Читать книгу With Beatty off Jutland - Percy Francis Westerman - Страница 5

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Instantly there was a wild scramble on the part of the three officers to gain the deck, all other topics of interest vanishing before the all-important information.

A cable's length on the port beam the Carse o' Gowrie was backing gently astern in order to close with her consort. The Dimpled Lassie was pitching sluggishly. Way had been taken off her, while over her squat counter the wire hawser attached to the Lucas grapnel was "straight up and down" under the steady strain of some heavy and still submerged object.

From the destroyer's bridge a signalman was semaphoring rapidly by means of hand-flags. The Dimpled Lassie replied. The man had just finished delivering the message to Lieutenant-Commander Crosthwaite when Sefton and the other officers gained the bridge.

"There's no doubt about it now," declared Crosthwaite breezily. "They've just reported that the thing is two fathoms off the bottom. The Carse o' Gowrie is going to help take the strain."

"Hope it won't carry away, sir," remarked Sefton.

"Never fear! Where the patent grapnel grips, it holds. What water have we?"

A cast with the lead gave 19 fathoms, the tide having risen 7 feet. The tidal current was setting south-east a half east, with a velocity of 1-½ knots.

"Tide'll be slacking in half an hour," said the skipper. "The less strain we get the better. Signalman!"

"Sir?"

"Ask the Dimpled Lassie to report the state of the dynometer."

Promptly came the reply that already the strain on the grapnel hawser was 2-½ tons.

"And the breaking strain is four, sir," Sefton reminded his chief.

"We'll get it all right," reiterated Crosthwaite. "Never fear."

His optimism was justified when forty-five minutes later the grapnel sullenly bobbed above the surface, holding in its tightly-closed jaws the bight of a large submarine electric cable.

"Let's hope we've hooked the right one," muttered the engineer-lieutenant.

"You atom of despondency!" exclaimed Stirling.

"I state a possibility, not a probability, Pills," rejoined Boxspanner. "It's a three-to-one chance, you know."

Already a number of artificers, who had been temporarily detailed for duty on board each of the trawlers, were hard at work in connection with the retrieved cable. What they were doing in connection must remain a matter of conjecture, but the fact was patent that the success or otherwise of unremitting toil depended upon the next few minutes.

Impatiently the young lieutenant-commander of the Calder awaited a further signal announcing the result of the investigations. When it came it was highly satisfactory.

"Thanks be for small mercies!" ejaculated Crosthwaite fervently. "Signal M'Kie and tell him to take due precautions in case a ground swell sets in from the east'ard."

The cable was one of three that in pre-war time connected the little Norfolk fishing-village of Bacton with the German island of Borkum. Two more ran from Borkum to Lowestoft, the whole system being partly British and partly German controlled.

Immediately upon the declaration of war the telegraph cables had been severed, both in the neighbourhood of the British coast and in the vicinity of the German island fortress. To all intents and purposes it seemed as if the cables were nothing more than useless cores of copper encased in gutta-percha, rotting in the ooze on the bed of the North Sea.

Yet in spite of the most stringent precautions on the part of the British Government to prevent a leakage of news, the disconcerting fact remained that, thanks to an efficient and extensive espionage system, information, especially relating to the movements of the Grand Fleet, did reach Germany.

Various illicit means of communication were suspected by the authorities, and drastic, though none the less highly necessary, regulations were put into force that had the effect of reducing the leakage to a minimum.

Simultaneously a campaign was opened against the use of wireless installations. Undoubtedly wireless played its part in the spies' work, but its efficacy was doubtful. It could be "tapped"; its source of agency could be located. However beneficial in times of peace, it was a two-edged weapon in war.

For a long time the British Government failed to unravel the secret, until it was suggested that the submarine cables had been repaired. And this was precisely what had been done. The Huns had promptly repaired their end of one of the Bacton-Borkum lines, while a German trawler, disguised as a Dutch fishing-boat, had grappled the severed end just beyond the British three-mile limit.

To the recovered end was fixed a light india-rubber-covered cable. This would be sufficiently strong to outlast the duration of the war, the scarcity of gutta-percha and the enormous weight of the finished cable being prohibitive. It was paid out from the trawler with considerable rapidity, the end being buoyed and dropped overboard some miles from the spot where the original cable used to land. In the inky blackness of a dark winter's night a boat manned by German agents disguised as British fishermen succeeded in recovering the light cable and taking it ashore. Here it was a brief and simple matter to carry the line to a cottage on the edge of the low cliff, burying the land portion in the sand.

For nearly eighteen months the secret wireless station had been in active operation. News culled from all the naval bases by trustworthy German agents was surreptitiously communicated to the operators in the little unsuspected Norfolk cottage and thence telegraphed to Borkum.

For the task of recovering the cable the utmost skill, caution, and discretion were necessary. The vessels detailed for the work were sent from a far-off Scottish port with orders to make no communication with the shore; while to protect them from possible interference the Calder had been detached from the rest of the flotilla to stand by and direct operations.

The Dimpled Lassie was indeed fortunate in finding the cable in a comparatively short space of time, and, what was more to the point, in locating the right one of the three known to be in close proximity. Contrast this performance with that of the cruiser Huascar in the Chilean-Peruvian War. That vessel tried for two days in shallow water to sever the cable at Valparaiso. The officer in charge had himself assisted to lay that particular cable, but picked up the one communicating with Iquique and severed that by mistake.

The only "fly in the ointment", as far as Lieutenant-Commander Crosthwaite was concerned, was the anticipated fact that the Calder would have to dance attendance upon the trawlers for an indefinite period. Once the mild excitement of grappling for the cable was over, the Calder was in the position of those who "serve who only stand and wait". It was a necessary task to "stand by", but with vague rumours in the air of naval activity on the part of the Huns, the officers and crew of the destroyer would infinitely have preferred to be in the thick of it, rather than detained within a few miles of the Norfolk and Suffolk coast.

When at length interest in the proceeding had somewhat abated, Sub-lieutenant Sefton went below to make up long arrears of sleep.

He had not turned in many minutes when Doctor Stirling gave him a resounding whack on the back.

"Wake up, you lazy bounder!" exclaimed the surgeon. "Didn't you hear 'Action Stations'? We've got the whole German fleet coming for us."