Читать книгу Kerrell - Henry Taprell Dorling - Страница 7

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IT was some minutes after eight-thirty that Toby, after a hurried breakfast, and having been round the guns and seen everything correct, returned to the bridge.

The four ships of the enemy, fine on the starboard bow, were clearly visible over the horizon, steaming at full speed for home with a dense reek pouring from their funnels. He could hardly restrain a shout of joy when he realized their distance had diminished. They were gradually being overhauled.

The Libyan was more or less in company with the entire Harwich Force of three light-cruisers and thirty-three destroyers. As the successive increases in speed had been made, however, the slower and older destroyers, though straining every effort to keep up, were gradually lagging astern.

A few miles to the south-eastward, steaming at twenty-six knots on a course parallel to, but on the starboard quarter of, the enemy, were the five British battle-cruisers, their turret guns at full elevation ready to open fire at extreme range. Already they were travelling faster than the designed speed of the two rear ships, the New Zealand and Indomitable, which had dropped astern of station and were pounding along in the wake of their newer consorts with black smoke rolling in clouds from their funnels.

Some distance to the northward, the four ships of the First Light Cruiser Squadron, headed by the Southampton, were also in chase.

“We seem to be gaining,” said Kerrell breathlessly, peering at the distant shapes of the enemy through his binoculars.

“We are,” Hendry agreed, and more cheerfully than usual. “The fun won’t be long in starting now.—Take her over for a bit, first-lieutenant,” he went on to say. “I want to snatch a mouthful of food in the chart-house. We’re going a shade over twenty-six, and you’ll find she’ll steer easier if you keep out of the wake of the next ahead. Be careful, though. She wants watching at this speed.”

Twenty-seven knots, twenty-eight, and twenty-nine were signalled in rapid succession from the Lion. Yard by yard the range of the flying enemy diminished—from 27,000 yards to 24,000, and from 24,000 to 22,000, or eleven sea miles. The Lion, Tiger, and Princess Royal were drawing well ahead of the two older ships. With his three faster vessels the admiral evidently intended to engage the rear of the enemy’s line.

It was at about ten minutes to nine, at the range of 20,000 yards, that a great red flash and a billowing cloud of tawny cordite smoke broke out from the Lion’s fore turret as one of her 13.5-inch guns opened fire. The reverberating concussion of the report brought Hendry out of the chart-house and on to the bridge.

The range seemed prodigious and the target absurdly small as, for what seemed æons of time, they watched for the projectile to pitch. At last it fell, its huge pillar of white water rising gracefully into the air some distance short of the enemy’s rearmost ship and high above her mastheads. It was merely a trial shot to test the range.

The Lion fired again, and this time the shell dropped into the water beyond its target, the Blücher. The British flagship thereupon opened a slow and deliberate fire. Soon after nine o’clock she scored her first hit, which was greeted with a cheer by the Libyan’s men, numbers of whom had collected on the forecastle and were loudly criticizing each sound.

It was the first time Kerrell had even seen a really heavy shell drive home on an enemy. He had expected something rather spectacular, a huge splash of flame and a mass of smoke and up-flung debris. Instead, there was merely a dull red glow and a hardly discernible puff of brown smoke which soon dispersed. It seemed absurd that nearly a ton of metal and high explosive could strike with so little commotion. The shell plunging into the sea and wasting their substance upon nothing were so far more interesting to look at.

As the range steadily diminished the Lion shifted her target to the third ship in the hostile line, while the Tiger and Princess Royal, coming into action, concentrated upon the Blücher, which was hit repeatedly.

“Lord!” Hendry exclaimed, as the German vessel’s hull occasionally disappeared behind tall pillars of spray, and then came into view again shrouded in clouds of reddish-brown smoke through which appeared tongues of darting flame from her own guns. “Just look at her!”

