# The Red Book Magazine/Volume 30/Number 4/The Quality of Mercy

Extracted from The Red Book Magazine, 1918 April, pp. 75–80, 112, 114, 115. Accompanying illustrations may be omitted.
If you were a poor German sailor, how would it strike you to be set adrift in an open boat with no more mercy than if you were a mere Englishman or American or neutral? Another exciting story of “The Scum of the Seas.”
The QUALITY of MERCY
By ROY NORTON
Illustrated by ROBERT W. AMICK
“There are six men here ready to die,” said Captain Bill, “—men who probably will die if taken before German judges. Why not die here?”
GO where one might, on the water-fronts of a hundred ports scattered and clinging to the shores of a score of seas, seafaring men would shake their heads and grin at the mere mention of Captain Bill Main. And sailors told tales of him in the dim recesses of those abodes where the beat of breasted waters sounds trough streaming bows and the forecastle-lights plunge and swing—tales not all of which were lies. Scarcely ever were they twice told alike; but in one feature all of them, legends and lies, fancies and facts, agreed—that point being his reckless, hard-bitten, resourceful courage. Smuggler, gun-runner and sometime outlaw that he had been, inevitably commanding “scum of the seas” that could find no berths aboard respectable, dainty ships, he had by repute the saving virtue of being “a man of his word.”
The evil men do is self-advertising; the good is like “the brave deed done alone in the night.” Hence there came a day when the seafarers were amazed, and speculated with puzzled comments, when it became bruited about the Atlantic ports that the Acirema, that stanch and disreputable steam schooner which had been chased by the gunboats of a half-dozen different navies, had boldly sailed into Newport News, had been docked and was being refitted. Furthermore, Captain Bill had been seen as an honored guest at a table where sat officers of the United States Navy. Inasmuch as truth is the most difficult of all gossip to believe, most of those who heard the tales promptly dismissed them as being most extravagant and extraordinary lies. And yet these were truths.
Ships are like women; a black reputation cannot be obliterated by a coat of paint and new top-gear. When the Acirema left the dock flaunting prosperity, spick and span, refurbished and overhauled from engine-room to bridge, glorified by new paint, dignified by new bridgework and polished brass, other ships without the taint of a shadowy past seemed to swing on their anchors and turn their backs upon her as if fearful of contamination, quite as if they lifted their clean skirts lest they somehow brush this harlot of the seas. When the Acirema broke out the American flag astern, they appeared to bob indignantly as if they objected to her patronizing their own milliner; but the flag went up, and more marvelous still, its use was not only sanctioned but saluted in divers ways by those grim arbiters of the blue-water fashions, the battleships and cruisers whose officers watched her depart.
A few signals fluttered up on the headland. A man in the signal-station laboriously scrawled in his record: “Acirema, steam schooner, bound for Cherbourg with munitions of war, 10:27 a. m. All clear.” Captain Bill, lean and lithe, gray-headed and gray-eyed, moved restlessly on the bridge and scowled at the open, sunlit expanse as if his new and legitimate rôle were unable to offset forty years of seafaring in most of which he had been compelled to mistrust, fear and evade all other travelers of the sea. He could not overcome the habit of regarding all other sails as enemies. The words were actually in his mouth to alter the course and set wide of a twin stream of smoke which his trained eye suggested might come from a warboat of some description. He had forgotten that all warboats in these waters were now his friends and allies.
It took Captain Bill days to overcome habit. It required hours of introspection to convince him that by one pitched battle in a southern sea in defense of American lives and an American flag he had wiped the old slate clean and was beginning life again. There were no enemies now save those who were enemies of his flag, and for them he gave but little heed and spared no breath, save for an occasional curse, sincere, heartfelt and bitter. He was very proud of his instructions. They were not much as far as indicatory evidence of a government's trust was concerned, but he had been ordered to cherish them with care, and destroy them in vicissitude. That made them doubly valuable.
There was a small three-inch gun up in the bows of the Acirema, canvas-clad. It had been granted by the same government. Whenever his eyes fell upon it, Captain Bill began to feel a new sense of responsibility—grave responsibility such as becomes a man who feels that he is part and parcel of a great government swaying and directing a great and broad-flung land. He brooded over this in the loneliness of his new cabin abaft the charthouse, across hundreds of leagues of sea as the Acirema pursued unmolested her uneventful way. And as for his crew, once known as “scum of the sea”—
A heavy voice roared through the megaphone: “The master's boat, ahoy! Pull over here! If you don't, we'll sink you!” “Tell 'em to sink and be damned!” exclaimed one of the men; but Captain Bill lifted a commanding hand. “Pull toward them,” he said tersely.
