Читать книгу The Pirate Submarine - Percy F. Westerman - Страница 4

"THAT'S done it! Scrap brass has fallen another thirty shillings a ton, Pengelly. The slump has knocked the bottom out of the market. We're in the soup."

Thus spoke Tom Trevorrick, senior partner of the firm of Trevorrick, Pengelly & Co., shipbreakers, of Polkyll, near Falmouth. He was a tall, powerfully-built man, standing six feet two and a half inches in his socks, red-haired, florid featured, with a high though receding forehead and a heavy protruding jaw. His rich deep voice had a plausible ring about it—a compelling, masterful yet persuasive tone, that had largely influenced the shareholders of Trevorrick, Pengelly & Co. to part with their money with the absolute certainty of a pre-war ten per cent. return.

Paul Pengelly, aged thirty-three, or three years older than the senior partner, was of different build and temperament. Trevorrick represented the Celtic strain of Cornishmen; Pengelly had dark curly hair and sallow features—legacies of an Iberian ancestor, one of a handful of survivors from a vessel of the Spanish Armada that had been cast ashore on the rock-bound Lizard. History does not relate why the Cornish wreckers spared the lives of the olive-featured mariners, but it does record that the shipwrecked Spaniards took wives of the Cornish maids, and lived and died in the country of their adoption.

Pengelly was slow of speech, stolid in action save when roused to anger. Of an argumentative nature, he acted as a foil to his partner's exuberance. If Trevorrick suggested a certain course, Pengelly almost invariably went dead against it, not that he disapproved of the scheme, but simply as a matter of habit. He was secretive and cautious; but he never hesitated to do an underhand action if he felt reasonably secure from detection.

He was a man of many parts—a jack-of-all-trades and master of a few. Given to building castles in the air, he would soar to dizzy heights in planning fantastic schemes. Some of them might take definite shape; then, almost without warning, he would "chuck his hand in" and cast about for something else.

Eighteen months previously, Trevorrick and Pengelly had met for the first time. Trevorrick had just left the Royal Navy. He had been a lieutenant-commander attached to the Portsmouth submarine flotilla. He had not resigned under the favourable terms offered by My Lords to redundant officers; he had not been "axed" under the Geddes Scheme. He had been courtmartialled and dismissed from the Service under circumstances that could not be termed extenuating.

Trevorrick was at a loose end when he encountered Pengelly. He had a limited amount of capital. So had Pengelly. The latter's latest scheme appealed to the ex-lieutenant-commander. Just then, hundreds of ships of all sizes were being sold out of the Service for breaking-up purposes. There was money to be made out of the business, with very little capital required for plant, while surplus destroyers and submarines could be bought at a flat rate of one pound per ton, subject to the condition that they had to be broken up.

Of the hundreds, nay, thousands of people who patronise the little steamers plying between Falmouth and Truro—or Malpas, according to the state of the tide few are likely to notice a small creek on the starboard hand of the picturesque river Fal. Fewer still know it by name.

Its entrance is narrow, between steeply rising, heavily wooded ground. Although barely twenty-five yards in width across its mouth, it carries nearly thirty feet of water at Springs. Two hundred yards up, the creek widens out. One bank retains its precipitous, tree-clad nature. The other dips, forming a wide bay, with a flat belt of ground between the shore and the high ground beyond.

On this site, hidden from the Fal by a bend in the channel, stood a derelict shipyard. A century ago, when Falmouth was at the height of its prosperity as a packet-station, the shipyard teemed with activity. It enjoyed a brief and illusory spell of life during the Great War, when it again sank into obscurity and neglect. The two slipways were left to rot, two tidal docks were allowed to silt up. The buildings were ruinous and leaky. The whole concern was in the hands of the Official Receiver.

To the delectable spot came Trevorrick and Pengelly. They looked at it. Trevorrick lost no time in declaring that it was "the" place; Pengelly asserted that it was not. The big man had his way, and thus the Polkyll Creek Shipbreaking Company came into being.

They started modestly upon their enterprise. The heaviest item for plant was the purchase of an oxygen-acetylene apparatus. At first, ten hands were engaged. Pengelly wanted to obtain them locally. Trevorrick, as usual, overruled him, and as a result inserted in a Plymouth paper an advertisement for ex-Naval and Mercantile Marine men. They received shoals of replies and could pick and choose, without having to pay Trade Union rates.

"We'll have unmarried men," declared the senior partner. "They won't be wanting to run away home every five minutes."

"Married men are more likely to stick to their jobs," objected Pengelly.

"No one but a born fool would chuck up a job nowadays," retorted Trevorrick. "They are none too plentiful."

In due course, the shipbreaking yard began to function. A destroyer and a submarine were purchased at Devonport and towed round to Falmouth and up the Fal to Polkyll. The scrap metal was sent up to Truro in barges and thence transferred to goods train for the Welsh smelting works. So profitable was the venture that three more vessels were bought for demolition, twenty additional hands taken on, and the firm of Trevorrick and Pengelly became a limited liability company.