Kerrell could hear the men on the forecastle cheering and applauding each lucky shot. It was perfectly natural that they should, for here was their enemy. All the same, those who watched from a distance could by no means visualize what was happening in that sorely battered ship. Had they been able to do so, they would have been wrung by pity and remorse.

The Blücher’s men, with suspense clawing at their hearts, had been watching those spray fountains coming nearer and nearer, this side and that, until the first shell hit and burst with a crash which caused the whole ship to tremble. Then they started to come in droves, whinnying through the air, tearing their way through armoured decks like paper, and exploding far below to ignite and scatter the very coal in the bunkers, to fling blazing oil in all directions in flames of blue and green and gold. The dynamos were destroyed, so that the interior of the ship was plunged into darkness. Loose fittings were hurled from side to side, watertight doors weighing tons wrenched from their hinges by the air pressure, bulkheads perforated by splinters and buckled and twisted like cardboard. And in the midst of this hell men were slowly being burnt to death, torn in pieces, blinded, scalded, suffocated, hideously mutilated. Lucky were those who were killed outright.

When the Lion’s first shell went home the enemy returned the fire, at first slowly, then as they found the range, with greater rapidity. For a time the British flagship was the target for three Germans, and as Kerrell watched he saw one great shell splash after another erupting out of the sea all round her, towering high above her mastheads.

Time and time again she was all but blotted out in the turmoil, to reappear with her guns flashing defiance. Several times, however, he noticed the dull glow and tell-tale smoke puffs of hostile shell. A hit on the foremost turret seemed to have disabled one of the guns, for it no longer fired.

The engagement had become general, and presently, steaming at their utmost speed, the British battle-cruisers were forming on a line of bearing to avoid the interference to gunfire caused by smoke and shell splashes. The New Zealand, thanks to the almost superhuman efforts of her engineers, had managed to overtake the others; but the old Indomitable was over three miles astern. It was about now that the Blücher, burning fiercely and her speed considerably reduced by damage, fell out of the line.

While the air shook and trembled to the continuous discharge of heavy guns, Kerrell had a feeling of intense resentment that the Libyan was taking no part in the action. Things were happening all round them. Men were shooting and being shot at. Great ships were in hot action, yet, so far as the destroyers were concerned, they might have been doing a full-power trial in peacetime. And from now on it was rather like being at a theatre. There was so much going on, so much to look at, that his impressions, vivid though they were, became mixed. Time and sequence became things of no account.

He was looking at the Blücher, which, badly damaged and on fire, was being rapidly overhauled, when the captain suddenly drew his attention to the Lion, which seemed to be hit repeatedly. Her speed, too, appeared to be diminishing. Then, to their anxiety, she swung rapidly to port, while the Tiger, Princess Royal, and New Zealand raced at full speed past her.

“God!” Hendry muttered, as he voiced the thoughts of them all. “Is she done in?”

Signal flags could be seen fluttering from the only two pairs of halliards in the flagship that had not been shot away, though their colour and meaning could not be made out because of the distance. As they afterwards discovered, however, the periscope of a submarine had been sighted on the Lion’s starboard bow, and the admiral had ordered an alteration of course to port to avoid a possible torpedo. Almost simultaneously, she was badly hit on the port side, her port engines were damaged, and her speed was much reduced. The alteration of course signal was afterwards modified by a signal ‘Course north-east,’ while, at the same time, the Lion also displayed the flags which meant ‘Attack the rear of the enemy.’

So the flagship, with Sir David Beatty in her, was definitely out of the action, dropping every minute farther and farther astern of her consorts.

What happened then can be read in detail in the naval war histories. The Tiger, Princess Royal, and New Zealand, now under the command of the rear-admiral in the last-named, though the command was never formally transferred, steamed on in a north-easterly direction in obedience to the Lion’s signal, ceased firing on the retreating enemy, and transferred their attentions to the Blücher. In short, through misinterpretation of Beatty’s intentions, and the conditions were certainly confusing enough, the main action was broken off, and the Seydlitz, Derfflinger, and Moltke, leaving the Blücher to her fate, drew rapidly out of range and sight to the south-east. The Derfflinger had been hit once, and the Seydlitz three times, with terrible results. The very first shell had put both her after turrets out of action, the flames rising as high as a house. Her after magazine was set ablaze, and the fire could only be extinguished by flooding it. There was no time even to remove the men; over 150 of them, cooped up behind water-tight doors, were drowned like rats in a trap.