“This crew,” declared MacHarg, the engineer, “has gone daft. Since the old man took to wearing a uniform, it washes its face. Pretty soon it'll be takin' baths. Aye, mon, it's a reeformation ye nae can ken!”
A GRAY mist of fall hung over the waters on a dawn when the Irish coast was but four hundred miles sway, and all watches had been doubled. A gray, chill sea threatened, with sullen promise, to make heavy waves within a few hours; and wandering gulls, infallible weather-prophets of the air, screamed and flashed restless warnings. The crow's-nest, swaying under the lumbering swell and the thrust of screws into a half cross-sea, was tenanted by Glover, the Texan, who swore steadily, stodgily, audibly, as if to keep himself company, but his alert which never relaxed vigilance. No peace sailor, this, but one whose eyes from childhood had been trained to search distances for danger.
Suddenly, in the midst of a monologue, Glover stopped, gripped the tiny rail as if to steady the ship herself, bent forward and out, and became rigid. For a full quarter-minute he waited, peering through the gray curtains that shut off the horizon. It was there again—the thin shape flattened into half-obscurity against the background of wave and weather, almost colorless, reared like a rock of blue-gray on the surface. The Texan hesitated no longer, but raised his voice in a shout that was half startled, half jubilant and wholly significant.
“Submarine on the port bow, point and a half! Coming awash!”
Another voice echoed. The feet of the bridge-watch clumped heavily into haste as the man ran to the port where he too clutched a rail and peered as if narrowing his eyes to visualize the menace. Bells rang on the palpitating heart of the Acirema; men poured hastily from hatch, companionway and fiddley, and the clang of shovels and roar of forced draught told that boiler and engine-room were aroused to the danger. The gay rock enlarged as if heaved from the depths by sub-oceanic pressure.
“Sta'bo'd the helm! Hard down!” a quick and incisive voice behind the wheel ordered, and the quarter-master knew that Captain Bill had taken command. He whirled the spokes without looking around to assure himself of the fact, and the vibrations told him that the new steam steering-gear of the Acirema was responsive. She swung her nose in swift obedience. Her screws began to thresh as if restless and rebellious of restraint. She seemed to careen and give as she took her new course and raced away with the seas. She throbbed with unaccustomed energy, almost buoyantly, as if glorying in a return to adventure where life depended upon adroit and speedy scrape. It was as if she had cast off her new cloak of respectability, and was again the corsair.
“The sub's coming out, sir,” announced Burns the mate to Captain Bill, and it seemed that the words were scarcely concluded before a shell plunged after, then abreast of the Acirema, and exploded a hundred yards ahead of her, sending up a jet of water into the growing light.
When the alarm was first given, an ex-gunner of the United States Navy who had been promoted to the exalted position of gun-captain had run to the canvas-clad shape in the bows and with two assistants begun to cast off the lashings. Men strained at the cover of the huge box by its side, wrenched it open and lifted one of the sinister, slender, polished shapes. The breech of the gun clanged open; the shell was inserted; and now, obedient to Captain Bill's orders, the Acirema turned at bay, recognizing the futility of flight. She was throbbing now, as if with danger. She seemed to charge down in a wide semicircle toward her enemy, as if intent upon ramming her, even as a man in fury rushes to lay hands upon an unexpected antagonist.
The captain of the gun forgot the early discipline learned in those years before he had become a derelict, forgot everything save that his target was fair. He waited for no orders, but fired. Across the murk flashed a shape that landed upon its mark and exploded; and even in the dim light its effect was visible to those trained men who watched expectantly for the result. The crew of the Acirema burst into a cheer. Something seemed altered out there in the actions of the U-boat. It swerved violently, rolled, swung off for a moment and then, while they watched, straightened grimly out to its work. Again the gun in the bows spoke, but the shot exploded wide. There was no answer from the submarine. It seemed intent on some sinister purpose of its own.
“You've cleaned off their gun, Tom!” shouted a man who had been watching, and the gun-captain swore and grinned. Their voices sounded loud and exultant in the stillness that had held all others in thrall.
And then from the crow's-nest came another battle-pitched call: “Look out! Look out! Torpedo on the way. Port the helm, hard! Port, for God's sake, port!”
PROMPT as were the orders, quick as she obeyed, leap as she did to respond, it was too late. The white line of foam was upon her direct and true. Her very swerve seemed to assist it to its target. Men leaped back from rail and stanchion as if to find greater security amidships; then the Acirema and the line of white met. There was a strained fraction of a second stretched into infinity by its portent, and an explosion that seemed to lift from the very breast of the seas the ship that was part of it. Her stanch old bows that had defied many waves and many dangers arose swiftly upward as if in anguish and surprise; her engines suddenly stopped, and she traveled under nothing save her own way.
