’s a mystery that you will be able to explain to me,” returned Gabriel, winking his eye and giving me to understand that he grasped my desire to keep the story between ourselves, and he went on: “In any case you can’t complain of fate which, seeing that you were between the ‘Lot-et-Gironde’ and the submarine, has landed you on board the ‘Anne Marie.’ Come with me to my store-room. We’ll drink your health and that of absent friends in a cocktail. We shall be quiet and can have a little chat.”
The steam trawler of which Gabriel was captain was not more, nor was it less, comfortable than other vessels of the same type built in the years before the war. I have no doubt that in her time she had caught multitudes of fish. But I imagine from the gossip which was current in the alley-ways of the “Vengeance,” that the “Anne Marie” on more than one occasion had served her young captain for another purpose. It was a purpose that necessitated an investigation of the most secret recesses of the cliffs in the Bay of Biscay from the French to the Spanish coast. But it was a dangerous work, if there ever was one, for it was contrary to law; but it was a marvellous school in which a man might, in peace time, learn something of the terrible and stealthy game of war.
And since it was war-time, with what delight and enthusiasm Gabriel must have welcomed certain special missions with which he was entrusted as soon as the southern seas were poisoned by the German submarine.
With what eagerness he must have kept under observation the secret replenishing bases, and fallen upon the sinister foe as soon as he came to the surface for a breath of fresh air. But with what regret he must have relinquished, for a few weeks, his glorious but splendidly tragic task of “sweeping the seas” when, to his amazement and through his love for Dolores, he was called away to meet her, a prisoner in Captain Hyx’s hands.... And now he had hoisted afresh his war pennon at “Anne Marie’s” foremast.... But what were his experiences since I saw him on the “Vengeance”? I wanted to know. I was not less curious to hear his story than he was to fathom the mysterious secret of my adventurous life.
He looked very smart in his sou’wester and in sea boots which came above the knees. His cheeks were glowing from the sea breezes; and there was colour in his complexion, and light in his blue eyes. And all this was the result of leaving the depths of the sea in which lurked cunning and crime and revenge without honour, to be actively at war again above the surface.
And with what sort of crew, my masters! There was no gold lace here, or very little. The “lads” were all very young or all very old, with faces like choir-boys or ancient warlocks with hairy chins. And the gunners looked as if they were the lineal descendants of those gunners of a king’s galley, when there were kings who had galleys, their copper-coloured filibustering features gleaming still with the light of conquest as they boarded the enemy.
The hold, in which formerly great catches of codfish, or some other marine spawn, were supposed to be piled up, was now filled to overflowing with mines and grenades and cases of shells. The deck on which great tunny-fish, netted in Spanish waters or on the coast of Portugal, used to be cured and laid out in symmetrical rows — it was necessary to satisfy the customs-house officer with an appearance of fishing — was now supporting a powerful artillery.
I made a few stumbling steps as the ship rolled, and I knocked my head a few times as she pitched — I had to be careful of seasickness for I was a sort of under-water sailor — and I cast an eye over the entire crew, and over all this combination of chance and enterprise hurled forth into the mists to fight or to die, or to save the shipwrecked victims of Hun atrocities.
The guns were painted a pale blue, which was the colour of the sky at that season of the year. Ready loaded they lay stretched out at their mountings and near them were the gunners who never left their posts day or night.
In the Captain’s store-room — how she pitched and rolled for a war vessel — and in the deck-houses where formerly telescopes and harpoons were hung up, implements of an entirely different character were stored, such as regulation revolvers and rifles.... Yes, upon my word, I pity Fritz when they get hold of him and that confounded Von Treischke whom they nearly captured with his submarine. They were within an ace... within an ace of it.
Cocktails in the store-room! However little one is accustomed to sea-trips and the favours of captains, one must certainly acknowledge that there is very little friendly intercourse with real sailors without the introduction of cocktails.... Sailors have different methods of mixing them, but generally speaking their drinks are invigorating and put heart into one.
CHAPTER XII
IN WHICH MENTION IS ONCE MORE MADE OF CERTAIN ISLANDS
WHILE WE WERE chatting and pledging each other, Gabriel placed his private wardrobe at my disposal, and I unblushingly accepted his last pair of socks and a knitted vest. They were all that remained to him. His sea-chests were empty. Everything else had been distributed to the shipwrecked. He was a man after my own heart.
“Do you know, Herbert of Renich, that Captain Hyx is furious with you?”
“Give me first of all,” I broke in, “news of Frau von Treischke.”
“I did no
t see her again. Events moved very quickly after your departure. I can merely tell you that when I left the ‘Vengeance,’ nothing more unpleasant had happened to that lady than you are already aware of.... As to Captain Hyx, he was in a state of gloomy rage with you, and swore that you should pay dearly for your escape, and for certain initiatives that you had taken which, I gathered, thwarted his plans. I must confess, for that matter, that I understood only a part of what he said, his language was so heated and so full of hidden meaning.”
“I am sorry,” I replied. “I quite understand him although I didn’t hear him.... There was a time,” I went on, “when I should have wondered at the hard fate which has turned loose upon me the resentment of certain formidable persons whose friendship I have never sought, but whose enmity I could have done without, but I am now a bit of a fatalist and nothing astonishes me. It is written that I can do nothing without drawing upon myself unpleasantness, and I can plainly see that I shall never have any peace until I’m dead....That’s the last resource of which I am beginning to think seriously. I have an idea about it that I want to explain to you presently.”
“You’re not going to commit suicide,” said Gabriel in a tone of commiseration.
“No; religion forbids it.... But before I deal with a subject on which I shall ask your advice, tell me how you escaped from your gaolers, and how it fares with Señorita Dolores.”
A slight shadow darkened Gabriel’s handsome face and he replied in a low voice:
“You know that at the time of the Cies Islands affair Dolores went ashore?”
“Do I know it!” I exclaimed. “Why, I saw her in the Cies Islands tending the wounded after some battle or other, and wearing the black cross.”
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 365