Down to the Sea/The Submarine

Y wireless telegraphy, international code-signal, and despatch-boat gossip her existence was known to the allied fleets, but the world at large had learned of her, while yet in process of construction, through indiscreet official babbling at St. Petersburg and immediate publication of the news in the London Times. Later on, Japanese spies heard of her as far inland as Lake Baikal, coming along on a flat-car of the Siberian railroad, and so reported; but at Harbin all trace of her was lost—it was not known whether she would proceed farther east to Vladivostok, or whether she would turn south and take to the sea from Newchwang, Shanhaikwan, or Port Arthur. But, though her whereabouts was doubtful, her plans and specifications were known to every officer on every ship from Vladivostok to Shanghai; and to all lookouts, search-light men, and boat parties instructions were given to watch for an object resembling a green washtub floating upside-down.

This would be her conning-tower—all that would show when she had risen to the surface for a peep around. For the rest, according to specifications, she was sixty-three feet long, cigar-shaped, with five torpedoes and a tube in her nose, a gasoline engine for surface running and a reversible motor-dynamo, drawing power from a storage-battery charged by itself, for submarine work. With ballast-tanks empty she floated high, and could easily be seen; with these filled with water she sank to the awash condition, from which she could dive out of sight in a few seconds by the aid of her motion and horizontal rudders. But, with every tank full and her engine stopped, she still possessed a reserve buoyancy which would bring her slowly to the surface. She could travel awash four hundred miles; submerged, fifty. In this radius of action she could expend her five Whitehead torpedoes, and return to port again and again for more. Her torpedoes were miniature models of herself, with thirty-knot speed, automatic controlling-gear to replace the human intelligence within the mother-boat, and a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound charge of gun-cotton in their heads that exploded on impact. Her mission was secret and unseen; her blow, sudden and deadly; and even though she struck no blow, her presence in Eastern seas was of more injury to the morale of the crews than was the gun-fire of action, for she was conducive to neurasthenia; officers wore an anxious, worried look, men lost their appetites and saved on their mess-money, and Old Man Finnegan, of the Argyll, stopped drinking. It was bad for his nerves to stop so suddenly; and, as it was given him to be the first one to see that inverted washtub, while out at the end of the boat-boom, he promptly sang out the news to the bridge, then fell overboard.

The ship was anchored in a deep and narrow strait, with a swift but smooth tide running past. Mr. Felton was officer of the deck; he saw Finnegan fall, saw the circular steel object coming up on the port quarter, and immediately ordered a boat cleared away for the one and the secondary battery for the other, while all hands rushed on deck and the captain and other officers joined him on the bridge. But Finnegan needed no boat; he slid up sprawling on the turtle-back of the oncoming submarine. And the latter needed no immediate attention from the battery, for a circular hatch flew up from the top of the conning-tower, and a keen-eyed, shrewd-faced man popped his head out, yelled incomprehensible things in a strange tongue at Finnegan, finished with a profane request in good English to come amidships and trim the boat—which Finnegan obeyed—and steered the curious craft up under the boat-boom, where he slowed down, by which time the cutter lowered for Finnegan was in the water.

"On board the torpedo-boat!" shouted Mr. Felton through a megaphone. "What's your name and nationality?"

"Thunder and blazes!" answered the man in the conning-tower. "Are you English? I thought you were Russian. Well, damn my fool soul!"

"Keep your hands up in sight," called the lieutenant. "Don't move a lever, or we'll sink you. This is his Majesty's ship Argyll. Come aboard and give an account of yourself. Step into that cutter."

"Wait," interrupted the Argyll's captain. "Before you leave, empty your ballast-tanks. You are too low in the water—too elusive."

"Empty now, captain," answered the skipper of the lesser craft. "We've got the equivalent down aft in the bilges. The tail-shaft was badly packed, and the engine-room's nearly full of water. We've stopped the leak from within. Oh, I'm a damned fool."

"Then come on board."

"Yes, sir, I will, as the jig's up. But suppose I make fast to your boat-boom first. There'll be no strain on it. I'm steering with the diving-rudder hard down to trim her against that weight of water, and must keep her turning over, or she'll sit on her tail."