“Got us, by thunder! Got us, he did!” exclaimed a voice, as if thoroughly astonished at such a fact.
And instantly, as if released from a spell of silence, other voices joined in, roaring and shouting expletives, filled with anger, shrieking for a fair fight, the voices of fighting men, undismayed, defiant and asking nothing more than equal odds. A huge negro, half nude, came running up from the engine-room followed by blackened oilers and stokers.
“Cap'n Main, sah! Cap'n Main! Tha's a hole blowed the bow fo'wa'd squah open, sah! And Mistah MacHarg reckons we's done sunk!”
“Where is MacHarg, Washington?” demanded Captain Bill.
“Standin' by the ingines, sah!”
Captain Bill swung toward the mate.
“Get the boats ready to lower away, Burns,” he said, his voice sounding extraordinarily calm and unexcited now that the short-fought battle was hopelessly lost. Then he turned to the tube and called: “MacHarg, come on deck if it looks hopeless. Is there a chance? None whatever. All right. Come on deck.”
He had scarcely ceased speaking when a roar of steam told that MacHarg was taking the last precautions to prevent an explosion, by releasing his boilers, and a moment later the Scot stood in the midst of the men by the boats, calmly pulling a reefer over his grease-stained jumper. The Acirema gurgled and throbbed suddenly beneath their feet. Already her stern was lifting, and her bow was but a foot or two above the rollers. There was no time to lose. There was nothing further to be done. The job was finished, the voyage at an end.
Captain Bill gave a troubled glance at the ominous sea, at the waiting men, and ordered the crew to the boats. He stalked inside his cabin and returned with the ship's papers and his pet sextant, a present from the officers and men of the U. S. gunboat Troy, and walked calmly to the rail. Burns, the mate, was standing up in the boat he commanded, which lay a dozen yards off, palpably fearful that Captain Bill would delay his departure too long. MacHarg was lighting his pipe. Glover, the Texan from the crow's-nest, was rolling a cigarette. Washington, the negro in the Captain's waiting boat, was fending off and on with his huge naked arms, to prevent her bumping against the lee side of the dying Acirema. And there, insolently coming nearer and watching the death-scene, was the U-boat that had brought them to this dread and hopeless situation. Captain Bill's face hardened murderously, and then he clung to the Jacob's ladder and waited for the boat to uplift and receive him. He did not look back at the Acirema. He could not. She had been his, a faithful partner, loyal servant, and his all. He could not bear to see her die. His voice was husky when he ordered: “Give way! Smartly now. Backwash might get us.” He did not turn his head to see her sink. Nothing but a far-reaching swirl of water told him that she was irrevocably gone—that and a chorus of rough exclamations and curses from the men in the boat.
“She was the best ship that ever was, sah,” said Washington sympathetically; but the Captain did not respond.
A HEAVY voice roared through a megaphone: “The master's boat, ahoy! Pull over here! If you don't, we'll sink you!”
“Tell 'em to sink and be damned, sir!” exclaimed one of the men; but Captain Bill scowled at the speaker and lifted a commanding hand for silence.
“Pull toward them,” he said tersely, and his men sullenly obeyed.
“Come around to the lee side and put the ship's master aboard,” ordered a German officer, neat and stiff in his braided uniform. On the low deck of the U-boat a machine-gun asserted command of the situation. Captain, Bill gestured his men to obey, and at the cost of wet legs where a wave slapped against him as he stepped across to the wet steel side-steps, he climbed upward to meet the man in uniform.
“You brought your papers with you?” demanded the German officer, without that courtesy of “sir,” which prevails between men of the sea.
“Yes,” replied Captain Bill, deliberately making the same omission.
“Then follow that man below,” ordered the U-boat commander, and he turned and gave an order in German.
Captain Bill saw that with instant obedience and clockwork discipline men sprang to individual tasks and recognized in these movements preparations to submerge.
“Just a moment, Captain,” he protested indignantly. “What you do with or to me doesn't matter at all! But you aren't going to leave my men out here in open boats with a sea making, are you? You might at least give them a tow toward—”
The German laughed boisterously.
