The Diary of a U-boat Commander With an Introduction and Explanatory Notes by Etienne

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Ti­tle: The Di­ary of a U-​boat Com­man­der

Au­thor: Anon

Re­lease Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7947] [This file was first post­ed on June 4, 2003]

Edi­tion: 10

Lan­guage: En­glish

Char­ac­ter set en­cod­ing: ISO Latin-1

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTEN­BERG EBOOK, THE DI­ARY OF A U-​BOAT COM­MAN­DER ***

Er­ic El­dred, Mar­vin A. Hodges, Charles Franks, and the On­line Dis­tribut­ed Proof­read­ing Team.

THE DI­ARY OF A U-​BOAT COM­MAN­DER

WITH AN IN­TRO­DUC­TION AND EX­PLANA­TO­RY NOTES BY ETI­ENNE

AND

_18 Il­lus­tra­tions on Art Pa­per by Frank H. Ma­son._

[Il­lus­tra­tion: “We rammed a de­stroy­er, pass­ing through her like a knife through cheese.”]

* * * * *

BOOKS BY ETI­ENNE

STRANGE TALES FROM THE FLEET

A NAVAL LIEU­TENANT

1914–1918.

“In col­lab­ora­tion with Naval­lus.

Five Songs from the Grand Fleet.”

[Il­lus­tra­tion: “…they are so black and swift I don’t go near them.”]

* * * * *

LIST OF IL­LUS­TRA­TIONS

“We rammed a de­stroy­er, pass­ing through her like a knife through cheese”

“…they are so black and swift I don’t go near them”

“Steer­ing north-​west­er­ly … to lay a small mine­field off New­cas­tle”

“He had sud­den­ly seen the bow waves of a de­stroy­er ap­proach­ing at full speed to ram”

“We were put down by a trawler at dawn”

“The tor­pe­do had jumped clean out of the wa­ter a hun­dred yards short of the steam­er and had then dived un­der her”

“A mo­ment lat­er there was a se­vere jar; we had struck the bot­tom”

“As the dim lights on the mole dis­ap­peared, the cease­less foun­tain of star-​shells, min­gling with the flash­ing of guns, rose in­land on our port beam”

“We hit her aft for the sec­ond time….”

“The track met our ram”

“In the flash I caught a glimpse of his con­ning tow­er”

“The 1,000 kilo­grammes of met­al crashed down”

“Good-​bye! Steer west for Amer­ica!”

“It is a snug an­chor­age, and here I in­tend to re­main”

“A trap­door near her bows fell down, the White En­sign was bro­ken at the fore, and a 4-inch gun opened fire from the em­bra­sure that was re­vealed on her side”

“I sight­ed two con­voys, but there were de­stroy­ers there….”

“… when there was a blind­ing flash and the air seemed filled with moan­ing frag­ments”

“When I put up my periscope at 9 a.m. the hori­zon seemed to be ringed with pa­trols”

* * * * *

IN­TRO­DUC­TION

“I would ask you a favour,” said the Ger­man cap­tain, as we sat in the cab­in of a U-​boat which had just been added to the long line of bedrag­gled cap­tives which stretched them­selves for a mile or more in Har­wich Har­bour, in Novem­ber, 1918.

I made no re­ply; I had just grant­ed him a favour by al­low­ing him to leave the up­per deck of the sub­ma­rine, in or­der that he might await the mo­tor launch in some sort of pri­va­cy; why should he ask for more?

Un­de­terred by my si­lence, he con­tin­ued: “I have a great friend, Lieu­tenant-​zu-​See Von Schenk, who brought U.122 over last week; he has lost a di­ary, quite pri­vate, he left it in er­ror; can he have it?”

I de­lib­er­at­ed, felt a cer­tain pity, then re­mem­bered the _Bel­gian Prince_ and oth­er things, and so, look­ing the Ger­man in the face, I said:

“I can do noth­ing.”

“Please.”

I shook my head, then, to my as­ton­ish­ment, the Ger­man placed his head in his hands and wept, his mas­sive frame (for he was a very big man) shook in ir­reg­ular spasms; it was a most ex­traor­di­nary spec­ta­cle.

It seemed to me ab­surd that a man who had suf­fered, with­out vis­ible emo­tion, the mon­strous hu­mil­ia­tion of hand­ing over his com­mand in­tact, should break down over a triv­ial in­ci­dent con­cern­ing a di­ary, and not even his own di­ary, and yet there was this man cry­ing open­ly be­fore me.

It rather im­pressed me, and I felt a cu­ri­ous shy­ness at be­ing present, as if I had stum­bled ac­ci­den­tal­ly in­to some pri­vate re­cess of his mind. I closed the cab­in door, for I heard the voic­es of my crew ap­proach­ing.

He wept for some time, per­haps ten min­utes, and I wished very much to know of what he was think­ing, but I couldn’t imag­ine how it would be pos­si­ble to find out.

I think that my be­haviour in con­nec­tion with his friend’s di­ary added the last nec­es­sary drop of wa­ter to the floods of emo­tion which he had striv­en, and striv­en suc­cess­ful­ly, to hold in check dur­ing the agony of hand­ing over the boat, and now the dam had crum­bled and bro­ken away.

It struck me that, down in the bril­liant­ly-​lit, stuffy lit­tle cab­in, the re­sult of the war was epit­omized. On the ta­ble were some in­stru­ments I had for­bid­den him to re­move, but which my first lieu­tenant had dis­cov­ered in the en­gi­neer of­fi­cer’s bag.

On the set­tee lay a cheap, im­ita­tion leather suit-​case, con­tain­ing his spare clothes and a few books. At the ta­ble sat Ger­many in de­feat, weep­ing, but not the tears of re­pen­tance, rather the tears of bit­ter re­gret for hu­mil­ia­tions un­der­gone and am­bi­tions un­re­al­ized.

We did not speak again, for I heard the launch come along­side, and, as she bumped against the U-​boat, the noise echoed through the hull in­to the cab­in, and aroused him from his sor­rows. He wiped his eyes, and, with an at­tempt at his for­mer har­di­ness, he fol­lowed me on deck and board­ed the mo­tor launch.

Next day I vis­it­ed U.122, and these pa­pers are pre­sent­ed to the pub­lic, with such ad­di­tion­al re­marks as seemed de­sir­able; for some cu­ri­ous rea­son the au­thor seems to have omit­ted near­ly all dates. This may have been due to the fear that the book, if cap­tured, would be of great val­ue to the British In­tel­li­gence De­part­ment if the en­tries were dat­ed. The pa­pers are in the form of two vol­umes in black leather bind­ing, with a long let­ter in­side the cov­er of the sec­ond vol­ume.

_In­ter­nal ev­idence has per­mit­ted me to add the dates as re­gards the years. My thanks are due to K. for as­sis­tance in trans­la­tion_.

ETI­ENNE.

* * * * *

The Di­ary of a U-​boat Com­man­der

One vol­ume of my war-​jour­nal com­plet­ed, and I must con­fess it is dull read­ing.

I could not help smil­ing as I read my en­thu­si­as­tic re­marks at the out­break of war, when we vi­su­al­ized bat­tles by the week. What a con­trast be­tween our ex­pec­ta­tions and the ac­tu­al facts.

Months of monotony, and I haven’t even seen an En­glish­man yet.

Our bat­tle cruis­ers have had a lit­tle amuse­ment with the coast raids at Scar­bor­ough and else­where, but we bat­tle-​fleet fel­lows have seen noth­ing, and done noth­ing.

So I have de­cid­ed to vol­un­teer for the U-​boat ser­vice, and my name went in last week, though I am told it may be months be­fore I am tak­en, as there are about 250 lieu­tenants al­ready on the wait­ing list.

But soon­er or lat­er I sup­pose some­thing will come of it.

I shall have no cause to com­plain of in­ac­tiv­ity in that Ser­vice, if I get there.

* * * * *

I am off to-​night for a six-​days trip, two days of which are to be spent in the train, to the Ver­dun sec­tor.

It has been a great piece of luck. The trip had been ar­ranged by the Mil­itary and Naval In­ter-​com­mu­ni­ca­tion De­part­ment; and two of­fi­cers from this squadron were to go.

There were 130 can­di­dates, so we drew lots; as usu­al I was lucky and drew one of the two chances.

It should be in­tense­ly in­ter­est­ing.

* * * * *

_At_ —-

I ar­rived here last night af­ter a slow and tire­some jour­ney, which was some­what al­le­vi­at­ed by an ex­cel­lent bot­tle of French wine which I pur­chased whilst in the Cham­pagne dis­trict.

Long be­fore we reached the vicin­ity of Ver­dun it was ob­vi­ous to the most ca­su­al ob­serv­er that we were head­ing for a cen­tre of un­usu­al ac­tiv­ity.

Hos­pi­tal trains trav­el­ling north-​east and east were nu­mer­ous, and twice our train, which was one of the or­di­nary mil­itary trains, was shunt­ed on to a sid­ing to al­low troop trains to rum­ble past.

As we ap­proached Ver­dun the noise of ar­tillery, which I had heard dis­tant­ly once or twice dur­ing the day, as the ca­su­al rail­way train ap­proached the front, be­came more in­tense and grew from a low mur­mur in­to a steady noise of a kind of growl­ing de­scrip­tion, punc­tu­at­ed at ir­reg­ular in­ter­vals by very deep booms as some es­pe­cial­ly heavy piece was dis­charged, or an am­mu­ni­tion dump went up.