"Do so," answered Mr. Felton. "Finnegan, take that man's place at the wheel and steer after the boat-boom."

"Steer small," said the captain to Finnegan, as he climbed out of the hatch and stood knee-deep on the submerged deck. "It's an air-engine steering-gear. Don't touch anything but the wheel."

The old man, shaky with age and nerves, floundered into the conning-tower and took the wheel—the upper spokes of which were visible to those on the high bridge of the battle-ship—while the boats commander waded forward on the round and unstable platform to where a ring-bolt showed through the water.

"Strikes me," he said, with a quizzical glance at Finnegan and at those above, "that there's no real necessity of a second man getting wet feet when the first is drenched through. But I'm not bossing this."

He was doomed to a worse wetting. He had fastened the end of a line thrown him from the boom to the ring-bolt, and was reaching for a hanging Jacob's ladder to climb to the boom, when those above saw him sink out of sight; then they saw the open conning-tower rush forward, settling as it came. Some saw Finnegan's face, with its look of pained amazement, others only heard his yell: "Leggo me legs—leggo! Lemme out!" Then Finnegan and the coning-tower went under, the rope snapped, and the water was smooth but for the ripples caused by the swimming captain and a line of large, irregular bubbles that stretched ahead for a hundred feet and stopped.

It happened so suddenly that not a shot was fired, though every gun in the port battery was trained and ready. Not a gunner on board would shoot at Finnegan unless ordered, and Mr. Felton had not given the word. But he ordered the boat, after it had picked up the swimmer, to pull ahead ready for Finnegan or any others who might have climbed out of that open hatch against the inrush of water; and in ten minutes, none appearing on the surface, he called it back. Drenched and dripping, the submarine boat's commander was brought into the presence of the captain and officers of the battle-ship.

"Well, sir," asked the big captain, sternly, "what explanation have you to offer of this trick?"

"No trick at all, sir," answered the pale and crestfallen man. "I suppose that my engineer and my quartermaster, who attends to the diving-gear, took a chance that I would not. If they die, I am merely a prisoner. If they live, I am disgraced."

"Disgraced? You, an Englishman, serving Russia, talk of disgrace?"

"An American, captain, who never saw England," answered the man, with dignity. "An officer of twenty years' service in the imperial navy. Lieutenant Bronsonsky, in command of the Russian torpedo-boat Volga—plain Jim Bronson back in Indiana."

"Um—humph! Different, of course. What happened to your boat?"

"None of my men understands English. Some one gave full speed to the motor, under which we were running. The diving-rudder was inclined; it balanced her at half-speed, but at full speed made her dive. If they succeeded in closing that hatch in time they may save their lives, but not the boat. Nothing but a wrecking outfit can raise her, even if found."

"Is the hatch easily closed?"

"A strong spring keeps it up, and also down, when pulled past a dead center. A man must reach up for it against the downpour of water. I doubt that it could be done."

"How about air? Is there enough?"

"Plenty of compressed air, and a reserve store of oxygen. If they escape drowning, they will starve before they will suffocate."

"But why," asked the captain, "were you alone in these seas without convoy? And why did you approach us so unwisely?"

"Now, captain," answered Bronson, with some hesitation, "you are scratching the hide of the bear. I do not know. Russian diplomacy, I suppose. I can tell this much, however. My orders were to conceal myself until I reported to the admiral of the outer squadron, except that in this strait I was to deliver verbal information to a battle-ship, which, alone of the Russian fleet, was ignorant of the news that I carried."

"And the news?"

"It is known to the world, and to you. The presence in Eastern seas of five English submarines."

The captain smiled and bowed. "Yes, known to the world, for we have been at pains to advertise it. It is demoralizing to an enemy to have him feel that at any moment a submarine may creep up unseen and torpedo him. We are now, thanks to your mistake, freed from this strain upon our nerves. How did you make such a mistake?"

"Why," said Bronson, coloring, "I simply took you for the Russian ship. She closely resembles you."