“Tow? Of course I'm not going to tow them anywhere. And as for you—”
“Why, man, it's murder!” roared Captain Bill, losing his air of calmness. “The glass is falling, and—”
“Shut his mouth and take him below!” the officer ordered in German, and Captain Bill was unceremoniously hauled toward the steel steps leading downward to the electric brilliancy of the interior. He saw in an instant the uselessness of struggling, and again dared not, lest his own men recklessly attempt aid and thereby lose their last chance of life. He was taken to a tiny box of a cabin where he threw himself distractedly into a chair while two men stood guard over him. He heard the vague, unfamiliar sounds of strange machinery, endured new sensations of movement, and savagely repressed his passions. For his own predicament he wasted no thought; but his grim, rocklike exterior there was a wailing horror and pity for those valiant, time-tried comrades of his left up there to die on the surface of the sea. To have been with them and shared the Great Adventure would not have been so bad. Perhaps they had died easier had he been there to join them, “scum of the seas” and hardened, reckless wanderers that they were.
HIS meditations were interrupted by the entry of the commander, who ordered him to stand, and took the papers from his hands. The Prussian deliberately turned his back while he scanned the papers and logbook, chuckling now and then; but had he fully appreciated the character of this common tramp-skipper who patiently stood behind, thoughtfully staring at the floor, the chuckling would have died. For Captain Bill Main was calmly weighing the chances as to whether he could, with naked hands, kill his captor before being himself slain.
“So you had the Acirema, eh? And you are the master Wilhelm Main? Acirema! Ridiculous name.”
“Spell it backward,” harshly flared Captain Bill, and the officer did so with the pleased interest of a boy over a puzzle, and laughed contemptuously.
“Well, Captain Wilhelm Main, of the America spelt backward, as it should be,—always going back,—so you had munitions aboard?”
“As you can see for yourself.”
“And you were the owner?”
“Yes.”
“And I suppose now you have learned that fighting a great country like Imperial Germany is folly? Are sorry you jumped in with your own boat?”
“Not by a long sight! I'd do it again, if it were not for my men; but what has this to do with us? Why am I here? Why didn't you leave me with them? What right have you to—”
“Listen!” the commander interrupted harshly. “You were summoned to surrender and did not. You—”
“That's a lie!”
“If you interrupt me again, I'll have you gagged, you swine!” stormed the commander, half rising from his seat and glaring at Captain Bill, who thereupon relapsed into wooden silence.
“You fired on my boat and killed three of my men, wounded three more and destroyed my forward gun! You then tried to ram me. You want to know what I'm going to do with you? I'm going to take you to Zeebrugge and turn you over to a naval court to be tried and I hope hanged for malevolent resistance! That's what I'm going do! How do you like that, you dollar-scraping Yank?”
He snapped a thumb and finger derisively, and he sneered malignantly when Captain Bill did not respond. As if dismissing a troublesome insect with a brush of his hand, he gestured to the guard, who in turn indicated to Captain Bill that he was to accompany them. With head erect and a face as immobile as that of Sioux Indian being led to torture, he followed the man in front and heard the steps of the one behind through the narrow steel alleyway until they came to a narrow door.
This door was unlocked by the guard, and still obedient, Captain Main stepped inside and heard it close and bolted behind him. He stood within, surprised to discover that in this narrow cubicle there were other prisoners as helpless as he. Five men he counted in that confined space that had been built to serve but one. They looked up at him from their places on the improvised bunks which they had crawled to economize the restricted space. One of them threw his legs out, got to his feet and spoke.
“We are sorry to see you here, sir,” he said with the calm inflection of an English gentleman. “We too are masters of lost ships, as we presume you are, and prisoners. I am named Blake. Permit me to introduce you.”
The German commander fired. The bullet grazed Captain Bill's head, but he caught the barrel of the pistol in his hand so that the second shot struck the steel roof.
And then, with a formality that under the circumstances seemed absurd, Captain Bill was duly made acquainted with five other “masters of lost ships,” and asked to explain the events preceding his appearance in this sad colony. He learned that in nothing but details were their stories dissimilar. He was congratulated that he alone been able to strike a punishing blow before losing the fight. He learned that here were five men who would have willingly died could a valorous fight have culminated in assurance that another U-boat had been swept from the registers. They courteously offered him his choice of bunks, but he knew without their telling that of the six men in that cabin two must sleep on the floor, and refused.
Captain Main wondered mentally, in his calm, logical way, what these other masters, three of great steamers, would think if they knew him for what he was, ex-outlaw, ex-gun-runner, ex-corsair so recently reformed; and then he thought, almost with a sense of superiority, that these men were soft compared with such as he, that these were gentlemen of the seas who had led what to him would have been tame and uneventful lives. None of them had ever had a price upon his head. None of them had ever before faced a gallows and a noose. These were men who had been welcomed in their ports. They had never slipped in, hoping to avoid observation and avert suspicion. They had returned from voyages eager to meet wives, children, friends, employers; whereas he had come alone—always alone from great adventures, with none to welcome.