But for that lucky hit on the Lion which put her out of action; but for the unfortunate but understandable misinterpretation of Sir David Beatty’s signal ‘Attack the rear of the enemy’; and owing also to the fact that the other battle-cruisers did not see his last signal ‘Keep closer to the enemy’ because the flags were undistinguishable, the engagement might have resulted in a decisive instead of a partial victory.

Speeding on past the damaged Lion, round which destroyers were soon clustering, the Libyan was in at the death of the unhappy Blücher, which fought gallantly to the last.

Ship after ship opened fire upon her, even some of the destroyers letting drive with their 4-inch guns. She was soon blazing furiously, a layer of heavy smoke, glowing redly with the glare of many fires, hanging over her like a pall. Her steering gear was destroyed and her engines damaged, but she still struggled on, moving slower and slower through the water. One funnel had disappeared, and the other two were perforated through and through and tottering. Her tripod foremast, brought down by an explosion at its base, leaned drunkenly over on one side.

Torpedoed by the Arethusa and battered out of all recognition, the stricken ship started to sink on an even keel. But, with most of her crew dead or dying and the stokers supplying the ammunition to her guns, she still moved slowly ahead and fought doggedly on.

It was not until five minutes past noon, indeed, that her last gun was fired at the destroyer Meteor, which had approached to give her the coup de grâce at close range with a torpedo. The 8.2-inch shell went home and burst in one of the destroyer’s boiler-rooms, killing four men and wounding another. It was the Meteor’s torpedo, however, that finally brought the Blücher to a standstill. Striking her fairly amidships, it detonated with a thundering shock and an upheaval of whitish-grey water mingled with smoke. The cruiser listed heavily over to port and lay down to die.

Seen from a distance of a few hundred yards, as the Libyan’s saw it, the end was horrible.

Those that remained of the Blücher’s ship’s company had obviously been told to save themselves. Some were already swimming in the sea, others were throwing themselves overboard. Her deck seemed crowded with men, who could be heard shouting as she rolled sluggishly over on her side. The sound of those men’s voices blending together in a prolonged moaning wail was eerie and nerve-shattering, ghastly in its human anguish and intensity. There was not a spectator whose heart was not wrung with pity.

“Get the whaler away!” said Hendry sharply, when his ship had stopped within 300 yards of the blazing, listing wreck and he saw the boats from the other ships busy picking up survivors from the water.

While the work of rescue went on, the Blücher heeled over and over until her deck became vertical, and the muzzles of her guns pointed into the air. Many of her men could be seen walking on her rounded starboard side as she rolled over. Others slid down the curving bottom of the ship and walked along the bilge-keel before trusting themselves to the water. Many, badly wounded or dazed with shock, jumped into the sea and never reappeared. It was mid-winter. The water was icy cold.

The whaler came alongside with her first boatload of survivors—a badly wounded officer, a huge bearded petty-officer, and five men, two of whom were also wounded. Their injuries bleeding, their faces white, and their teeth chattering with cold, they were helped on board, the Libyan’s men clustering round full of solicitude and not a little curiosity, with young Hartopp, the surgeon-probationer, bursting with zeal and importance and a first-aid haversack ready to hand, well in the forefront. Wounded men, whatever their nationality, came under the ‘young doc’s’ jurisdiction, and this was his first real job since the war had started. He rather relished it. What a yarn he’d have to tell his fellow-students when he got back to Barts!

“Steady, lads! Steady!” said Toby, as the Germans were lifted painfully on board. “Go easy with that wounded man!”