"Inferior in armor, armament, and marksmanship," said the captain, dryly. "She went to Weihaiwei yesterday as an English prize."

"But, captain," interposed Mr. Clarkson, in sudden alarm, "are we free from this strain upon the nerves? What is to prevent that boat from coming back and torpedoing us? They have Finnegan. They must know we are English."

"You need not fear," answered Bronson, serenely; "she is helpless, and when the tide has drifted her to three hundred feet depth, she will be crushed in by the pressure."

"Did you inform your men that you were captured?"

"No," said Bronson, knitting his brows. "They couldn't have known. I only told your man in English to steer small and to touch nothing but the wheel."

"Were you running under the motor?" asked the executive.

"Yes," answered Bronson. "It was the only precaution that I took."

"Was there a starting switch in the conning-tower?"

Yes." Bronson's face lighted. "And your man—"

"Finnegan's luck, perhaps, captain!" interrupted Mr. Clarkson. "You know your theory."

"You think he started the motor?" asked the captain. "But why? Was he intoxicated?"

"There's the rub," answered the officer, doubtfully. "He was sober as the chaplain. Now, if he were drunk, I would swear that trouble was coming and that Finnegan would be in it—an instrument of Providence, as you call him. But he was sober—beastly sober."

"Yes, I know," said the captain; "but what trouble threatens us more than did that submarine—now on the bottom? We have command of these seas.

"I don't know. And Finnegan was dead sober. Had you any whisky, vodka, or other intoxicant in that boat, lieutenant?"

"Not a drop," answered Bronson. "Nor any alcohol, nor varnish."

"Well," said Mr. Clarkson, "if he was drunk, or could get drunk, I'd be ready for trouble. But he was sober, and of course, being sober, he didn't start the motor. He's done for, captain."

"I believe so," answered the captain. "In fact, I see no hope for any one who went down in that boat. You see, Lieutenant Bronson," he said to the puzzled prisoner of war, "our man Finnegan occupies a peculiar position with regard to the ship's company and the service regulations. Several times, by being drunk and under control of his instincts, he has been the means of saving this ship and our lives. So, trusting that no harm will come to him that is not already come, we permit him to drink all he pleases. If he were drunk, and had started your boat to the bottom, we might believe that he did so for some purpose known only to God and his own subliminal self; but he was sober, so our theory is useless. Now, you are, of course, a prisoner, but on parole. You will be provided with dry clothing. Make yourself at home among my officers."

So Lieutenant Bronson, of the Russian navy, became for the time a supernumerary officer of his Britannic Majesty's battle-ship Argyll, and, clad in an undress uniform supplied by one of the English officers, mounted to the forward upper fighting-top, where, with the strongest binoculars on board—borrowed from the captain—he was able to report unofficially, but decisively, on the character of a long, low, destroyer-type of craft that crept around the headland down-stream, hovered a few moments, and then hurried seaward at thirty knots, followed by about half a ton of steel from the Argyll's six-inch and secondary guns. "Russian scout-boat," he remarked to the deck, then turned his glasses elsewhere on the smooth waters of the strait—where might appear some traces of his lost boat or his men. Late in the afternoon, when the tide had turned and gained its maximum strength, he called attention to something that glistened in the sun, far over toward the other shore, and soon after he pointed out another such object just behind it, then another, farther out in the stream, then a fourth, far to the rear of them all.

"Torpedoes!" he called to the bridge beneath. "They've shot them out to lighten her. They float, you know, when their motion stops. There should be another somewhere."

He turned his glass around for a moment, then hailed again: "Man overboard!" and pointed dead ahead. Then a dozen lookouts repeated the call, and Bronson came down to the bridge.

The man could be seen with the naked eye; a swarthy, bearded fellow, who swam remarkably high out of water, even for a strong man. But Bronson, after another inspection through the glass from the end of the bridge, stopped the comment on this by the quiet remark: "He's not swimming at all; he's riding a torpedo. Look out for it, gentlemen, for you'll find the safety-gear unscrewed from the detonator. That's my engineer."