The coun­try here is very dif­fer­ent from the mud flats of Flan­ders, as it is hilly and well wood­ed. The Meuse, in the course of cen­turies, has cut its way through the ram­part of hills which sur­round Ver­dun, and we are at­tack­ing the place from three di­rec­tions. On the north we are slow­ly forc­ing the French back on ei­ther riv­er bank–a very cost­ly pro­ceed­ing, as each wing must ad­vance an equal amount, or the one that ad­vances is en­filad­ed from across the riv­er.

We are al­so slow­ly creep­ing for­ward from the east and north-​east in the di­rec­tion of Douau­mont.

I am at­tached to a 105-cm. bat­tery, a young Ma­jor von Markel in com­mand, a most charm­ing fel­low. I spent all to-​day in the ad­vanced ob­serv­ing po­si­tion with a young sub­al­tern called Gra­bel, al­so a nice young fel­low. I was in po­si­tion at 6 a.m., and, as ap­par­ent­ly is com­mon here, mist hides ev­ery­thing from view un­til the sun at­tains a cer­tain strength. Our bat­tery was sup­port­ing the at­tack on the north side of the riv­er, though the bat­tery it­self was on the south side, and fir­ing over a hill called L’Homme Mort.

Von Markel told me that the fight­ing here has not been pre­vi­ous­ly equalled in the war, such is the in­ten­si­ty of the com­bat and the price each side is pay­ing.

I could see for my­self that this was so, and the whole at­mo­sphere of the place is preg­nant with the supreme im­por­tance of this strug­gle, which may well be the dy­ing con­vul­sions of deca­dent France.

His Im­pe­ri­al Majesty him­self has ar­rived on the scene to wit­ness the fi­nal tri­umph of our arms, and all agree that the end is im­mi­nent.

Once we get Ver­dun, it is the gen­er­al opin­ion that this por­tion of the French front will break com­plete­ly, car­ry­ing with it the ad­ja­cent sec­tors, and the French Armies in the Vos­ges and Ar­gonne will be com­mit­ted to a gen­er­al re­treat on con­verg­ing lines.

But, favourable as this would be to us, it is gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered here that the fall of Ver­dun will break the moral re­sis­tance of the French na­tion.

The feel­ing is, that in­finite­ly more is in­volved than the cap­ture of a French town, or even the de­struc­tion of a French Army; it is a ques­tion of stami­na; it is the cli­max of the world war, the fo­cal point of the colos­sal strug­gle be­tween the Latin and the Teu­ton, and on the bat­tle­fields of Ver­dun the gods will de­cide the des­tinies of na­tions.

When I got to the for­ward ob­serv­ing po­si­tion, which was sit­uat­ed among the ru­ins of a house, a most amaz­ing noise made con­ver­sa­tion dif­fi­cult.

The or­ches­tra was in full blast and some­thing ap­proach­ing 12,000 pieces of all sizes were in ac­tion on our side alone, this be­ing the great­est ar­tillery con­cen­tra­tion yet ef­fect­ed dur­ing the war.

We were sit­uat­ed on one side of a val­ley which ran up at right an­gles to the riv­er, whose ac­tu­al course was hid­den by mist, which al­so ob­scured the bot­tom of our val­ley. The front line was down in this lit­tle val­ley, and as I ar­rived we lift­ed our bar­rage on to the far hill-​side to cov­er an at­tack which we were de­liv­er­ing at dawn.

Noth­ing could be seen of the con­flict down be­low, but af­ter half an hour we re­ceived or­ders to bring back our bar­rage again, and Gra­bel in­formed me that the at­tack had ev­ident­ly failed. This af­ter­noon I heard that it was in­deed so, and that one di­vi­sion (the 58th), which had tried to work along the riv­er bank and out­flank the hill, had been caught by a con­cen­tra­tion of six bat­ter­ies of French 75’s, which were sit­uat­ed across the riv­er. The un­for­tu­nate 58th, forced back from the riv­er-​side, had hero­ical­ly fought their way up the side of the hill, on­ly to en­counter our bar­rage, which, ow­ing to the mist, we thought was well above and ahead of where they would be.

Un­der this fresh blow the 58th had re­tired to their trench­es at the bot­tom of the small val­ley. As the day warmed up the mist dis­ap­peared, and, like a the­atre cur­tain, the lift­ing of this veil re­vealed the whole scene in its ter­ri­ble and yet me­chan­ical splen­dour.

I say me­chan­ical, for it all seemed un­re­al to me. I knew I should not see cav­al­ry charges, guns in the open, and all the old-​world panoply of war, but I was not pre­pared for this bar­ren and shell-​torn cir­cle of hills, con­tin­ual­ly be­ing fresh­ly, and, to an un­in­formed ob­serv­er, aim­less­ly lashed by shell fire.

Not a man in sight, though be­low us the ground was thick­ly strewn with corpses. Over­head a few aero­planes cir­cled round amidst balls of white shell bursts.

Dur­ing the day the slow-​cir­cling aero­planes (which were ar­tillery ob­serv­ing ma­chines) were gal­va­nized in­to fright­ful ac­tiv­ity by the sud­den ap­pear­ance of a fight­ing ma­chine on one side or the oth­er; this hap­pened sev­er­al times; it re­mind­ed me of a pike amongst young trout.

Af­ter lunch I saw a Spad shot down in flames, it was like Lu­cifer falling down from high heav­ens. The whole scene was en­framed by a slug­gish line of ob­ser­va­tion bal­loons.

Some­times groups of these would hasti­ly sink to earth, to rise again when the men­ace of the aero­plane had passed. These bal­loons seemed more like phleg­mat­ic spec­ta­tors at some ath­let­ic con­test than ac­tu­al par­tic­ipants in the events.

I wish my pen could con­vey to pa­per the var­ied im­pres­sions cre­at­ed with­in my mind in the course of the past day; but it can­not. I have the con­so­la­tion that, though I think that I have con­sid­er­able abil­ity as a writ­er, yet abler pens than mine have aban­doned in de­spair the task of de­scrib­ing a mod­ern bat­tle.

I can but re­it­er­ate that the dom­inant im­pres­sion that re­mains is of the me­chan­ical na­ture of this busi­ness of mod­ern war, and yet such an im­pres­sion is a false one, for as in the past so to-​day, and so in the fu­ture, it is the hu­man el­ement which is, has been, and will be the foun­da­tion of all things.

Once on­ly in the course of the day did I see men in any num­bers, and that was when at 3 p.m. the French were de­tect­ed mass­ing for a counter-​at­tack on the south side of the riv­er. It was doomed to be still-​born. As they left their trench­es, dis­tant pigmy fig­ures in hori­zon blue, ap­par­ent­ly plod­ding slow­ly across the ground, they were lashed by an in­ten­sive bar­rage and the lit­tle fig­ures were oblit­er­at­ed in a se­ries of spout­ing shell bursts.

Five min­utes lat­er the bar­rage ceased, the smoke drift­ed away and not a man was to be seen. Gra­bel told me that it had prob­ably cost them 750 ca­su­al­ties. What an amaz­ing and ef­fi­cient de­struc­tion of liv­ing or­gan­ism!

* * * * *

An­oth­er most in­ter­est­ing day, though of a dif­fer­ent na­ture.

To-​day was spent wit­ness­ing the ar­range­ments for deal­ing with the wound­ed. I spent the morn­ing at an ad­vanced dress­ing sta­tion on the south bank of the riv­er. It was in a cel­lar, be­neath the ru­ins of a house, about 400 yards from the front line and un­der heavy shell-​fire, as close at hand was the re­mains of what had been a wood, which was be­ing used as a con­cen­tra­tion point for re­serves.

The cov­er af­ford­ed by this so-​called wood was ex­treme­ly slight, and the troops were con­cen­trat­ing for the in­nu­mer­able at­tacks and counter-​at­tacks which were tak­ing place un­der shell fire. This caused the sur­geon in charge of the cel­lar to de­scribe the wood as our main sup­ply sta­tion!

I en­tered the cel­lar at 8 a.m., tak­ing ad­van­tage of a par­tial lull in the shelling, but a ma­chine-​gun bul­let vi­cious­ly flipped in­to a wood­en beam at the en­trance as I ducked to go in. I was not sor­ry to get un­der­ground. A slop­ing path brought me in­to the cel­lar, on one side of which sap­pers were dig­ging away the earth to in­crease the ac­com­mo­da­tion.

The il­lu­mi­na­tion con­sist­ed of can­dles set in bot­tles and some elec­tric hand lamps. The cen­tre of the cel­lar was oc­cu­pied by two portable op­er­at­ing ta­bles, rarely un­tenant­ed dur­ing the three hours I spent in this hell.

The at­mo­sphere–for there was no ven­ti­la­tion–stank of sweat, blood, and chlo­ro­form.

By a pow­er­ful ef­fort I coun­tered my nat­ural ten­den­cy to vom­it, and looked around me. The sides of the cel­lar were lined with fig­ures on stretch­ers. Some lay still and silent, oth­ers writhed and groaned. At in­ter­vals, one of the at­ten­dants would call the doc­tor’s at­ten­tion to one of the still forms. A hasty ex­am­ina­tion en­sued, and the stretch­er and its con­tents were re­moved. A few min­utes lat­er the stretch­er– emp­ty–re­turned. The sur­geon ex­plained to me that there was no room for corpses in the cel­lar; busi­ness, he ge­nial­ly re­marked, was too brisk at the present cru­cial stage of the great bat­tle.