“For some reason she doesn't seem to be making way.”
The voice of the English gentleman, who had been master of a famous ship, aroused Bill from his meditation where he sat on the floor.
“How can Monsieur be certain of zat? But he should have ze know. He knows ze sub-boat. Ah, he ees ze only one who do know ze sub-boat and has been een one before,” commented Captain Escouflaire, the master of a French mail-boat, in his painful English.
The Englishman gave them information, and Captain Bill gathered that he had been a commander of the British Naval Reserve, had been interested in the development of submarines and had, at his regular training intervals, done duty upon such craft. The conversation passed on in the fatigued monotone of men who are wearied fellow-prisoners; but Captain Bill's brows were scowling and his mind suddenly alert. The imagination that had made him a successful adventurer and had led him to escape from a thousand dangerous situations was at work. He was tabulating, correlating and fiercely scheming as he sat with his lean hips on the steel floor and his broad shoulders against the locked door.
The crew of a U-boat of this size could scarcely exceed twenty men, all told. Three of these were gone, and three wounded by his own shell-fire. That left fourteen. The prisoners were confined in what had probably been an engineer's cabin, amidships, as his observation of sea-abodes had subconsciously told him in that short passage to his prison. The commander's cabin was probably about twelve paces forward. The engine-room must be aft, as indicated by the subdued noises therefrom. The door against which he rested his back was of thin wood. He found himself reaching back and tapping and feeling it to assure himself of this fact. It opened outward, as all ships' doors of emergency character do. It was not barred—this much he had also observed. There was another man there in that cabin, Captain Olesen, who looked even stronger and physically more capable than he himself. Two men against that door should splinter it at the first impact. And then—
He stopped and derided himself. What could six men do against at least a dozen and possibly fourteen? Unarmed men, fighting with naked hands against some at least with arms? And then he thought of MacHarg and Washington and Glover and Burns and those others who in the past had fought against far more desperate and hopeless odds, and fought to victory, too, and now he wished that five of them he might select were there with him. But, again, here were five men who were no more afraid to die than those adventurers he might have chosen. And one of them knew submarines! To capture her with inexperienced men would have left her captors as helpless as if they had never revolted to victory. This Englishman—
“Captain,” he demanded, suddenly lifting his chin up his chest where it had rested during his reverie, “if we had command of this boat, could you teach the others of us to run her to port?”
His companions paused and gave heed with astonishment, although his voice had been nothing more than a hoarse murmur, as if coming from some vague depths which they had not surmised.
“Why—why, yes! By heavens, I could!” Blake replied in a tense voice scarcely louder.
Captain Bill straightened his legs, doubled them until he was on his knees and then crawled into the center of the tiny space.
“There are six men here ready to die,” Captain Bill said as if stating a fact. “There are six men here who probably will die if taken before German judges—die like criminals, not as sailors and brave and free men! Why not die here? Men, up above us at the top are two boats filled with friends of mine. Friends, I say! With a long glass, open boats and four hundred miles from land! You men know what it means. The one hit made off my boat smashed the for'ard gun of this craft and knocked out some of their men. I know, because that scut of a puppet in gold braid told me so when I was in his cabin. Maybe he has twelve or fourteen left. Maybe we can't smash the door and surprise them enough to get the best of it, but if you're with me, we can try. And as far as I'm concerned, I'd rather take the chance and die now than leave those men of mine behind.”
He had to lift his hand in a motion of caution to silence them when the possibilities now open dawned upon then.
“You're right! You're right!” declared the English liner-man hoarsely. “If you put six of them out of action we've got a chance! The beast that runs this craft went one too far when he thought to bag enough of us to make a German holiday. He thought he could gain an iron cross by bringing in such proof of his work. He hasn't considered that there are now six of us, a wooden door, and at least one man in this hole that knows the mechanism of such boats. I suggest that you, Captain Main, be our leader, and that we try!”
The captain of the gun waited for no orders but fired.
They were inflamed by the daring of it, these men who had commanded others through stress and storm and now crowded together in the tiny space until their heads, some gray with the beginning of age, others untouched by time's erosion, were together as closely as conspirators ever were before. They took stock of knowledge and strength. Here were hardy men, and unafraid. Truly the German commander, seeking his bauble, had not measured the quantity and quality of menace that he had gathered from ill-fated ships into his possession.
Captain Bill read it in their faces as he measured them, man by man, and by that keen judgment was satisfied. It was the Englishman who gave the best strategy of all.