Whitehead torpedoes being standardized, are valuable to any craft carrying tubes, and boats were sent to bring them in, one of which brought, also, the bearded Russian engineer. Mr. Bronson translated his story.

"It was the quartermaster," he said, "who reached up and moved the starting-switch in the conning-tower. He easily surmised, by my talking in a language strange to him, that we were captured, and when he saw me relinquish the wheel to Finnegan he acted."

"But did anybody drown?" asked Mr. Clarkson, eagerly. "Where's Finnegan? How did that man get out?"

"Some must have drowned," went on Bronson, gravely. "The quartermaster got Finnegan out of the way and closed the hatch; and then she was bumping along the bottom, unable to rise even by her own motion against the diving-rudder—hard up. They shot out the torpedoes, but still she would not rise; then they drew lots and ejected themselves, one by one. The quartermaster swam to a torpedo and was rescued by that scout-boat, but the rest must have drowned, for the engineer did not see them."

"But who remained behind?" asked Mr. Clarkson. "Who drew the fatal number?

"Finnegan—he was treated fairly and instructed in the method."

"Poor old Finnegan," groaned the executive officer. "Done for at last. He has saved thousands of lives when drunk, and now must die, sober and instructed, to save a half-dozen enemies."

The groan echoed, mentally, throughout the ship, and men went to their sleep that night praying for the soul of the gentle and ridiculous old man they had loved.

But at daylight there were other things to think of. Sharp but intermittent firing was heard, and hardly had the crew got to quarters before there staggered around the headland below a large merchant-built steamer, with huge derricks fitted to each mast, a few small, quick-fire guns mounted in high places and barking as she came, the white naval ensign of Britain flying from each mast and gaff, and a volume of smoke belching upward from amidships. She was afire, and, as if this trouble were not enough, she was perceptibly down by the head, proving that at least one compartment was filled. She turned into the strait and came toward the Argyll.

"The mother-ship, lieutenant," explained the captain, as Bronson appeared on the bridge. "She carries our five submarines and a holdful of Whiteheads. Your friends are after her."

"And after you, too, captain," answered Bronson. "Look there." He pointed to the upper end of the strait, where, far out over the gray sea, were two grayer spots, from each of which, even as they looked, came a twinkle of flame. "That scout-boat has reported you."

"And you, too, lieutenant," answered the captain, grimly. "She rescued one of your men. What will happen to you for losing that boat?"

"The salt-mines of Siberia for me," answered Bronson. "I am pondering on the ethics of desertion."

The captain glanced inquiringly at him, then said, "I will release you from parole, if you wish."

"Thank you, sir. I accept the release, officially; but will always maintain it, personally, between you and myself. But I am still pondering. I cannot desert yet. Please put me in irons."

The captain smiled. "No," he said. "You cannot escape."

But, being a prisoner no longer under parole, Bronson left the bridge; and by this time two fountains of water had arisen on the smooth waters of the strait perilously near to the Argyll, proving that the men behind those twinkles of flame had the range.

Then two booming reports came over the sea; but the Argyll remained at anchor and waited.

The gun-fire from behind the headland below had not ceased, and soon appeared—three miles out, however—the scout-boat of the day before. She passed slowly across the opening, firing at the mother-ship but maintaining a safe distance. Then a three-funneled, high-sided, armored cruiser appeared in view, then a short, bulky battle-ship, and another smaller cruiser. All directed their fire at the reeling mother-ship, coming on in her smoke, her crew work- ing at the heavy forward crane.

"Only three submarines on her deck," remarked the captain, as he viewed her through his glass. "She has left two of them somewhere. I wonder if they're near by?"

