Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/173

1917] bodies, the survivors would lie low, waiting, with infinite patience, until the critical moment arrived. This was the way they took to persuade the submarine that their ship was what it pretended to be, a tramp, that there was nothing alive on board, and that it could safely come near. The still cautious German, after an hour or so of this kind of execution, would submerge and approach within a few hundred yards. All that the watchful eye at the peephole could see, however, was the periscope; this would sail all around the vessel, sometimes at a distance of fifty or a hundred feet. Clearly the German was taking no chances ; he was examining his victim inch by inch, looking for the slightest sign that the vessel was a decoy. All this time the captain and crew were lying taut, holding their breath, not moving a muscle, hardly winking an eyelid, the captain with his mouth at the voice pipe ready to give the order to let the false works drop the moment the submarine emerged, the gun crews ready to fire at a second's warning. But the cautious periscope, having completed the inspection of the ship, would start in the direction of the drifting lifeboats. This ugly eye would stick itself up almost in the faces of the anxious crew, evidently making a microscopical examination of the clothes, faces, and general personnel, to see if it could detect under their tramp steamer clothes any traces of naval officers and men.

Still the anxious question was, would the submarine emerge? Until it should do so the ship's crew was absolutely helpless. There was no use in shooting at the submerged boat, as shots do not penetrate the water but bounce off the surface as they do off solid ice. Everybody knew that the German under the water was debating that same question. To come up to the surface so near a mystery ship he knew meant instant death and the loss of his submarine; yet to go away under water meant that the sinking ship, if a merchantman, might float long enough to be salvaged, and it meant also that he would never be able to prove that he had accomplished anything with his valuable torpedo. Had he not shelled the derelict so completely that nothing could possibly survive? Had he not examined the thing minutely and discovered nothing amiss ? It must be remembered that in 1917 a submarine went through this same procedure with every