“I suggest that we wait until she starts her engines,” he said. “They are abaft these cabins. Their noise will help to smother the breaking of the door, and some of her men will not be alarmed. If it gives quickly, some of us will be out in the companionway before anyone can come. If there is a guard, we must get him as soon as we can. What do you suggest, Captain Main?”
“That two of us stop to get the guard if there is one, that two of us go to nab the brute who masters this craft, and two more tackle the engine-room. I should like to be the one to get the commander. Probably we can find something in his cabin to arm ourselves with. But we must grab anything with which to kill. Is that agreed? Good! Then you, Captain Blake, will lead the party to the engine-room. I'll take Captain Olesen with me. Captains Murdock and Escouflaire will care for the guard at the door. Captain Olesen, being the heaviest of us all, will help me smash it out. The others of you are to get behind and use us as battering-rams.”
They paused, perturbed, that he should thus suggest that they use their united strength to smash their fellow-beings against that barricade. It might not give. It might prove proof against their strength. But he gruffly asserted his position.
“You've said that I'm to be in command. Well, I accepted. It goes. I command by your leave. I say that you're to use Olesen and me as battering-rams. Now all we do is to wait for the noise of the engines.”
THEY had not long to wait, but to men strung up and waiting for battle the time dragged. They had stripped according to individual fancy. The captain of the British liner took off his coat and carefully folded it as if to preserve it immaculate, but rolled up his sleeves. The French master stripped to his undershirt, and Olesen followed the grim example of Captain Bill, who divested himself of everything save his trousers and tightened his belt around his lean waist.
They were strangely unlike as they stood there with naked torsos, the one muscled like a huge gladiator, the other with long folds of thew and sinew sweeping downward and around his lean ribs. All were barefooted or in stocking-feet. Even their whispering ceased, and they stood silent, some of them doubtless reflecting of things far remote, past events, and distant ties, as men do think when confronted with the final curtain of life's drama. They stared into one another's eyes when the first hum of driven dynamos suddenly pervaded the stillness, arose to a throbbing monotone and told them that this was the time to act.
Captain Bill took his place in the front, with Captain Olesen half behind and half abreast.
“When I say go,” ordered the adventurer, “you men are to drive us hard! Hard, I say! No mercy for these bodies of ours. If they break or bruise, it doesn't matter, if you succeed in smashing the door at the first blow. Ready? Now!”
From the' back end of the tiny compartment, hurled by their own momentum and the desperately exerted strength of those behind, like a living solidified catapult, the six men shot forward against the door. They felt the giving of flesh, the straining of joints, the rending of impact—and heard triumphantly the crashing of wood as the barrier gave way, a mass of splintered wood. They brought up in the wreckage against the steel wall of the alleyway on the opposite side. They heard a cry of wild alarm, and under the light saw a flash of steel as the guard attempted to use the short sword-bayonet with which he was armed. The captain of the liner seized it with one naked hand regardless of an edge that cut to the bone and with a trained fist caught the man a blow beneath the chin that would have broken a neck less sturdy. And then he tore the bayonet from the relaxing hand, and before the guard had fallen limply to the floor, was charging toward the engine-room.
Captains Bill and Olesen, regardless of a hundred bruises and splinter-wounds, ran forward. The German commander, alarmed, met them at the door with pistol in hand and fired. The bullet grazed Captain Bill's head, and a stream of blood spurted outward, but he caught the barrel of the pistol in his hand and directed its muzzle upward so that the second shot struck the steel roof above and spattered lead about them as it fell. They twisted back and forth, powerfully. From forward, men were rushing to the commander's assistance.
Time itself seemed against success in the sturdy resistance of the German, who threatened to delay a conclusion until he could be supported. Captain Bill made a desperate swerve, took advantage of an open doorway and succeeded in swinging the commander half around, thus giving Olesen room to act. The latter promptly brought both huge fists smashing beneath the commander's ears, and then savagely struck again as he fell.
“Out of my way! Give me room!” he shouted to Captain Bill who had the pistol and now fell backward into an open doorway. The Dane fought as if from atavistic depths the soul of a Viking had come to his aid. He seized the unconscious body of the commander, lifted it high in his mighty arms, and using it as a heavy shield. charged full at the oncoming men of the U-boat's crew. He swept into them, a giant maddened with battle-lust, shouting strange roaring cries of battle. And as the foremost fell, he trampled them beneath his bare feet in his onward charge.
One of the fallen men gained his feet with agile speed and started to draw a knife. Captain Bill's pistol was fired at such close range that the man's brains were spattered over the walls. Then Captain Bill leaped close behind the broad back of the Berserker and fired over the straining shoulder. A man in front screamed and fell. In the face of such demoniacal onslaught the others turned and fought to retreat down the narrow space. Captain Bill wriggled under the giant's arm and fired again with the certainty of a master of firearms, and a hand as cool, steady and deadly as a life's training of adventure had made.