So far, things were going smoothly. The two principals got on amicably, which was rather to be wondered at, since Trevorrick was apt to boast that he had had heaps of friends and had never been able to keep one of them. No doubt, the totally dissimilar physical and mental characteristics of each kept them in a state of mutual docility; but already Pengelly was tiring of the monotonous work, and Trevorrick was scheming to get away to a livelier spot than the dead-and-alive Polkyll Creek.

Then, slowly but surely, came the slump. The shareholders had their first dividends—ten per cent.—paid out of the capital. Another dividend was shortly due and there was no possible chance of it being forthcoming, unless Trevorrick and Pengelly drew upon their capital—a step that each was firmly determined not to take.

"Are we in the soup?" asked Pengelly, in reply to his partner's pessimistic declaration. "What do you suggest?"

"Pack up and clear off," replied the senior partner. "Lay hands on all the ready money we can possibly get hold of, and make ourselves scarce."

"How about the shareholders?" asked Pengelly. Trevorrick shrugged his shoulders.

"Shareholders have lost money before to-day," he remarked. "That's their affair."

"That's all right as far as we are concerned, if they take it lying down," objected the other. "S'posing they don't? What then? We wouldn't be safe for twenty-four hours in this country. We might try our luck abroad."

It was Trevorrick's turn to offer objections.

"Don't fancy the idea, especially with a warrant hanging over my head. Fellows who issue fraudulent balance sheets (Pengelly winced) get it in the neck pretty badly when they're caught. I've no fancy for seven years behind prison bars. And there's another thing. How long could either of us hang out abroad with what money we can lay our hands on? Six months. After that—phut!"

"Then what do you suggest?"

"Depends," replied Trevorrick. "Fifty thousand apiece and a snug hiding-place in one of the South American republics."

"Takes some doing."

"It can be done."

"How?"

The two men looked at each other, trying to fathom the depths to which either would be prepared to go.

"How?" asked Pengelly again. "Holding up a bank, for example.

"Try again."

"Highway robbery, perhaps."

"Sort of," admitted Trevorrick. "For 'highway' substitute 'high seas,' and you've got it."

"Piracy, by Jove!" ejaculated Pengelly, with a gleam in his eyes. It was a case of blood will tell, and Pengellys had in bygone days sailed under the Jolly Roger; more than one had made a public spectacle at Execution Dock. "'That's funny, deuced funny," he added after a pause.

"I've been thinking of that myself."

"It'll require a jolly sight more than thinking," remarked Trevorrick grimly.

"It's risky."

"Course it is. So's everything, if you go the wrong way about it. Take shipbreaking: you might get cut in two by a chunk of steel plate, or you might try the business end of an oxygen-acetylene flame. That's happened before to-day."

"You—I mean, we—would probably be caught inside of a week," said Pengelly, resuming his habit of raising objections. "Aircraft and wireless don't give a fellow much of a chance."

"Not if we played our cards properly."

"Don't see how," rejoined the little man petulantly. "And when we're collared——"

He completed the sentence by a double gesture—a circular motion of his right hand in a horizontal plane followed by a rapid vertical movement.

"Better that than seven years," said Trevorrick coolly. "But you're showing the white feather already."

"Surely you're joking about it?"

"Never more serious in all my life," the senior partner hastened to assure him. "The audacity of the thing is in our favour. Ask any naval expert. He'll tell you that piracy, except in the Red Sea and the China Station, is as dead as Queen Anne. I'm going to show the blamed experts that they're talking through their hats."

"But——"

"Don't start butting in with your confounded 'buts,'" exclaimed Trevorrick, with a tinge of asperity. "You say you've been considering the matter. How far have you gone into the practical side of it? I can make a pretty shrewd guess. You haven't even scratched the epidermis of the problem. I have. Cast your eyes over this."

From his pocket-box, Trevorrick produced a leaf of a notebook. On it was written in small, carefully-formed letters, the following:

1. The vessel.

2. Crew.

3. Maintenance.

4. Cruising limits.

5. Communication with shore.

"Now," continued Trevorrick briskly, "I've gone deeply into the question. We'll run over the various items. Then we can discuss details; but remember, I want constructive, not destructive criticism. Here I am trying to put you on to a get-rich-quick scheme. That's the main idea. It's for your benefit—and mine. First, the ship. I propose adopting R 81."

R 81 was the Polkyll Creek Shipbreaking Yard's latest acquisition. She had been towed round from Devonport only a couple of days previously and had been placed in the mud-dock alongside the rapidly-disintegrating hull of her former sister-submarine R 67.

"Bless my soul, man!" interrupted Pengelly, heedless of the senior partner's caution. "You'd never get her outside Falmouth Harbour."