The first feel­ings of re­vul­sion hav­ing been mas­tered, I de­ter­mined to make the most of my op­por­tu­ni­ties, as I have al­ways felt that the naval of­fi­cer is at a great dis­ad­van­tage in war as com­pared with his mil­itary broth­er, in that he but rarely has a chance of ac­cus­tom­ing him­self to the un­pleas­ant spec­ta­cle of torn flesh and bones.

This morn­ing there was no lack of ma­te­ri­al, and many of the in­testi­nal wounds were pe­cu­liar­ly re­volt­ing, so that at lunch-​time, when an­oth­er con­ve­nient lull in the tor­rent of shell fire en­abled me to leave the cel­lar, I felt thor­ough­ly hard­ened; in fact I had as­sist­ed in a hum­ble de­gree at one or two op­er­ations.

I had lunch at the 11th Army Med­ical Head­quar­ters Mess, and it was a sump­tu­ous meal to which I did full jus­tice.

Af­ter lunch, whilst wait­ing to be mo­tored to a field hos­pi­tal, I hap­pened to see a bat­tal­ion of Sile­sian troops about to go up to the front line.

It was rather cu­ri­ous feel­ing that one was look­ing at men, each in him­self a unit of civ­iliza­tion, and yet many of whom were about to die in the in­ter­ests there­of.

Their faces were an in­ter­est­ing study.

Some looked care­less and debonair, and seemed to swing past with a touch of reck­less­ness in their stride, oth­ers were grave and se­ri­ous, and seemed al­most to plod for­ward to the dic­tates of an in­evitable fa­tal­ism.

The field hos­pi­tal, where we met some very charm­ing nurs­es, on one of whom I think I cre­at­ed a dis­tinct im­pres­sion, was not par­tic­ular­ly in­ter­est­ing. It was clean, well-​or­ga­nized and ra­di­at­ed the ef­fi­cien­cy in­sep­ara­ble from the Ger­man Army.

* * * * *

Back at Wil­helmshaven–curse it!

Yes­ter­day morn­ing, when about to start on a tour of the am­mu­ni­tion sup­ply ar­range­ments, I re­ceived an ur­gent wire re­call­ing me at once!

There was noth­ing for it but to obey.

I was lucky enough to get a pas­sage as far as Mons in an al­ba­tross scout which was tak­ing dis­patch­es to that place.

From there I man­aged to bluff a mo­tor car out of the town com­man­dant–a most oblig­ing fel­low. This took me to Aachen where I got an ex­press.

The rea­son for my re­call was that Wit­neiss­er went sick and Arn­heim be­ing away, this has left on­ly two in the op­er­ations ci­pher­ing de­part­ment.

My ar­rival has made us three. It is pret­ty stren­uous work and, be­ing of a cler­ical na­ture, suits me lit­tle. The on­ly con­so­la­tion is that many of the mes­sages are most in­ter­est­ing. I was look­ing through the back files the oth­er day and amongst oth­er in­ter­est­ing in­for­ma­tion I came across the wire­less re­port from the boat that had sunk the _Lusi­ta­nia_.

It has al­ways been a mys­tery to me why we sank her, as I do not be­lieve those things pay.

* * * * *

Arn­heim has come back, so I have got out of the ci­pher­ing de­part­ment, to my great de­light.

I have re­ceived of­fi­cial in­for­ma­tion that my ap­pli­ca­tion for U-​boats has been re­ceived. Mean­while all there is to do is to sit at this —- hole and wait.

_2nd June_, 1916.

I have fought in the great­est sea bat­tle of the ages; it has been a won­der­ful and ter­ri­ble ex­pe­ri­ence.

All the de­tails of the bat­tle will be his­to­ry, but I feel that I must place on record my per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ences.

We have not es­caped with­out marks, and the good old _König_ brought 67 dead and 125 wound­ed in­to port as the price of the vic­to­ry off Ska­jer­ack, but of the En­glish there are thou­sands who slept their last sleep in the wrecked hulls of the bat­tle cruis­ers which will rust for eter­nal ages up­on the Jut­land banks.

Sad as our loss­es are–and the gal­lant _Lut­zow_ has sunk in sight of home–I am filled with pride.

We have met that great ar­ma­da the British Fleet, we have struck them with a ham­mer blow and we have re­turned. I was asleep in my cab­in when the news came that Hip­per was com­ing south with the British bat­tle cruis­ers on his beam. In five min­utes we were at our ac­tion sta­tions. We made con­tact with Hip­per at 5.30 p.m., [1] and Beat­ty turned north with his cruis­ers and fast bat­tle­ships and we pur­sued.

[Foot­note 1: This is 4.30 G.M.T.–Eti­enne]

Two of the great ships had been sunk by our bat­tle cruis­ers, and we had hopes of de­stroy­ing the re­main­der, when at 6.55 the mist on the north­ern hori­zon was pierced by the formidable line of the British Bat­tle Fleet.

Jel­li­coe had ar­rived!

Three bat­tle cruis­ers be­came in­volved be­tween the lines, and in an in­stant one was blown up, and an­oth­er crawled west in a sink­ing con­di­tion. Sud­den and ter­ri­ble are events in a mod­ern sea-​bat­tle.

Con­front­ed with the con­cen­trat­ed force of Britain’s Bat­tle Fleet we turned to east, and for twen­ty min­utes our High Seas Fleet sus­tained the un­equal con­test.

It was dur­ing this pe­ri­od that we were hit sev­en­teen times by heavy shell, though, in my po­si­tion in the af­ter tor­pe­do con­trol tow­er, I on­ly re­al­ized one hit had tak­en place, which was when a shell plunged in­to the af­ter tur­ret and, blow­ing the roof off, killed ev­ery mem­ber of the tur­ret’s crew.

From my po­si­tion, when the smoke and dust had blown away, I looked down in­to a mass of twist­ed ma­chin­ery, amongst which I seemed to de­tect the charred re­mains of bod­ies.

At about 7.40 we turned, un­der cov­er of our smoke screen, and steered south-​west.

Our po­si­tion was not sat­is­fac­to­ry, as the last in­for­ma­tion of the en­emy re­port­ed them as turn­ing to the south­ward; con­se­quent­ly they were be­tween us and He­ligoland.

At 11 p.m. we re­ceived a sig­nal for di­vi­sions of bat­tle fleets to steer in­de­pen­dent­ly for the Horn Reef swept chan­nel.

Ten min­utes lat­er we un­der­went the first of five de­stroy­er at­tacks.

The British de­stroy­ers, search­ing wide in the night, had lo­cat­ed us, and with des­per­ate gal­lantry pressed home the at­tack again and again. So close did they come that about 1.30 a.m. we rammed one, pass­ing through her like a knife through a cheese.

It was a won­der­ful spec­ta­cle to see those sin­is­ter craft, rush­ing mad­ly to their de­struc­tion down the bright beam of our pow­er­ful search­lights. It was an av­enue of death for them, but to the cred­it of their Ser­vice it must stand that through­out the long night­mare they did not hes­itate.

The sur­round­ing dark­ness seemed to vom­it forth flotil­la af­ter flotil­la of these cav­al­ry of the sea.

And they struck us once, a tor­pe­do right for­ward, which will keep us in dock for a month, but did no vi­tal in­jury.

When morn­ing dawned, misty and soft, as is its way in June in the Bight, we were to the east­ward of the British, and so we came hon­ourably home to Wil­helmshaven, feel­ing that the young Navy had laid wor­thy foun­da­tions for its tra­di­tion to grow up­on.

We are to re­port at Kiel, and shall be six weeks up­on the job.

_Frank­furt_.

Back on sev­en­teen days’ leave, and ev­ery­one here very anx­ious to hear de­tails of the bat­tle of Ska­jer­ack.

It is very pleas­ant to have some­thing to talk to the wom­en about. Usu­al­ly the gal­lant field greys hold the draw­ing-​room floor, with their startling tales from the West­ern Front, of how they near­ly took Ver­dun, and would have if the British hadn’t in­sist­ed on be­ing slaugh­tered on the Somme.

It is quite im­pos­si­ble in many ways to tell that there is a war on as far as so­cial life in this place is con­cerned.

There is a short­age of good cof­fee and that is about all.

* * * * *

Ar­rived back on board last night.

They have made a fine job of us, and we go through the canal to the Schillig Roads ear­ly next week.

We are to do three weeks’ gun­nery prac­tices from there, to train the new drafts.

1916 (_about Au­gust_).

At last! Thank Heav­ens, my ap­pli­ca­tion has been grant­ed. Schmitt (the Sec­re­tary) told me this morn­ing that a let­ter has come from the Ad­mi­ral­ty to say that I am to present my­self for med­ical ex­am­ina­tion at the board at Wil­helmshaven to-​mor­row.

What joy! to strike a blow at last, fin­ished for ev­er the cursed monotony of in­ac­tiv­ity of this High Seas Fleet life. But the U-​boat war! Ah! that goes well. We shall bring those stub­born, blood-​suck­ing is­landers to their knees by strik­ing at them through their bel­lies.

When I think of Lon­don and no food, and Glas­gow and no food, then who can say what will hap­pen? Re­volt! re­bel­lion in Eng­land, and our brave field greys on the west will smash them to atoms in the spring of 1917, and I, Karl Schenk, will have helped di­rect­ly in this! Great thought–but calm! I am not there yet, there is still this con­found­ed med­ical board. I al­most wish I had not drunk so much last night, not that it makes any dif­fer­ence, but still one must run no risks, for I hear that the med­ical is ter­ri­bly strict for the U-​boat ser­vice. On­ly the cream is skimmed! Well, to-​mor­row we shall see.