“Stop! Stand where you are, or I'll kill you one by one,” he shouted; but they did not understand, and the Dane roared a translation into German, adding in the same tongue: “Up with your hands! Quick!”
The men, confused by the lack of a leader, terrified by the surety of death, obeyed. The Viking, breathing heavily dropped his shield to the floor and callously put a foot on the commander's upturned face to assure the officer's continued insensibility.
“Let me in front, Olesen,” ordered Captain Bill; and holding the men steadily under the point of his weapon he added: “Now you go back and see if there are any other arms in the commander's cabin. Hurry!”
There was but a moment's wait before Olesen returned with another revolver and a dress sword; but in that moment Captain Bill was fearfully aware that the motors had stopped and that the engine-room was resonant with the sound of screams and oaths of battle. One of the men in the companionway, encouraged by the sounds, dropped his hands and started to spring toward Captain Bill, who calmly killed him and shouted an invitation for another man to make a try.
“Tell them to come back one by one. You search them as they come, and herd them into the commander's cabin,” he said to Olesen, who instantly translated the order. Captain Bill stepped into a side recess and threatened them as they passed. From the side of his eye he saw that Olesen was evidently conducting his search inside the cabin and did not know until the last man visible, the sixth, had duly entered, that the Viking's method of search was to stand just inside the door and knock each man down as he appeared. Captain Bill growled a remonstrance and left Olesen on guard.
He ran back to the engine-room, where the noise had all but subsided, in time see that one of his own force lay upon the floor still and inert, that another sat rocking dizzily and holding his head, and that the captain of the liner was having a desperate struggle over and across the motors with a burly German engineer. He was rushing forward to assist, when from behind one of the motors appeared the French master dripping with the red of conflict and wounds. Before Captain Bill could shout a protest, he saw the Frenchman, swift as light, bring a huge spanner crashing down on the German's head. The battle in the engine-room was done.
“Thank you, M'sieur le Capitaine! Very well done indeed,” said the Englishman as calmly as if throughout all the ordeal he had remained mentally unruffled. “For a slight time, Captain Main, we found it a bit difficult here,” he explained, deliberately removing the remnants of his collar and tie. “A spanner was thrown in time to knock down Captain Ware as we entered; Captain Murdock was struck from behind and knocked out, and Monsieur Escouflaire and I were compelled to engage four very good men. Very good, indeed! I fear you will find one of them somewhat mixed up with the engines; one is here, as you see; another should be down there between the dynamos; and—I'll be blessed if I know where the other is.”
“Heem I am standing on,” explained Monsieur Escouflaire. “He is hors de combat by zee asseestance of zees spannair.”
“Take this gun and watch 'em, Captain,” said Captain Bill, handing the Frenchman his pistol. “Don't kill any more if you can avoid it. Captain Blake and I will search the ship.”
They found two other men hiding in the forward recesses of the boat and brought them aft. They made certain of subjection by binding the hands of those they could not confine separately; and then in the strange stillness succeeding the battle they took stock of their own wounds. One of the masters of lost ships was dead, and of the others there was not one but sustained bruises and wounds. They ministered to one another as best they could, all masters of crude surgery. Then they fell to the grim task of laying the dead in the only available open space. The silence of the depths surrounded them uncannily, as if their battle had been fought in the funereal heart of a steel morgue that had resumed its awesome peace.
CPTAIN BILL was made aware of his responsibilities by the voice of Olesen announcing that the commander of the conquered craft had regained consciousness.
“Shall I hit him again?” the Viking questioned, as if his desire for reprisals had not been fully sated.
“Certainly not,” replied Captain Bill. For an instant he was puzzled what to do; then he recalled what to him was the most vital issue of all.
“Captain,” he said, addressing the Englishman, “can you bring her to the surface?”
“I can, provided some of you men can man the engines, or we can compel the engineer to work,” was the answer.
“Then,” said Captain Bill, “I'd like to go to the surface and find my men. They are—”
He paused as if afraid of displaying sentiment, but the Englishman nodded gravely and said: “I understand. We'll try.”
From the depths of dark, cold waters to the depths of a dark gray morning the submarine arose, and Captain Bull climbed out through the conning-tower hatch and anxiously scanned the sullen, threatening wastes about him.
“I can't see them! I can't see them!” he said almost in a moan, to the captain of the liner, who had followed close on his heels.
