VI

A DAY OF TERROR

What we went through was horrible. The breakers dashed high over the sandbar. They hurled themselves on us to destroy our boat, played ball with us, lifted us high into the air and dropped us again on the bar with such fury that the whole boat shivered and trembled.

We had lost control of the boat completely. The roaring breakers made so much noise we could hear them through the thick metal wall. Every new, onrushing wave tossed us higher and higher on the reef. Exposure was our greatest danger. Already the top of the conning tower and the prow projected above the surface—but a moment more and the entire boat would be plainly visible. Then we would surely be lost. As a helpless wreck, we would become a target for the destroyer.

Pale and calm, every man stuck to his post and clung to the nearest support, so as not to fall at the rolling and jolting of the boat. With awe, I looked alternately at the manometer and the feverish sea which I could see all around me through the conning tower windows. Oh, if it had been only the sea we must fear! But through the scum and froth, more merciless than the wild, onrushing breakers, the black destroyer, smoking copiously, steamed straight toward us, like a bull with lowered horns.

“We had better keep below the water at any price, even if we are smashed to pieces against the sandbank and the boat breaks up, rather than to be blown to pieces by the shells of the English,” was the thought that flashed through my brain.

“Fill the ballast tanks,” I called down to the “Centrale.” “Fill all the tanks full, Herr Engineer. Do you hear? We must not under any circumstances rise any higher!”

“All ballast tanks filling!” it was reported from below.

Oh, how quiet it was below! Not a word was uttered. No anxious conjectures, no surmises, and no questions.

A deep, irresistible grief clutched my heart. My poor little boat! My poor crew! There every man unflinchingly and unhesitatingly did his duty, and devotedly put his faith in me. They were all heroes, so young and still so brave and able. And I, the commander, had brought them into the very mouth of death, and to me, the only one who could see our desperate situation, it seemed as if the scale of death slowly weighed against us, because the destroyer, with horrible certainty, was approaching. His sharp prow pointed directly towards us. Soon he would discover the projecting parts of our tower and prow, which the breakers treacherously washed over, and then we would be lost. Soon a hail of shells would sweep over us, and the greedy, foaming sea would roaringly hurl itself through the open holes in our sides.

The filling of the ballast tanks had the desired effect. The boat lay down heavily on the reef and spurred the wild waves to greater efforts, and, though we did not rise any farther, the jolting increased in violence because of its added weight. It was a wonder that the boat did not go to pieces like an egg shell, and we all looked at one another in surprise when, after a terrific jolt, nothing more occurred than the bursting of a few electric bulbs. “First-class material,” I thought to myself.

The mate who, over my shoulder, was keeping watch on the destroyer through the window on the port side, suddenly said, in his hearty, Saxon dialect:

“Well, well! Where does he intend to look for us now, I wonder? At any rate, he doesn’t think that we are stuck here among the breakers.”

“Mate, you old optimist. Those words I’ll never forget. Great God! If you are right! Then certainly——”

“He is already turning,” the little chap cut me short, and jammed his nose against the window-glass, so as to be able to see better.

I grabbed him by the neck and pulled him away, as my blood rushed to my head.

“What? What is it you are saying? Is he turning—good God in heaven—yes, it’s true—he really is turning, all the time turning—now his broadside swings round towards us, now his stern—he has turned—he is departing. He has not seen us, he has not seen us!”

I remember that once, when I was a little boy, I got a roe-deer as a present.

I loved it a great deal and we were inseparable. It had to sleep on a rug by my bed. One beautiful summer’s day we were playing in the sun on a large lawn before the house when suddenly a large, unknown hound came rushing towards my little pet and blood-thirstily chased it around the lawn. The nasty dog was about to run it down when my pet, with a shrill shriek, appealed for help. I was standing paralyzed in terror and could not get a word through my lips, when unexpectedly the owner called the dog back with a whistle. Then I threw myself, with great exultation, down alongside my pet, pressed it to my heart, kissed its black snoot, and cried and laughed with joy.

Those were my feelings now, when, with my own eyes, I saw the impossible—that the destroyer, without suspecting our presence, had steered away from us. Was it possible that he did not see us, when, according to my estimation, he was only about eight hundred meters away? Could the mate be right, and the foolish destroyer have only searched the passage in accordance with his schedule? “But,” I thought, with a shiver, “how easily would not perchance a glance in our direction have betrayed us?”

Radiant with joy, I told the crew in the “Centrale” what a happy turn the affairs had taken at the last moment. A burden must have fallen from the hearts of my splendid, brave boys.

I then revealed my plans to the engineer:

“We are going to lie here until the destroyer reaches the other end of his patrol, which is about three to four sea miles from here. Then, at once, quickly empty all the tanks so that the boat cuts loose from the reef. At top speed, we will make for deep water and then dive again to a safe position below the surface.”