* * * * *

Passed! and with fly­ing colours; it seemed ab­surd­ly easy and on­ly took ten min­utes, but then my physique is mag­nif­icent, thanks to the phys­ical train­ing I have al­ways done. I am now due to get three weeks’ leave, and then to Zee­brugge.

I have wired to the lit­tle moth­er at Frank­furt.

* * * * *

_At Zee­brugge, or rather Bruges._

I spent three weeks at home, all the fam­ily are pleased ex­cept moth­er; she has a wom­an’s dread of dan­ger; it is a pleas­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic in peace time, but a cloy on plea­sure in days of war. To her, with the nar­row­ness of a fe­male’s in­tel­lect, I re­al­ly be­lieve I am of more im­por­tance than the Fa­ther­land–how ab­surd. Whilst at Frank­furt I saw a good deal of Rosa; she seems bet­ter look­ing each time I meet her; doubt­less she is still de­vel­op­ing to full wom­an­hood. Moritz was home from Flan­ders. He had ten days’ leave from Ypres, and, though I have a dis­like for him, he cer­tain­ly was in­ter­est­ing, though why the En­glish cling to those wretched ru­ins is more than I can un­der­stand.

I felt in­stinc­tive­ly that in a sense Moritz and I were ri­vals where Rosa was con­cerned, though I have nev­er con­sid­ered her in that light–as yet. One day, per­haps? These wom­en are much the same ev­ery­where, and I could see that hav­ing en­tered the U-​boat ser­vice made a dif­fer­ence with Rosa, though her log­ic should have told her that I was no dif­fer­ent. But is that right? Af­ter all, it is some­thing to have joined this ser­vice; the Guards them­selves have no bet­ter ca­chet, and it is cer­tain­ly cheap­er.

Here we live in bil­lets and in a com­man­deered ho­tel. The life ashore is pleas­ant enough; the damned Bel­gians are some­times sulky, but they know who is mas­ter. Biss­ing (a splen­did chap) sees to that.

As a mat­ter of fact we have ben­efit­ed them by our oc­cu­pa­tion, the shops do a roar­ing trade at pre­pos­ter­ous prices, and shame­ful­ly enough the Ger­man shop­keep­ers are most guilty. These pot-​bel­lied mer­chants don’t seem to re­al­ize that they ex­ist ow­ing to our ex­er­tions.

I was much struck with the beau­ti­ful or­der­li­ness of the small gar­dens which we have laid out since 1914, and, in fact, wher­ev­er one looks there is ev­idence of the ge­nius of the Ger­man race for thor­ough or­ga­ni­za­tion. Yet these Bel­gians don’t seem to ap­pre­ci­ate it. I can’t un­der­stand it.

I find here that so­cial life is very much gay­er than at that mad town of Wil­helmshaven. At the High Seas Fleet bases there was the strict­ness and aus­ter­ity that some peo­ple seem to con­sid­er nec­es­sary to show that we are at war, though Heav­en knows there was pre­cious lit­tle war in the High Seas Fleet; per­haps that was why the “blood and iron” régime was in full or­der ashore. Here, in Bruges, at any rate as far as the sub­ma­rine of­fi­cers are con­cerned, the mat­ter is far dif­fer­ent. When the boats are in, one seems to do as one likes, with a per­func­to­ry vis­it to the ship in the course of the day.

Wit­nitz (the Com­modore) favours com­plete re­lax­ation when in from a trip. In the evenings there are par­ties, for which there are al­ways ladies, and I find it is nec­es­sary to have a “smok­ing.”[1] I went to the best tai­lor to buy one, and found that I must have one made at the damnable price of 140 marks; the fit­ter, an oily Jew, had the in­cred­ible im­per­ti­nence to as­sure me it would be cut on Lon­don lines!

[Foot­note 1: A din­ner jack­et.]

I near­ly felled him to the ground; can one nev­er get away from Eng­land and things En­glish? I’ll see his ac­count waits a bit be­fore I set­tle it.

There are sev­er­al fel­lows I know here. Karl Müller, who was 3rd watch­keep­er in the _Yor­ck_, and Adolf Hil­fs­baumer, who was cap­tain of G.176, are the two I know best. They are both do­ing a few trips as sec­ond in com­mands of the lat­er U.C. boats, which are mine-​lay­ing off the En­glish coasts. This is a most dan­ger­ous op­er­ation, and near­ly all the U.C. boats are com­mand­ed by re­serve of­fi­cers, of whom there are a good many in the Mess.

Ex­cel­lent fel­lows, no doubt, but some­what un­couth and lack­ing the fin­er points of breed­ing; as far as I can see in the short time I have been here they keep them­selves to them­selves a good deal. I cer­tain­ly don’t wish to mix with them. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it ap­pears that I am al­most bound to be ap­point­ed as sec­ond in com­mand of one of the U.C. boats, for at least one trip be­fore I go to the periscope school and train for a com­mand of my own. The idea of be­ing bot­tled up in an elon­gat­ed cigar and un­der the com­mand of one of those nau­ti­cal plough-​boys is re­pel­lent. How­ev­er, the Von Schenks have nev­er been too proud to obey in or­der to learn how to com­mand.

* * * * *

I have been ap­point­ed sec­ond in com­mand to U.C.47. Her cap­tain is one Max Al­ten by name. Be­yond the fact that I saw him drunk one night in the Mess I know noth­ing of him.

I re­port­ed to him and he seems rather in awe of me. His fears are ground­less.

I shall make it as easy as pos­si­ble for him, for it must be as awk­ward for him as it is un­pleas­ant for me.

To cel­ebrate my prop­er en­try in­to the U-​boat ser­vice, I gave a din­ner par­ty last night in a pri­vate room at “Le Coq d’Or.” I asked Karl and Adolf, and told them to bring three girls. My op­po­site num­ber was a love­ly girl called Zoe some­thing or oth­er. I wore my “smok­ing” for the first time; it is cer­tain­ly a be­com­ing cos­tume.

We drank a good deal of cham­pagne and had a very pleas­ant lit­tle de­bauch; the girls got very mer­ry, and I kissed Zoe once. She was not very an­gry. I think she is thor­ough­ly charm­ing, and I have ac­cept­ed an in­vi­ta­tion to take tea at her flat. She is ei­ther the wife or the chère amie of a colonel in the Bran­den­burg­ers, I could not make out which. Luck­ily the gal­lant “Cockchafer” is at the mo­ment on the La Bassée sec­tor, where I was in­ter­est­ed to ob­serve that heavy fight­ing has bro­ken out to-​day. I must con­sole the fair Zoe!

Both Karl and Adolf got rather drunk, Adolf hope­less­ly so, but I, as usu­al, was hard­ly af­fect­ed. I have a head of iron, pro­vid­ed the liquor is good, and _I_ saw to that point.

* * * * *

We were sail­ing, or rather go­ing down the canal to Zee­brugge on Fri­day, but the start­ing re­sis­tance of the port main mo­tor burnt out and we were de­layed till Sun­day, as they will fit a new one.

I must con­fess the or­ga­ni­za­tion for re­pair work here is ad­mirable, as very lit­tle is done by the crews in the U-​boats, all work be­ing car­ried out by the per­ma­nent staff, who are quar­tered at Bruges docks. Tak­ing ad­van­tage of the de­lay I called on Zoe Stein, as I find she is named.

It ap­pears she is _not_ mar­ried to Colonel Stein. She told me he was fat and ug­ly, and laughed a good deal about him. She showed me his pho­to­graph, and cer­tain­ly he is no beau­ty. How­ev­er, he must be a man of means, as he has giv­en her a charm­ing flat, beau­ti­ful­ly dec­orat­ed with wa­ter-​colours which the Colonel salved from the French château in the ear­ly days–these army fel­lows had all the chances.

I bade an af­fec­tion­ate farewell to Zoe, and I trust Stein will be still busi­ly en­gaged at La Bassée when I re­turn in a fort­night’s time! I am great­ly obliged to Karl for the in­tro­duc­tion, and told him so; he him­self is run­ning af­ter a lit­tle grass wid­ow whose hus­band has been miss­ing for some months. I think Karl finds it an ex­pen­sive game; luck­ily Zoe seems well sup­plied with mon­ey–the es­sen­tial in­gre­di­ent in a joy­ous life.

On Fri­day night we had an air-​raid–a fre­quent event here, but my first ex­pe­ri­ence in this line. Un­pleas­ant, but a fine spec­ta­cle, con­sid­er­able dam­age done near the docks and an un­ex­plod­ed bomb fell in a street near our head­quar­ters.

Two ma­chines (British) brought down in flames. I saw the green balls [1] for the first time. A most fas­ci­nat­ing sight to see them float­ing up in wav­ing chains in­to the vault of heav­en; they re­mind­ed me of mak­ing daisy chains as a child.

[Foot­note 1: Known as “Fly­ing-​onions.”]

_At Zee­brugge_.

We are along­side the mole in one of the new sub­ma­rine shel­ters that has been built.

The boat is un­der a con­crete roof over three feet thick, which would de­fy the heav­iest bomb.

We have much im­proved the port since our ar­rival. The port, so-​called, is pure­ly ar­ti­fi­cial, and ac­tu­al­ly con­sists of a long mole with a gen­tle curve in it, which reach­es out to sea­ward and pro­tects the mouth of the canal. The tides are very strong up and down the coast, and con­stant dredg­ing is car­ried out to keep 20 feet of wa­ter over the sill at the lock gates.