And now the two ships coming on from above—battle-ships, evidently—changed their fire from the Argyll to the other; and their range-finders were good and their aim was good, and the shells that they sent were heavy, and when one lifted a shower of water over the whole slanting deck of the mother-ship the Argyll acted. She was caught in a trap, but that unarmored, unprotected mother with her five small ducklings needed her care, and, lifting her anchor, she steamed out to meet her, the secondary battery silent the while, but the after-turret guns belching at the two ships at sea, the forward ones at the battle-ship, the two cruisers, and the scout. And her aim was good and her range-finding excellent, and the shells she sent so much heavier than those sent at her that with a little more time she might have saved that distracted mother, for the two cruisers and the scout withdrew from range as fast as their horse-power would admit. But the battle-ship remained broadside to the target—aflame, smoke, and pointed steel coming from her turrets, and every fountain of water raised by these pointed steel shells closer to the fleeing mother-ship than the last, until finally one struck her in the stern and raked through her length. She separated into fragments.

It was not an instantaneous explosion; beginning at the stem she seemed to split in two, while a line of rising flame and smoke traveled forward. Then the two sides disintegrated and sank; the masts leaned—one forward, the other aft—and fell; a cigar-shaped submarine boat, swung high at the forward derrick, went higher in air, and fell into the turmoil beneath; while two others, lifted sidewise from the shattered halves of the hull, whirled end over end and fell into the sea. Up and out from this riot of destructive forces came a huge expanding cloud of black and yellow smoke, while over the sea, echoing and reverberating against the wooded shores of the strait, went a crashing continuity of sound as of a repeated drum-call of artillery. Every Whitehead in the hold had exploded separately, and when the cloud had thinned there was nothing left of the mother-ship but a few floating fragments of wood, and, showing for one instant before it sank, the round conning-tower of a single submarine.

And now the Argyll received the gun-fire of the three ships, one but a mile below her, the other two, breast to breast, coming down the strait. The cruisers and the scout-boat were still going; they seemed to be agitated, smoking hard from their funnels and flying numerous small flags in different combinations. But the battle-ship they had deserted, though weaker than the Argyll, steamed boldly into the strait, and, as she was already close enough, the latter stopped her engines and drifted with the tide; then the two ships above slowed down, and, the Argyll in the center, there ensued one of the hammer-and-tongs, give-and-take conflicts from which the big English battle-ship had ever emerged victorious—because no shell was made that could penetrate her eighteen-inch armor, and no armor that could withstand her thirteen-inch shells.

Bronson, gloomy of face, appeared in the conning-tower, where the imperturbable captain and his aides had taken refuge from the storm of steel. He waited until the captain had withdrawn his eyes from a peep-hole, then said:

"Your master-at-arms will not confine me, captain."

"Are you still pondering on the ethics of desertion?" asked the captain, again gluing his eye to a peep-hole.

"The problem is unsolvable," said Bronson. "By the laws of honor and of Russia I should be fighting against you; by the laws of nature and of blood, I should be with you. There are penalties for violation of law."

"What do you mean?" asked the captain, without looking around.

"I notice that your fighting-top batteries are silent."

The captain paid no more attention to him, and Bronson climbed the ladder that led up the mast to the lower top.

It is an axiom in the world's navies that no man may live through an action in a fighting-top, and Bronson, aloft with the dead, could not but have been impressed by the sight of the fall of the lower Russian ship's foremasts, tops, guns, dead men and living, and the small signal-yard to which, even as the mast crashed down, small flags were ascending. But the ship went on, a man now exposed on her forward bridge waving a wigwag back and forth until abreast of the Argyll. And now, though her heavy shells still came toward the big, invulnerable Englishman, it was noticeable that her whole secondary battery of quick-fire and machine guns was directed astern, at something which only Bronson, high in air with a pair of service binoculars, could make out.

"A submarine!" he called. "They're running away from it. Now it has dived."

Gun-fire on the upper ships suddenly ceased, and the Argyll's captain and aides came out of their refuge to see these two, with a furious turmoil of water at their sterns, backing and turning in their lengths. The wigwag had told the news.

"There it is again!" shouted Bronson, excitedly. "It's up for a peep around. Now it's under again."

Professional excitement and enthusiasm are excusable, even when aroused over the performances of an enemy. Bronson, who had gone aloft to die, had a new interest in life.