He need not have spoken. Now that the fighting was over and the guns were no longer firing, the British seamen treated their late enemies more as honoured guests than as prisoners of war. Nothing was too good for them. After all, they were seamen like themselves, and, poor chaps, they had been through hell. Indeed, their ministrations and clumsy attempts to show their sympathy by offering cigarettes, and food, and mugs of tea or cocoa, together with dry clothing, became a positive nuisance.

“Get to hell out of it, can’t you!” little Hartopp exploded, when he found himself hindered in his work by a man offering a thick corned-beef sandwich to a badly wounded and barely conscious German lying on the deck, whose underclothing, sodden with blood and sea water, he was laboriously cutting away with scissors to get at the injury beneath.

“Sorry, sir,” the well-intentioned one apologized, bitterly disappointed. “I didn’t mean no ’arm.”

“Then just remember that the wounded are my business!” the young doctor retorted in his best professional manner. “Don’t you come interfering here!”

The whaler had just left the ship for the second time, when Hendry suddenly hailed her from the bridge to return alongside. Toby could hardly believe his ears. There were still numbers of Germans shouting in the water and swimming towards them.

“First-lieutenant!” the captain shouted again.

“Sir?” answered Kerrell, from the upper deck.

“Hoist the boat!” Hendry hailed, waving an arm overhead. “Make an evolution of it!”

His reason for abandoning the work of rescue was not far to seek, and all the other boats were already hurrying back to their ships. Looking up at the captain’s gesture skywards Toby saw the huge bulk of a Zeppelin between the low-lying clouds overhead. She was rapidly approaching, and with her came an aeroplane. Presently the bombs would begin to fall, and a stationary ship is too satisfactory a target willingly to be offered. The drowning Germans must be abandoned. There was nothing else for it.

The Blücher, meanwhile, was sinking fast. All that now could be seen of her was the curve of her side just about to disappear beneath the surface. The spot where she lay was marked by a large oily pool littered with debris, dotted with the heads of swimming men, whose agonized voices echoed and re-echoed across the water. “Save, Englishman! Save!” they could be heard shouting, as they saw ship after ship hoisting her boats and realized they were being left to their fate. “Camarade! Camarade!... Save! Save!”

It was a ghastly moment, a piteous thing to have to desert these drowning men when so many more might have been rescued.

Something whistled through the air. A line of splashes stood up one after another across the spot where the Blücher had all but foundered, right in among the heads of the swimmers. They were bombs—bombs from the aeroplane.

“Oh, them bleedin’ swine!” Toby heard a seaman beside him exclaim, as he angrily shook his fist at the heavens. “They’re killin’ their own pals, the muckin’ blighters!”

In point of fact, the bomb-dropper imagined he was attacking the sinking Lion, and reported as much when he got home. It did not seem to enter his comprehension that the British would stop to rescue the survivors from a stricken enemy.

“Get that boat hoisted!” the captain roared from the bridge through his megaphone.

“Just hooking on, sir!” Kerrell hailed back, leaning over the ship’s side. “Come on, whaler! For heaven’s sake smack it about!”

Pardoe, the sub, held up his hand from the boat.

“Hooked on!” he called.

“Haul taut singly!” the first-lieutenant shouted to the long line of men on the falls. “Marry! Hoist!—Boat’s clear of the water, sir!” as she came up with a rush.

The Libyan’s helm went over and her propellers started to revolve. The water slid slowly past her side, quicker ... quicker.

An ever-widening oily patch lay spread over the sea in the place where the Blücher had taken her final plunge. In the midst of it men could still be seen swimming, swimming and calling piteously for help—help which could not be rendered through the action of their own countrymen.

They had fought bravely in action. They continued to fight in the water until their exhausted bodies gave up the hopeless struggle, their numbed limbs ceased to function, and the cold grey sea closed over them.

“Poor devils!” Toby muttered to himself, turning his glasses from the spot as the Libyan circled round, gathered rapid headway, and made off to the westward.