On ar­rival last night we went straight in­to No. 11 shel­ter, as an air-​raid was ex­pect­ed, but noth­ing hap­pened, so I went up to the “Flan­dre,” which seems to be the best ho­tel here, full of sub­ma­rine peo­ple, and I heard many in­ter­est­ing sto­ries. There seems no doubt this U-​boat war is dan­ger­ous work; I find the U.C. boats are be­gin­ning to be called the Sui­cide Club, af­ter the fa­mous En­glish sto­ry of that name, which, cu­ri­ous­ly enough, I saw on the kine­mato­graph at Frank­furt last leave. We Ger­mans are ex­traor­di­nar­ily broad-​mind­ed; I doubt if the works of Ger­man au­thors are seen on the screens in Eng­land or France.

The news from the West is good, the En­glish are hurl­ing them­selves to de­struc­tion against our steel front. We are now to load up with mines. I must stop writ­ing to su­per­in­tend this work.

_At sea. Near the South Dog­ger Light._

We load­ed up the ten mines we car­ry in an hour and five min­utes. They were lift­ed from a rail­way truck by a big crane and del­icate­ly low­ered in­to the mine tubes, of which we have five in the bows.

The tubes ex­tend from the up­per deck of the ship to her keel, and slope aft to fa­cil­itate re­lease. Hav­ing com­plet­ed with fu­el at Bruges, we took in a store of pro­vi­sions and Al­ten went up to the Com­modore’s of­fice to get our sail­ing or­ders.

We sailed at 6 p.m. and at last I felt I was off. To-​day, the 22nd, we are just north of the South Dog­ger, steer­ing north-​west­er­ly at 9-1/2 knots.

The sea is quite calm and ev­ery­thing is very pleas­ant. Our mis­sion is to lay a small mine­field off New­cas­tle in the East Coast war chan­nel. I have, of course, nev­er been to sea for any length of time in a U-​boat, and it is all very nov­el.

I find the roar of the Diesel en­gine very re­lent­less, and last night slept bad­ly in a wretched bunk, which was a poor sub­sti­tute for my love­ly quar­ters in the bar­racks at Wil­helmshaven. One thing I ap­pre­ci­ate, and that is the food; it is re­al­ly ex­cel­lent: fresh milk, fresh but­ter, white bread and many oth­er lux­uries.

I have spent most of the day pick­ing up things about the boat. Her gen­er­al ar­range­ment is as fol­lows:

Start­ing in the bows, mine tubes oc­cu­py the cen­tre of the boat, leav­ing two nar­row pas­sages, one each side. In the port pas­sage is the wire­less cab­inet and sig­nal flag lock­ers, with store rooms un­der­neath. In the star­board pas­sage are one or two small pumps and the kitchen.

The next com­part­ment con­tains four bunks, two each side, these are oc­cu­pied by Al­ten, my­self, the en­gi­neer, and the Nav­igat­ing War­rant Of­fi­cer. Pro­ceed­ing fur­ther aft one en­ters the con­trol room, in which one periscope is sit­uat­ed, and the nec­es­sary valves and pumps for div­ing the boat.

The next com­part­ment is the crew space; ten of the com­pa­ny ex­ist here.

Over­head on each side is the gear for re­leas­ing the tor­pe­does from the ex­ter­nal tor­pe­do tubes, of which we car­ry one each side. I think we bor­rowed this idea from the Rus­sians.

Then comes the en­gine-​room, an in­fer­no of rat­tling nois­es, but ex­cel­lent en­gines, I be­lieve. At the af­ter end of the en­gine-​room are the two main switch­boards, of whose man­ner of work­ing I am at present in some ig­no­rance.

The two main sets of elec­tric mo­tors are un­der­neath the boards, in the stern, where we have a third tor­pe­do tube.

* * * * *

I had hard­ly writ­ten the above words when a mes­sage came that the cap­tain would like me to come to the bridge.

I went up in a leisure­ly fash­ion, through the con­ning tow­er, which is over the con­trol room, and re­port­ed my­self. He in­di­cat­ed a low-​ly­ing patch of smoke on the hori­zon far away on the star­board bow. I was obliged to con­fess that it con­veyed noth­ing to me, when he aroused my in­tense in­ter­est by stat­ing that it was, with­out doubt, be­ing emit­ted from a British sub­ma­rine, who are known to fre­quent these wa­ters. He was pro­ceed­ing away from us, and was, even then, six or sev­en miles away, so an at­tack was out of the ques­tion. The en­gi­neer, who had joined us, drew my at­ten­tion to the thin wisp of al­most in­vis­ible blue-​grey smoke from our own stern. The con­trast was cer­tain­ly strik­ing!

Over din­ner I gave it as my opin­ion that the British boats were pret­ty use­less. Al­ten would not agree, and stat­ed that, though in cer­tain tech­ni­cal as­pects they were in a po­si­tion of in­fe­ri­or­ity, yet in per­son­nel and skill in at­tack­ing they were ful­ly our equals. He seemed to hold them in con­sid­er­able re­spect, and he re­marked that, when mak­ing a pas­sage, he was more anx­ious on their ac­count than in any oth­er way. He in­formed me that, on the last pas­sage he made, he was at­tacked by a British boat which he nev­er saw, the on­ly in­di­ca­tion he re­ceived be­ing a tor­pe­do which jumped out of the wa­ter al­most over his tail. Luck­ily it was very rough at the time, which made the tor­pe­do run er­rat­ical­ly, oth­er­wise they would un­doubt­ed­ly have been hit.

What ap­peared to as­ton­ish him was the fact that the British boat had been able to make an at­tack in such weath­er. We are now charg­ing on one en­gine, 500 am­peres on each half-​bat­tery.

* * * * *

We are due back at Zee­brugge at 10 p.m. to-​night. We should have been in at dawn to-​day, but we re­ceived a wire­less from the se­nior of­fi­cer, Zee­brugge, to say that mine-​lay­ing was sus­pect­ed, and we were to wait till the “Q.R.” chan­nel, from the Blanken­berg buoy, had been swept. We lay in the bot­tom for eight hours, a few miles from the west­ern end of the chan­nel.

Our trip was quite suc­cess­ful, but not with­out cer­tain ex­cite­ments.

On the night of the 23rd we passed fair­ly close to a fish­ing fleet on the Dog­ger Bank, and saw the lights of sev­er­al steam­ers in the dis­tance. As our first busi­ness was to lay our mines in the ap­point­ed place, we did not wor­ry them.

We burnt usu­al nav­iga­tion lights, or rather side lights which ap­pear to be usu­al, ex­cept that, by a lit­tle fit­ting which Al­ten has made him­self, the arcs of bear­ing on which the lights show can be changed at will. His idea is that, should we ap­pear to be ap­proach­ing a steam­er which he wish­es to avoid, in many cas­es, by shin­ing a lit­tle more or less red and green light, we can make her think that we are a steam­er on such a course that it is her du­ty by the rules of the road to keep clear of us.

He tells me it has worked on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions, and he has al­so found it use­ful to have two small aux­il­iary side lights fit­ted which are the wrong colours for the sides they are on. It is, of course, on­ly neu­tral ship­ping which car­ry lights nowa­days, though Al­ten says that many British ships are still in­cred­ibly care­less in the mat­ter of lights.

How­ev­er, to re­sume my ac­count of what hap­pened. We reached our po­si­tion at dawn or slight­ly af­ter, the weath­er was beau­ti­ful­ly calm and the sea like glass. As we were on­ly three miles from the En­glish coast, and close to the mouth of the Tyne, we were ex­traor­di­nar­ily lucky to have noth­ing in sight, if one ex­cepts a long smudge of smoke which trailed across the hori­zon to the south­ward.

The land it­self was ob­scured by ear­ly morn­ing banks of mist, yet ev­ery­thing was so still that we ac­tu­al­ly faint­ly heard the whis­tle of a train. I could hard­ly re­strain from sug­gest­ing to Al­ten that we should el­evate the 10-cm. gun to fif­teen de­grees and fire a few rounds on to “proud Al­bion’s vir­gin shores,” but I did not do so as I felt fair­ly cer­tain that he would not ap­prove, and I do not wish to lay my­self open to re­buffs from him af­ter his be­haviour con­cern­ing the smok­ing in­ci­dent. I boil with rage at the thought, but again I di­gress.

The fact that the land was ob­scured was favourable from the point of view that we were not wor­ried by coast watch­ers, but un­favourable from the stand­point that we were un­able to take bear­ings of any­thing and so as­cer­tain our ex­act po­si­tion.

The im­por­tance of this point in sub­ma­rine mine-​lay­ing is ob­vi­ous, for, ow­ing to our small car­go of eggs, it is quite pos­si­ble that we may be sent here again, to lay an ad­ja­cent field, in which case it is high­ly de­sir­able to know the ex­act po­si­tion of one’s pre­vi­ous ef­fort.

[Il­lus­tra­tion: “Steer­ing north-​west­er­ly…; to lay a small mine­field off New­cas­tle.”]

[Il­lus­tra­tion: “He had sud­den­ly seen the bow waves of a de­stroy­er ap­proach­ing at full speed to ram.”]

We were some­what as­sist­ed in our ef­forts to lo­cate our­selves by the fact that a sev­en-​fath­om patch ex­ist­ed ex­act­ly where we had to lay. We picked up the edge of this bank with our sound­ing ma­chine, and steer­ing north half a mile, laid our mines in lat­itude–No! on sec­ond thoughts I will omit the pre­cise po­si­tion, for, though I shall take ev­ery pre­cau­tion, there is no say­ing that through some mis­for­tune this Jour­nal might not get in­to the wrong hands.