“Looks bad,” admitted the latter, peering this way and that through a pair of binoculars. “And the glass is falling like a shot. Shall we cruise a circle? I'll take the controls below.”
“Good,” said Captain Bill; and he was left with the French master to assist him on the lookout.
The U-boat tossed and rocked desperately when she took cross-seas, straightened to a half-easy keel when she ran into them or with them astern, and wallowed when buffeted on her turnings. She bucked and plunged, twisted and wriggled, threw wash and spume and spray; but the two men clinging to the tiny railed inclosure above her conning-tower never faltered in their quest. To the French master came the honor of discovery. Out on the lifted edge of the world his keen eyes descried a mere spot that arose on the crest of a larger wave and then dropped swiftly from sight.
Now the submarine altered her course and with almost reckless speed for such seas bore down upon the point. The boats were pulling sullenly and doggedly with bows on to meet oncoming seas, quite as if recognizing the futility of the struggle but determined to die gamely. Their crews now and then shook a fist and cursed the oncoming casket of steel that had brought them to this desperate situation; but the curses gave way to wild cheers of relief and astonishment when they identified Captain Bill on the bridge. With heavy difficulty they succeeded in coming aboard, the low, exposed portion of the U-boat's hull offering but a small lee protection against the sea.
“Pay off the lines on those boats and hold them there,” ordered Captain Bill. Then he went below.
“Captain Olesen,” he called, “how are the prisoners now?”
“They've all come around all right,” replied the Viking with a grin, and Captain Bill stalked into the cabin where the German commander was confined. The Hun ceased objurgations to stare haughtily at his conqueror.
“Get on your heaviest clothing,” ordered Captain Bill, and he added grimly: “You'll need it. You and your crew are going for a cruise. We've picked up my boats.”
For an instant the German's eyes opened wide, and his lips parted as if they were unable to enunciate his thoughts. Slowly his insolent stare changed to one of desperate terror.
“Herr Gott! You mean—you don't mean you are going to put us adrift in your boats?”
“Exactly that!”
“But—Himmel, man! mercy. That is murder.”
“That is what I said to you an hour or two ago. You laughed. Murder? You call it that now, eh? Then, curse you, I'll tell you this: It doesn't make the slightest difference to me if it is. All I know is that I've got thirty-two men to cram inside this craft, that the life of any one of them is worth more to me than yours and those of your entire crew, that it's impossible to stow them aboard without getting rid of you and yours, that when you and yours came to sea you took the chances, and—you showed no mercy, and none shall be given. Get your coat if you want it. If not, I'll have you hauled on deck as you are. It's just a coat more than you allowed my men a chance to get when they took to the water.”
CAPTAIN BILL stalked out to arrange for an equal indulgence to his other prisoners, and ordered some cases of stimulant he had discovered in the store-room during his first search carried up and put into the boats. The captain of the liner was the only one of his fellows who voiced a single word of regret.
“It's a pity,” he said sadly, “that we have to do it; but it's their lives or those of your men. You are doing all you possibly could do, Captain Main; and yet—”
The eyes that were turned on him gleamed coldly, and with no warmth of either compassion or regret. The liner-man closed his lips but finished mentally: “God spare me from having an enemy such as this!”
There were pleas for mercy, implorations and curses from those who were launched. The terrors heartlessly meted to others had come home to them with sickening and unexpected justice. They fell to helpless, hopeless silence when the last of their men was put aboard the rocking, spray-washed boat under the storm-driven skies. Captain Bill gave the orders that sent all men aboard the U-boat below preparatory to submergence to less buffeting waters. The commander of the U-boat aroused himself from his terrified dejection long enough to shout a final objurgation. It was caught by the wind and whirled idly away.
“Curse if you wish,” Captain Bill shouted in reply. “I've shown more mercy than your people showed women and babies on the Lusitania and a thousand other ships. Good-by! And may Heaven have mercy on your souls!”
He went below. There came the clang of closing hatches. The waves seemed to climb upward and embrace the steel hull. The water swirled for a moment over a tiny spot on the surface of the sea where it had submerged, and the waves washed this momentary mark clean with one fierce sweep. That was all!
A few days later an official in a great admiralty office read a telegraphed report from a tiny port where a captured German submarine had been brought in and turned over to the port commander. He read it again as if too astonished by its contents to glean its full import in one reading, and then laid it on his desk and exclaimed, “God bless my soul!”
Out on the Atlantic a tempest had subsided, and the long swells were again running with lazy regularity, heedless of the knowledge contained in their depths—a certainty of knowledge that others than the sea might never know where and how two laden boats came to their end; for they made no earthly port.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1942, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 81 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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