Again a light rain-cloud floated slowly towards us and favored our plans. Soon the destroyer could be seen only as a fading figure in the mist. Now we could risk to arise and get away from our other danger—the fiercely rolling breakers.

The valves were quickly opened. At once the boat came up. The terrific jolting ceased. The hand of the manometer moved upwards, and, after a few seconds, the boat’s broad, dripping back broke through the surface.

There is the buoy! Now full speed ahead! We’ll be soon there—now but a few hundred meters more and then the game is ours—a game on which life and death depended; a game which would have turned our hair white if we had not been so young, and if we had not, through horrible dangers, been united by true and faithful bonds.

As soon as we had placed ourselves on the right side of the longed-for buoy we again hurled ourselves deep down into the cool sea as happily as a fish which for a long time had been on dry land, and suddenly gets into its own element again.

The first and most dangerous part of our journey through the “Witch-Kettle” was over, although not without its horrible experiences. The narrow inlet was passed and also the several sea miles, wide and free from reefs and other navigation difficulties. Thus we merrily glided about in the deep and, in good spirits, hammered and listened and felt our splendid, hard-tried, heavily-tested boat all over back and forth, to see if it had pulled through without a leak from the pit of the rolling breakers; and we soon all forgot. As long as the nerves were at a continuous tension we had no time to think about past events. And though we had happily passed through and over mines and reefs, still the day was far from ended, and our main task was still before us.

This day continually brought us new and unexpected surprises, so that, at last, we had a gruesome feeling that everything had united itself for our destruction. First there were the trawlers; then the motor boats, which in pairs, with a steel net between them, searched through the channel where they suspected that U-boats were lurking. Every time we stuck up our periscope cautiously in order to look around a bit, it never failed that we had one of those searching parties right in front of us, so that we must submerge in a hurry to a greater depth in order not to be caught by the dangerous nets. And if for a short time there was an opportunity to scan the horizon undisturbed, then the atmosphere was thick, and we were unable to locate the shores, which we knew were close at hand, so that at last we hardly knew where we were, as the currents in these parts could not be estimated. Since the famous buoy we had not seen any mark which would in any degree assist us to locate ourselves.

We kept to our course up the center of the channel and trusted that our lucky star would lead us straight. Every half hour we came up from the safety of the deep and tried to take our bearings and then submerged again, disappointed. The crew, of course, must remain at the diving stations uninterruptedly.

About two o’clock the cook came around with pea-soup and pork in small tin cups. He also stretched up his arms to us in the conning tower with a steaming plate in his hands. I put the plate on my knees and dipped out its contents, thinking “The wild beasts are fed.” The moisture, which forms in large drops on the ceiling during long trips under the water, fell down on my head and into my plate and left small splotches of oil in the pea-soup as a sign they were real drops of U-boat sweat.

We again arose to the periscope level at four o’clock. At a distance of five hundred meters, a scouting fleet was moving about. At the same time on our starboard bow a French torpedo boat with four funnels was cruising around.

I had a desire to fire a shot at this enemy, but the fact that such a shot would send the whole lurking fleet at us restrained me.

I have to admit that it was hard to hold back from taking the chance, and it was with a heavy heart that I gave orders to dive again. But this, however, saved us. If we had traveled at the periscope level for only a few minutes more, I would not be sitting here to-day, smoking my cigar and writing down the story of our adventures.

We were submerging, and the manometer showed seventeen meters. Then, suddenly, it was as if some one had hit each one of us at the same minute with a hammer. We all were unconscious for a second and found ourselves on the floor or thrown prone in some corner with our heads, shoulders, and other parts of our bodies in great pain. The whole boat shook and trembled. Were we still alive or what had happened? Why was it so dark all around us? The electric lights had gone out.

“Look to the fuse!”

“It’s gone!”

“Put in the reserve fuse!”

Suddenly we had our lights again. All this happened within a few seconds and more quickly than I can tell it.

What had happened? Was it true we were lost? Would the water rush into the ship and pull us to the bottom? It must be a mine—a violent mine detonation had shaken us close by the boat. And the U-202? What were the consequences of this to the U-boat?

The reports came from all quarters:

“The bow compartment is tight!”

“The stern compartments tight!”

“The engine room all safe!”

Then the boat unexpectedly began to list. The bow sunk, and the stern arose. The ship careened violently, although the diving rudder was set hard against this.

“Herr Captain,” Gröning, who was in charge of the diving rudder, shouted, “something has happened. The boat does not obey the rudder. We must have gotten hooked into some trap—a line or maybe a net. It’s hell. That’s all that’s needed. We are jammed into some net, and all around us the mines are lining it. It’s enough to set you crazy.”