I am very glad I de­cid­ed to keep these notes, as I shall take much plea­sure in read­ing them when Vic­to­ry crowns our ef­forts and the joys of a peace­ful life re­turn.

I found it a de­light­ful sen­sa­tion be­ing so close to the en­emy coast, in his ter­ri­to­ri­al wa­ters, in fact. For the first time since the Ska­jer­ack bat­tle I ex­pe­ri­enced the per­son­al joys of war, the sen­sa­tion of in­ti­mate and suc­cess­ful con­tact with the en­emy, and the most hat­ed en­emy at that.

We had hard­ly fin­ished lay­ing our eggs when a dron­ing noise was heard. With mar­vel­lous celer­ity we dived, that damned fel­low Al­ten, who, un­der these cir­cum­stances leaves the bridge last, tread­ing on my fin­gers as he fol­lowed me down the con­ning tow­er lad­der.

The en­gi­neer en­deav­oured to sym­pa­thize with me, and made some id­iot­ic re­mark about my be­ing quick­er when I had had more prac­tice. I bit his head off. I can’t stand this hail-​fel­low-​well-​met at­ti­tude in these U.C. boats, from any lout dressed in an of­fi­cer’s uni­form. They wouldn’t be hold­ing com­mis­sions if it wasn’t for the war, and they should re­mem­ber that fact. I sup­pose they think I’m stand-​off­ish. Well, if they had my fam­ily tree be­hind them they would un­der­stand.

We dived to six­ty feet, and then came up to twen­ty. Al­ten looked through the periscope, and then in­vit­ed me to look. Cu­rios­ity im­pelled me to ac­cept this favour and, putting the fo­cussing lever to “skyscrape” I swept round the sky.

At last I saw him; he was a small gas-​bag of diminu­tive size, be­neath which was sus­pend­ed a lit­tle car, the most ridicu­lous lit­tle trav­es­ty of an air­ship I have ev­er seen. He was nos­ing along at about 800 feet and mak­ing about 40 knots.

Sud­den­ly he must have seen the wake of our periscope, for he turned to­wards us. Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly Al­ten, from the con­ning tow­er (I was us­ing the oth­er periscope in the con­trol room), or­dered the boat to six­ty feet, and put the helm hard over.

We had turned six­teen points, [1] and in about two min­utes heard a se­ries of re­ports right astern of us. It was ev­ident that our ruse had suc­ceed­ed and that he had over­shot the mark.

[Foot­note 1: 180º]

In­side the boat one felt a slight jar as each bomb went off.

We grad­ual­ly came round to our prop­er course, and cruised all day sub­merged at dead slow speed. Ev­ery time we lift­ed our periscope he was still hang­ing about suf­fi­cient­ly close to make it fool­ish for us to come to the sur­face.

To­wards noon a group of trawlers, doubt­less sum­moned by wire­less, ap­peared, and pro­ceed­ed to wan­der about. These seemed to con­cern Al­ten far more than the air­ship, and he in­formed me that from their, to me, aim­less move­ments he de­duced they were hunt­ing for us by hy­droplanes. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly we lay on the bot­tom in nine­teen fath­oms.

By 4 p.m. the at­mo­sphere was be­com­ing rather un­pleas­ant and hot, and grad­ual­ly we took off more clothes. Cu­ri­ous­ly enough, I longed for a smoke, but wild hors­es would not have made me ask Al­ten for per­mis­sion.

At 8 p.m. it was suf­fi­cient­ly dark to en­able us to rise, which gave me great plea­sure, though the first rush of fresh air down the hatch made me vom­it af­ter hours of breath­ing the vi­ti­at­ed muck. On com­ing to the sur­face we saw noth­ing in sight, but a breeze had sprung up which caused spray to break over the bridge as we chugged along at 9 knots.

Ev­ery­one was in high spir­its, as al­ways on the re­turn jour­ney, when the mind turns to the Fa­ther­land and all it holds.

My mind turns to Zoe. I con­fess it to my­self frankly. I hard­ly re­al­ized to what ex­tent this wom­an had be­gun to in­flu­ence me un­til we re­ceived the wire­less sig­nal or­der­ing us to de­lay en­ter­ing for twelve hours. The re­ceipt of this news, triv­ial though the de­lay has been, threw a man­tle of gloom over the crew. I par­tic­ipat­ed in the de­pres­sion and, up­on thought, rather won­dered that this should be so. Self-​anal­ysis on the lines laid down by Schess­man­weil [1] re­vealed to me that the ba­sis of my an­noy­ance is the fact that my next meet­ing with Zoe is de­ferred! I feel in­stinc­tive­ly that I shall have trou­ble here, and that I had bet­ter haul off a lee shore whilst there is ma­noeu­vring room, and yet–and yet I se­cret­ly re­joice that ev­ery rev­olu­tion of the pro­peller, ev­ery clank and rat­tle of the Diesels brings us clos­er to­geth­er.

[Foot­note 1: Ap­par­ent­ly some Ger­man au­thor, of ob­scure ori­gin, as I can­not find him in any book of ref­er­ence.–ETI­ENNE.]

Al­ten has just come down from the bridge, and we chat­ted for some mo­ments; it is ev­ident that he wish­es to apol­ogize for his rude­ness over the smok­ing in­ci­dent.

I was in er­ror, I ad­mit it frankly; at the same time I did not know that the bat­tery was on charge, and to dash a match from my hand! I could have shot him where he stood. How­ev­er, I am not vin­dic­tive, and as far as I am con­cerned the in­ci­dent is end­ed.

One thing I find try­ing in this small boat, and that is that I can find no space in which to do half my Müller ex­er­cis­es, the leg- and-​arm-​swing­ing ones. I must see whether I can’t in­vent a set of U-​boat ex­er­cis­es!

Good! in two hours we reach the Mole-​end light buoy.

* * * * *

_Sub­ma­rine Mess, Bruges._

It is mid­night, and as I write in my room at the top of the house the low rum­ble of the guns from the south-​west vi­brates faint­ly through the open win­dow, for it is ex­traor­di­nar­ily warm for the time of year, and I have flung back the cur­tains and risked the light shin­ing.

We spent the night at Zee­brugge and came up to the docks here next day. We shall prob­ably be in for a week, and I am on four days’ “ex­tend­ed ab­sence from the boat,” which prac­ti­cal­ly means that I can go where I like in the neigh­bour­hood pro­vid­ed I am handy to a tele­phone.

Af­ter a short in­ward strug­gle I rang Zoe up on the tele­phone; for­tu­nate­ly I did not call first.

A man’s voice an­swered, and for a mo­ment I was dumb­found­ed. I guessed at once it was the Colonel, and I had count­ed so con­fi­dent­ly on his be­ing still away at the front.

For an in­stant I felt speech­less, an im­pulse came to me to ring off with­out fur­ther ado, but I re­strained my­self, and then a fine idea came in­to my head.

“Who is that?” I said.

“Colonel Stein!” replied the voice, and my fears were con­firmed, but my plan of cam­paign held good.

“I am speak­ing,” I con­tin­ued, “on be­half of Lieu­tenant Von Schenk—-“

“Ah, yes!” growled the voice, and for an in­stant a pan­ic seized me, but I re­sumed:

“He met Madame Stein at din­ner some days ago, and she kind­ly asked him to call; he has asked me to ring up and in­quire when it would be con­ve­nient, as he would like to meet you, sir, as well. He has been un­able to ring up him­self, as he was sent away from Bruges on du­ty ear­ly this morn­ing.”

I smiled to my­self at this lit­tle lie and lis­tened.

“Your friend had bet­ter call to-​mor­row then, for I leave to-​mor­row evening for the Somme front; will you tell him?”

I replied that I would, and left the tele­phone well sat­is­fied, but curs­ing the fates that made it ad­vis­able to keep clear of No. 10, Kafelle Strasse for thir­ty-​six hours. Need­less to say next day I rang up again in or­der to tell the Colonel that Lieu­tenant Schenk had ap­par­ent­ly been de­tained, as he was not yet back in Bruges, and how I felt sure that he would be sor­ry at miss­ing the Colonel, etc., etc., but all this cam­ou­flage was un­nec­es­sary, as she her­self came to the ‘phone. I could have kissed the in­stru­ment when I told her of my stratagem and heard her sil­very laugh­ter in my ear.

“It is ar­ranged that to-​mor­row, start­ing at 10.30, we mo­tor for the day to the For­est of Meten, tak­ing our lunch and tea with us–pray Heav­en the weath­er holds.”

To-​night in the Mess it is gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered that U.B.40 has been lost; she is ten days over­due and was op­er­at­ing off Havre, she has made no sig­nal for a fort­night. Such is the price of vic­to­ry and the cost of war–death, per­haps, in some ter­ri­ble form, but bah! away with such thoughts, to-​mor­row there is love and life and Zoe!

* * * * *

Once more it is night, still the guns rum­ble on the same old dis­mal tones, and as it is rain­ing now it must be get­ting bad up at the front. Ex­cept for the rain it might have been last night, but much has hap­pened to me in the mean­while.

To-​day in the for­est by Ruysslede I found that I loved Zoe, loved her as I have nev­er yet loved wom­an, loved her with my soul and all that is me.

The day was glo­ri­ous­ly fine when we start­ed, and an hour’s run took us to the for­est. We left the car at an inn and wan­dered down one of the glades.

I car­ried the bas­ket and we strolled on and on un­til we found a suit­able place deep in the heart of the for­est.

I have the sailor’s love for woods, for their depths, their shad­ows, their mys­ter­ies, which are so vivid a con­trast to the monotony of the sea, with the ev­er­last­ing cir­cle of the hori­zon and the half-​bowl of the heav­ens above.