"The mother-boat must have dropped one somewhere," said the captain, "or else it's the one they had hoisted when she blew up. Just in time, too," he added calmly, as a crash sounded and a quiver went through the ship, while a cloud of smoke and splinters went up from the stern. A shell from the lower ship had struck.

"Steering-gear gone, sir!" called a quartermaster from within the conning-tower.

"Thought so," remarked the captain. "We're hit in our weak spot. We're helpless, but—praise God for that submarine. Look at them go."

The two backing and turning Russians had straightened around. The other, still waving the wigwag from her bridge, had passed them, and was leading the parade. Behind was an occasional glimpse of a small, circular conning-tower, which appeared for only an instant and then dived.

The big, helpless ship swung slowly around, steering, after a manner, with her twin screws, but helpless to maneuver. Yet her batteries were intact, and she continued her hammering blows on the fleeing ships; and these, as they gathered way, resumed their response. Shot and shell again crashed into her soft spots, but the officers did not again enter the conning-tower. They were too interested in that other and smaller conning-tower. It appeared again and again, each time remaining longer in sight, and at last seemed to be approaching the Argyll which had swung end on to it. Then it dived again, and Bronson, his new interest in life much stronger, came down to the main-deck unperceived in the confusion.

"She's coming," said the captain. "I wonder if she fired a torpedo."

"Don't think she got near enough, sir," answered one of his lieutenants. "But consider the moral effect of these boats, captain. She frightened away the scout-boat and the cruisers. They went away signaling."

"Yes, one such boat is worth a whole fleet until fighting begins. She has frightened them all away. Here she is again."

The small conning-tower again arose, a hundred yards ahead. This time it remained above water, and they expected the hatch to open and her commander's head to appear, when their attention was brought closer to themselves. A large shell had struck the foremast just below the lower top, exploded, and sent the upper part of the mast whirling overboard; the blast of flame and smoke and the sudden compression and expansion of the surrounding cushion of air threw every man on the bridge upon his back.

"Poor Bronson!" gasped the captain. "His problem in ethics is settled."

The men, little hurt, arose one by one and looked, some in time to see the hatch open in the approaching conning-tower, others when a man had clambered out.

"Ship ahoy!" yelled the man, standing knee-deep in the water ahead of the ship. "Why d'ye run away fur? Hey—ye brass-bound, murtherin' sons ov a codfish a-arishtocracy! Lemme out o' this contrapshion. D'ye hear me?—damn yer eyes!"

"Finnegan!" yelled a chorus of voices from gun-ports and apertures. And the beloved name went through the ship. Crews deserted their guns and crowded out for a look at him. He began dancing about in the water, shaking his fist and reviling his officers, profanely and unkindly, demanding that he be taken on board at once, and rebuking them for their heartlessness in running away. Those on the bridge were speechless at first, then the captain spoke.

"He's drunk," he said, an expression of awe and wonder on his smoke-stained countenance; "and still an instrument of Providence. But how did he raise that boat alone, and how did he get drunk?"

As the small submarine boat came abreast, men on the main-deck went over after Finnegan. Yelling and shouting joyously, they pulled the profane and abusive old man off into deep water, and held him up, finding him at last an inert and lifeless load on their hands; then a bowline was lowered, and he was pulled aboard. But in the confusion in the water no one had noticed that one man had climbed up the submerged deck of the submarine, floundered along to the tower, and entered it. It was only when the noise of the hatch snapping down came to their ears and they saw the small conning-tower disappear before their eyes that they suspected who had entered the boat.

But as to how Finnegan had raised the boat they did not learn from him; he knew nothing about it, he insisted, when the surgeon had revived him. Months later, the explanation came in a letter, part of which the captain read to his officers.

"I was released from parole, you remember," said the letter, "and took a chance that Finnegan had weathered—that's all. Five torpedoes going out did not lighten her enough; but five men—nearly a thousand pounds more—going out, did the business, and she must have floated up with Finnegan. He only had to start the motor, but the water awash in her destroyed her trim; that is why she dived so often. He turned on the oxygen, too, and I nearly suffocated before I got things straight."

"Oxygen," murmured the surgeon. "That's what made him drunk."