"You're bearing in mind the Admiralty inspector," declared Trevorrick, purposely refraining from showing displeasure at the interruption. "He'll be here to-morrow or Friday. After that, it will be three months before he shows up again. Then I can manage him all right. No, I don't intend to offer him half a crown to look the other way. But there's not the slightest reason why we shouldn't hoodwink him. The moment he goes after his next visit, we'll start operations. R 81 goes under the covered shed; R 67 will be moved into R 81's berth. It's not altogether a stroke of luck that we haven't started cutting into R 67's hull below the waterline. When the inspector comes again he won't see R 67. She'll be broken up entirely as far as he's concerned. R 67 will assume R 81's number. We'll leave enough of the hull for that. The pirate submarine, ex-R 81, will already be nearing completion well out of the sight of the official eye."

"Trevorrick, I always thought I had the bump of imagination," declared Pengelly. "I give you best."

"Imagination isn't of much use, unless you put it to a practical purpose," rejoined the other. "What I'm proposing can be done; more, it's going to be done."

"But——"

"There you go again," interrupted Trevorrick tolerantly. "Carry on, then. Trot out your objections. We'll argue all along the line as we go. What were you about to remark?"

"We'll assume that you've bamboozled the Admiralty Nosey Parker, whose business it is to bind us to our contract," said Pengelly. "You've got the submarine fit, more or less, for sea. You'd have to take her down the Fal on the surface. There's not enough water to submerge. Day or night, you'd be spotted; and there'd be questions asked."

"Pengelly, your Christian name ought to be Thomas, not Paul," remarked Trevorrick, in a bantering tone. He could afford to try to be facetious. He knew enough of his partner by this time to realise that the greater the objections the latter raised, the more chance he, Trevorrick, had of gaining his case—as he almost invariably did. "I'm going to take her out of Falmouth as a surface ship. I'd defy any one to think her to be otherwise than an old tramp without they actually came on board, which I don't intend that they should. We've got the materials. In a couple of months we'll build up a superstructure, rig dummy masts and funnels, and there you are. What have you to say against that?"

"Top-hamper," declared Pengelly bluntly. What do you propose doing when she dives? Ditch the lot? If you don't, she'll roll over when she's submerged. And what speed do you expect you'll get when running beneath the surface, assuming she doesn't turn turtle?"

"Top-hamper judiciously constructed will make no difference to her stability when submerged," replied the other. "All that requires to be done is to see that the superstructure, taken as a whole, weighs the same as the quantity of water it displaces—fairly simple matter if we make use of air-tight tanks and compartments packed with cork. Speed under the surface doesn't count for much in our case. Storage batteries are a nuisance at the best of times. No, I mean to submerge and rest on the bottom in the event of an attack. She's built to withstand, with an ample margin of safety, a depth of twenty-five fathoms."

"Armament—guns and torpedoes—then," resumed Pengelly. "That's going to knock you. Torpedoes don't grow on blackberry bushes, and you can't go trotting about with a six-inch quick-firer under your arm. Supposing Elswicks or Vickers did accept your order for a quick-firer, you'd have the police knocking you up to know what your little game is."

"Torpedoes are out of the question, I'm afraid," admitted Trevorrick. His fellow-partner grinned with satisfaction. It was one of those rare occasions when he scored a point with his objections. "It's a pity; they might have come in handy, especially as they've left the tubes in the ship. Nothing like a tinfish' to settle an argument. Guns—no difficulty there. I can buy a 15.2 centimetre quick-firer of the latest pattern—that's practically six-inch—at Liége and get it delivered afloat outside Dutch or Belgian territorial waters for a mere song, with as much ammunition as we're likely to want. You see, I've made inquiries all along the line already. Next item: Crew. I'll skip that for the present; but, let me tell you, there was method in my madness when I was so mighty particular in the choice of the hands here. Maintenance—that's easily disposed of. We'll help ourselves, supplementing our store with purchases from the shore. Now, Cruising Limits. No need to go very far from home. West Coast of Europe between Finisterre and Bergen offers enough scope for our little stunt; but it's in the Channel that I hope to play Cain. No, don't get alarmed, Pengelly. I'm not out for British shipping unless I'm forced. Hoist German colours and capture a French vessel; collar a German and tell him we're a Frenchman. Spin a yarn to a Dutchman while you're going through his pockets. Bless my soul, man, we'll have our fifty thousand apiece in no time. That brings me to the last item: Communication with the shore. We'll have to lay by for a rainy day, Pengelly—show a clean pair of heels before it's too late. We'll have to travel light. Can't carry a pantechnicon of booty with us. We must arrange to have it sent ashore and transferred to a trustworthy agent in South America. I know of at least half a dozen."

"How about the crew?" asked Pengelly. "We can't show up at some port with thirty fellows tacked on to us."

"No need," replied Trevorrick with a grin. "We're not sentimentalists, nor philanthropists."