In the for­est to-​day, though the leaves had turned to gold and red and brown, the beech­es were still well cov­ered, and over­head we were tent­ed with a rus­set canopy.

I say, at last we found a spot, or rather Zoe, who, with girl­ish plea­sure in the ad­ven­ture, had run ahead, called to me, and as I write I seem to hear the echoes of “Karl! Karl!” which rang through the wood. When I came up to her she proud­ly point­ed to the place she had found.

It was ide­al. An out­crop of rock formed a minia­ture Mat­ter­horn in the for­est, and be­neath its shel­ter with the old trees as silent wit­ness­es we sat and joked and laughed, and made twen­ty at­tempts to light a fire.

Af­ter lunch, a lit­tle in­ci­dent hap­pened which had an enor­mous ef­fect on me; Zoe asked me whether I would mind if she smoked.

How many wom­en in these days would think of do­ing that? And yet, had she but known it, I am still suf­fi­cient­ly old-​fash­ioned to ap­pre­ci­ate the im­plied re­spect for any pos­si­ble prej­udices which was con­tained in her re­quest.

Af­ter lunch, I asked her a ques­tion to which I dread­ed the an­swer.

I asked her whether, now that the old Colonel had gone to the Somme, whether that meant that she would be leav­ing Bruges.

She laughed and teas­ing­ly said: “Quien sabe, señor,” but see­ing my re­al anx­iety on this point, she as­sured me that she was not leav­ing for the present. The Colonel, she said, had a strange be­lief that once a man had served on the Flan­ders Front, and es­pe­cial­ly on the Ypres salient, he al­ways came back to die there.

It ap­pears that the Colonel has done four­teen months’ ser­vice on the salient alone, and is firm­ly con­vinced he will end his ca­reer on that great buri­al ground. As we were talk­ing about the Colonel I longed to ask her how she had met him, and per­haps find out why she lives with him, for I can­not be­lieve she loves him, but I did not dare.

Strange­ly enough I found that a cu­ri­ous shy­ness had tak­en hold of me with re­gard to Zoe.

I said to my­self, “Fool! you are alone with her, you long to kiss her; you have kissed her, first at the din­ner-​par­ty, sec­ond­ly when you said good-​bye at her flat,” and yet to-​day it was dif­fer­ent.

Then I was kiss­ing a pret­ty wom­an, I was on the eve of a dan­ger­ous life, and I was sim­ply ex­tract­ing the an­imal plea­sures whilst I lived.

To-​day it was a case of Zoe, the per­son­al­ity I loved; I still longed to kiss her, but I want­ed to have the un­ques­tioned right to kiss her, as much as I want­ed the kiss­es.

I want­ed to have her for my own, away from the con­tam­inat­ing own­er­ship of the old Colonel, and I de­ter­mined to get her.

I think she no­ticed the changed at­ti­tude on my part, and per­haps she felt her­self that a sub­tle change in our re­la­tion­ship had tak­en place, and whilst I med­itat­ed on these things she fell in­to a doze at my side.

I was sit­ting slight­ly above her, smok­ing to keep the midges away, and as I looked down on her child­ish fig­ure a great ten­der­ness for her filled my mind. She is very beau­ti­ful and to me de­sir­able above all wom­en; I can see her as she lay there trust­ful­ly at my feet. I will de­scribe her, and then, when I get her pho­to­graph, I will read this when I am far away on a trip.

She is of av­er­age height, for I am just over six feet and she reach­es to just above my shoul­der. Her hair is glo­ri­ous­ly thick and of a deep black colour, and lies low on her fore­head. Her com­plex­ion is of the purest white­ness be­yond com­pare, which but ac­cen­tu­ates the red warmth of the lips which en­cir­cle her lit­tle mouth. Her fig­ure is slight and her an­kles are my de­light, but her crown­ing glo­ries, which I have pur­pose­ly left till last, are her eyes.

I feel I could lose my soul; I have lost it, if I have one, in the vi­olet depths of those eyes, which were veiled as she slept by the long black eye­lash­es which curled up del­icate­ly as they rest­ed on her cheeks. I have re-​read this de­scrip­tion, and it is oh, so un­sat­is­fy­ing; would I had the pen of a Goethe or a Shake­speare, yet for want of more skill the de­scrip­tion shall stand.

How I long for her to be mine, and yet, un­for­tu­nate that I am, I can­not for cer­tain de­clare that she loves me.

A thou­sand doubts arise. I tor­ment my­self with rec­ol­lec­tions of her be­haviour at the din­ner-​par­ty, when with­in two hours of our first meet­ing she gave me her lips.

Yet did I not first rough­ly kiss her as we danced?

I find con­so­la­tion in the fact that, though she has said noth­ing, yet her con­duct to-​day was dif­fer­ent. She was so qui­et af­ter tea as we wan­dered back through the forests with the set­ting sun strik­ing gold­en beams aslant the tree trunks.

Be­fore we left I sang to her Tchaikowsky’s beau­ti­ful song, “To the For­est,” and I think she was pleased, for I may say with jus­tice that my voice is of high qual­ity for an am­ateur, and the song goes well with­out an ac­com­pa­ni­ment, whilst the at­mo­sphere and sur­round­ings were ide­al.

There was on­ly one jar­ring note in a per­fect day; when we re­turned to the car the chauf­feur per­mit­ted him­self a sar­don­ic grin. Zoe un­for­tu­nate­ly saw it and blushed scar­let.

I could have struck him on his im­pu­dent mouth, but for her sake I judged it ad­vis­able to no­tice noth­ing.

I feel I could go on writ­ing about her all night, but it is near­ly 2 a.m. I must get some sleep.

The guns rum­ble steadi­ly in the south-​west, and the sky is lit by their flash­es; may the fight­ing on the Somme be bloody these com­ing days.

[_Prob­ably about ten days lat­er.–Eti­enne._]

We leave to-​night, hav­ing had a longer spell than usu­al. I am in a dis­tract­ed state of mind. Since our glo­ri­ous day in the for­est I have seen her near­ly ev­ery af­ter­noon, though twice that swine Al­ten has kept me in the boat in con­nec­tion with some re­place­ments of the bat­tery.

I have found out that, like me, she is in­tense­ly mu­si­cal. She plays beau­ti­ful­ly on the pi­ano, and we had long hours to­geth­er play­ing Chopin and Beethoven; we al­so played some of Mous­sorgsky’s duets, but I love her best when she plays Chopin, the com­pos­er pre-​em­inent of love and pas­sion.

She has mass­es of mu­sic, as the Colonel gives her what she likes. We al­so played a lot of De­bussy. At first I de­murred at play­ing a liv­ing French com­pos­er’s works, but she pout­ed and looked so adorable that all my scru­ples van­ished in an in­stant, so we closed all the doors and she played it for hours very soft­ly whilst I for­got the war and all its hor­rors and re­mem­bered on­ly that I was with the well-​beloved girl.

The Colonel writes from Thiep­val, where the British are pour­ing out their blood like wa­ter. He writes very in­ter­est­ing let­ters, and has had many nar­row es­capes, but un­for­tu­nate­ly he seems to bear a charmed life. His let­ters are full of de­tails, and I won­der he gets them past the Field Cen­sor­ship, but I sup­pose he cen­sors his own.

She laughs at them and calls them her Colonel’s dis­patch­es; she says he is so ac­cus­tomed to writ­ing of­fi­cial re­ports that the poor old man can’t write an or­di­nary let­ter.

I told her that I thought the way he men­tioned reg­iments and dis­po­si­tions rather in­dis­creet, and she agrees, but she says he has asked her to keep them, with a view to form­ing a col­lec­tion of let­ters writ­ten from the front whilst the in­ci­dents he de­scribes are vivid in his mind. I sup­pose the old ass knows his own busi­ness, and one day the col­lec­tion may be com­plet­ed by a tele­gram “Re­gret­ting to an­nounce, etc. etc.” The soon­er the bet­ter.

So the days passed pleas­ant­ly enough, and nev­er by a ges­ture or word of mouth did she show that I was more to her than any oth­er pleas­ant young man.

I kissed her when I ar­rived, I kissed her when I left, each day was the same. She would put her arms round my neck and look long and deeply in­to my eyes, then she would gen­tly kiss my lips. Not an atom of emo­tion! not a spark from the fires which I feel must be rag­ing be­neath that di­abol­ical­ly [1] ex­traor­di­nary [1] amaz­ing­ly calm ex­te­ri­or.

[Foot­note 1: These words are crossed out.–ETI­ENNE.]

On or­di­nary sub­jects she would chat­ter vi­va­cious­ly enough and she can talk in a fas­ci­nat­ing man­ner on ev­ery sub­ject I care to bring up, but as soon as I drew the con­ver­sa­tion round to a per­son­al line she grad­ual­ly be­came more silent and a far-​away and dis­tant look came in­to those won­der­ful eyes.

I have found out noth­ing about her be­yond the fact that she has trav­elled all over Eu­rope. I don’t even know how old she is, but I should guess twen­ty-​six.

I tried to find out a few de­tails by means of dis­creet re­marks at the Club and else­where.

She sim­ply ar­rived here about a year ago–as a singer, and met the Colonel–be­yond that, all is mys­tery. Ev­ery­thing about her at­tracts me pow­er­ful­ly, and this mys­tery adds sub­tleties to her charms.