“Listen,” I called down. “We must go through it. Put the diving rudder down hard! Both engines full speed ahead! On no condition must we rise! We must stay down at all costs. All around above us are mines!”

The engines were going at top speed. The boat shot upwards and then bent down, ripped into the net, jerked, pulled and tore and tore until the steel net gave way from the force of the attack.

“Hurrah! We are through it! The boat obeys her diving rudder!” Gröning called out from below. “The U-202 goes on her way!”

“Down, keep her down all the time. Dive to a depth of fifty meters,” I commanded. “This is a horrible place—a real hell!”

I bent forward and put my head into my hands. It was rocking as if being hit by a trip hammer. My forehead ached as if pricked with needles and my ears buzzed so that I had to press my fingers into them.

“It’s a horrible place,” I repeated to myself. “And what luck we had, what a peculiar chance and wonderful escape that we got out at all!”

It took some time for my aching head to remember chronologically what had happened. Yes, it certainly was lucky that we, at the right moment, had submerged deep. We had been at a depth of about seventeen meters when our prow collided with the net, and the detonation followed. The more I thought of it, the plainer everything became to me.

As we had run against the net, it had stretched and that had set off the mine. The mines are set in the nets at the height at which the U-boats generally travel, which is the periscope level. If we had tried to attack the torpedo boat or, for any other reason, had remained for a few minutes more at the periscope level, we would have run into the net at a point where our enemies had hoped we would—namely, so that the mine would have exploded right under us. Now the mine, on the contrary, exploded above us, and its entire strength went in the direction where the natural resistance was smallest—which was upwards. Without causing us any greater damage than a fright and a few possible scars on the thin metal parts, which might have scratched the paint, we had escaped.

Undoubtedly the Frenchman was filled with exultation over our destruction when, waiting at his post by the net, he heard and saw the explosion, and probably reported by wireless to the entire world:

“Enemy U-boat caught and destroyed in a net by a mine explosion.”

And little I begrudge him that joy if he, as a return favor in the future, will leave us alone, because we had gotten pretty nearly all we wanted, as it was.

The day’s experiences were far from ended. First Engineer Krüger appeared on the stairway to the conning tower with a troubled look.

“Herr Captain,” he reported, “we must have gotten something in the propeller. Our electric power is being consumed twice as fast as it should. I suppose that pieces of the metal net have entangled themselves in the blades. The laboring of the engines is terrific and the charge in the batteries is being rapidly reduced, and they are becoming exhausted.”

Were we now going to have this difficulty, too! We had already consumed a large quantity of the current, because we had been compelled to dive at our highest speed and this uses up the batteries fast.

“How far can we go on it now, Herr Krüger?”

The engineer calculated in his notebook, shrugged his shoulders thoughtfully, and said:

“If we do not consume it any faster, it should last us for a couple of hours yet. It would be better, however, to decrease our speed a little.”

I pondered this situation for a time. In about an hour the tide would turn and the current would be against us. We would not be able to make much speed then, but, on the other hand, it would be dark, and we would probably dare to rise to the surface. The enemy undoubtedly believed we had perished and would have decreased his vigilance.

“All right,” replied the engineer. “We’ll stop one motor. There is no danger we will run aground. It is too deep here for that.”

Consequently, we stopped one motor, and continued ahead at a reduced speed. At exactly five o’clock we came up again to look around. Hard by in our wake was the French torpedo boat steaming at a distance of about two hundred meters.

“Well, what is it now?” I said to the mate, and bit nervously on my lower lip. “It looks as if that rascal was after us.”

“It must be a coincidence,” answered the unperturbed optimist.

We submerged once more, but came up again after another half hour.

The torpedo boat still came after us, steaming along in our wake at a distance of two hundred meters.

“If this is a coincidence, Mate, then it is a very, very peculiar one,” I said to him.

When it was six o’clock we again took a look around. The Frenchman was still after us at the same distance.

“The devil! This is no coincidence! I’ll be hanged if this is a coincidence. This is intentional. We are certainly pursued!”

There must be something the matter with us. The enemy must be able to follow us—there must be some sign that enables him to follow us even when submerged to a great depth. What could it be?

I was pondering this impossible problem. The only thing I could think of was that when the mine exploded, it had caused a leakage in one of our oil tanks and that the escaping oil left a plain trail that betrayed our presence. It was impossible at any rate on account of our slow speed under the water, against the current, that by a coincidence and without knowing about it, the Frenchman kept coming after us at the same precise distance. I had to find out about it. We submerged once more, changed our course, and proceeded at full speed. If the Frenchman had really been able to see anything of us, then he would also follow us now when we changed our course and were going four times as fast.

At half past six I looked astern through the periscope and again saw, just as at five, half past five, and six, the Frenchman who, at the same speed on a changed course, continued to follow us.