This af­ter­noon I went to say good-​bye; I told her we were leav­ing “short­ly,” and she gen­tly re­proved me for dis­obey­ing the or­der which for­bids dis­cus­sion of move­ments, but I could see she was not great­ly dis­pleased.

Af­ter tea she played to me, mu­sic of the mod­ern Rus­sian school–Aren­sky, Sibelius and Pil­su­ki; a storm was brew­ing and we both felt sad.

She played for an hour or so, and then came and sat by me on a low di­van by the fire. We were silent for a long while in the gath­er­ing gloom, whilst a thou­sand thoughts chased each oth­er swift­ly through my brain, as I en­deav­oured to sum­mon up courage to say what I had de­ter­mined I must say be­fore I left her, per­haps for ev­er.

At last, when on­ly her pro­file was vis­ible against the glow of the logs, I spoke.

I told her qui­et­ly, calm­ly and al­most dis­pas­sion­ate­ly that I had grown to love her and that to me she was life it­self. I told her that I had tried not to speak un­til I could en­dure no longer.

She sat very still as I spoke, and when I had fin­ished there was a long si­lence and I gen­tly stretched out my hand and stroked her love­ly black hair. At last she rose and with avert­ed face walked across the room, and stood look­ing at the storm through the big bow win­dows. I watched her, but did not dare fol­low.

At length she re­turned to me, and I saw what I had in­stinc­tive­ly known the whole time–that she had been cry­ing. I could not think why.

She put her arms round my neck, kissed me on the fore­head and mur­mured, “Poor Karl.”

I felt crushed; I dared not move for fear of break­ing the mag­ic of the mo­ment, yet I longed to know more; I felt over­whelmed by some colos­sal mys­tery that seemed to be en­velop­ing me in its folds. Why did she pity me? Why did she weep? Why didn’t she an­swer my avow­al? Why didn’t she tell me some­thing? Such were some of the prob­lems that per­plexed me.

It was thus when the clock chimed sev­en. I told her that my leave was up at sev­en o’clock, and that at 7.15 I had to be back on board the boat. She re­mem­bered this, and in an in­stant the past quar­ter of an hour might nev­er have ex­ist­ed. She was all ag­ita­tion and ner­vous­ness lest I should be late on board–though at the mo­ment I would have cheer­ful­ly missed the boat to hear her say she loved me.

I tried to protest, but in vain. With fem­inine quick­ness she uti­lized the in­ci­dent to avoid a sit­ua­tion she ev­ident­ly found full of dif­fi­cul­ty, and at 7.10, with the mem­ory of a light kiss on my lips and her God-​speed in my ears I was in a taxi driv­ing to the docks in a blind­ing rain-​storm–and we sail to-​night.

For five, six, sev­en, per­haps ten days at the least, and at the most for ev­er, I am doomed to be away from her and with­out news of her. And I don’t even know whether she loves me!

I think I can say she cares for me up to a cer­tain point, but I want more.

“Oh Zoe! of the vi­olet eyes, And hair of black­est night Thy lips are bright­est crim­son, Thy skin is daz­zling white.

“Oh! lay your head up­on my breast, And lift your lips to mine; Then mur­mur in soft breath­ings, Drink deep from what is thine.

“Then let the war rage on­ward, Let king­doms rise and fall; To each shall be the oth­er, Their life, their hope, their all.”

[Foot­note: I am in­debt­ed to Com­man­der C. C. for the above rough trans­la­tion of Karl’s ef­fu­sion.–ETI­ENNE.]

_At sea._

We are bound for the same old spot as last time.

Al­ten must have been drink­ing like a fish late­ly; his breath smells like a dis­tillery; he is ap­par­ent­ly par­tial to schnapps, which he gets eas­ily in Bruges.

I can’t help ad­mir­ing the man, as he is a rigid tee­to­taller at sea, though he must find the strain well nigh in­tol­er­able, judg­ing from the con­di­tion he was in when he came on board last night. He was re­al­ly to­tal­ly un­fit to take charge of the boat, and I vir­tu­al­ly took her down the canal, though with sot­tish ob­sti­na­cy he in­sist­ed on re­main­ing on the bridge.

This morn­ing, though his com­plex­ion was a hideous yel­low colour, he seems quite all right. I shall play a lit­tle trick on him at din­ner to-​night.

I have be­gun to get to know some of the crew by now; they are a fine lot of young­sters with a sea­son­ing of half a dozen old­er men. The coxswain, Schmitt by name, is a splen­did old pet­ty of­fi­cer who has been in the U-​boat ser­vice since 1911.

His favourite en­joy­ment is to spin yarns to the younger mem­bers of the crew, who know of his weak­ness and play up to it.

He has a favourite ex­pres­sion which runs thus:

“His Majesty the Kaiser said Ger­many’s fu­ture lies on the sea; I say Ger­many’s fu­ture lies un­der the sea.”

He is in­or­di­nate­ly fond of this state­ment, and the young­sters con­tin­ual­ly say: “What made you take to U-​boat work, Schmitt?” and the in­vari­able re­ply is as above. When he has been asked the ques­tion about half a dozen times in the course of a day, he is li­able to be­come sus­pi­cious, and if his ques­tion­er is with­in range Schmitt stares at him for a few sec­onds in an ab­sent-​mind­ed way, then an arm like that of a go­ril­la shoots out, and the quizzer (_Un­ter­such­er_) re­ceives a re­sound­ing box on the ears to the huge de­light of his com­pan­ions. The old man then per­mits his iron-​lipped mouth to re­lax in­to a caus­tic smile, af­ter which he is left in peace for some time.

At the wheel he is an artist, for he seems to di­vine what the next or­der is go­ing to be, or if he is steer­ing her on a course he pre­dicts the di­rec­tion of the next wave even as a skil­ful chess play­er works out the moves ahead.

* * * * *

I am rather weary and ought to go to bed, but be­fore I lose the savour I must record the splen­did fun I had with Al­ten at din­ner.

We were din­ing alone, as the nav­iga­tor was on the bridge, and the en­gi­neer was busy with a slight leak in the cook­ing wa­ter ser­vice. I have said that, though a heavy drinker by na­ture, Al­ten is a strict ab­stain­er at sea. Ac­cord­ing­ly I pro­duced a small flask of rum, half-​way through din­ner, and helped my­self to a lib­er­al tot, plac­ing the liquor be­tween us on the ta­ble. As the sight met his eyes and the aro­ma greet­ed his nos­trils, a gleam of joy flashed across his face, to be suc­ceed­ed by a frown.

With an ami­able smile I prof­fered the flask to him, re­mark­ing at the same time: “You don’t drink at sea, do you?”

In a thick voice he mut­tered, “No! Yes–no! thank you.”

With an air of hav­ing no­ticed noth­ing, I re­sumed my meal, but out of the cor­ner of my eye I watched his left hand on the ta­ble near the flask. It was most in­ter­est­ing, all the veins stood out like ropes, and his knuck­les al­most burst through the skin.

This went on for about thir­ty sec­onds, when he choked out some­thing about need­ing a breath of fresh air. As he got up his face was brick red, and I al­most thought he’d have a fit.

Whether by ac­ci­dent or de­sign he pulled the cloth as he got out from be­tween the set­tee and the ta­ble and up­set the flask.

He was ap­par­ent­ly in­ca­pable of apol­ogiz­ing, for he rushed up on deck.

A few min­utes lat­er the nav­igat­ing of­fi­cer came down and asked what was up?

I said: “What do you mean?”

He said: “Well, the Cap­tain came up just now, swear­ing like a troop­er, and told me to get to the dev­il out of it; it didn’t seem ad­vis­able to ques­tion him, so I got out of it and came down.”

I ex­pressed my opin­ion that the Cap­tain must be feel­ing sea-​sick and was ashamed to say so. I al­so sug­gest­ed to the nav­iga­tor that he should take the Cap­tain a lit­tle brandy in case he was not feel­ing well, but the nav­iga­tor de­clared he was go­ing to stay down in the warmth till he was sent for. Al­ten is a great coarse brute. Fan­cy al­low­ing a ma­te­ri­al sub­stance such as al­co­hol to grip one’s men­tal­ity.

Thank Heav­en I have nerves of iron; noth­ing would af­fect me!

And now to bed, though I must just read my ac­count of our day in the for­est. Dar­ling girl, may I dream of thee.

* * * * *

We laid our mines with­out trou­ble at 5 a.m. this morn­ing, though at mid­night we had a most un­pleas­ant ex­pe­ri­ence.

I was asleep, as it was my morn­ing watch, when I was awak­ened by the harsh rat­tle of the div­ing alarms.

The Diesel sub­sid­ed with a few spas­mod­ic coughs in­to si­lence, and as I jumped out of my bunk and groped for my short sea boots, the nav­iga­tor and helms­man came tum­bling down the con­ning tow­er, with the nav­iga­tor shout­ing, “Take her down,” as hard as you like.

The men at the planes had them “hard-​to-​dive” in an in­stant.

The vents had been opened as the hoot­ers sound­ed, and Al­ten, who had jumped in­to the con­trol room, im­me­di­ate­ly rang down, “All out on the elec­tric mo­tors.”

In thir­ty sec­onds from the orig­inal alarm we were at an an­gle of twen­ty de­grees down by the bow, and I had sat down heav­ily on the bat­tery boards, com­plete­ly sur­prised by the sud­den tilt of the deck.

It oc­curred to me that the air was es­cap­ing through the vents with a strange­ly loud noise, but be­fore I could con­sid­er the mat­ter fur­ther or even in­quire the rea­son for this sud­den dive, the noise in­creased to a ter­ri­fy­ing ex­tent, and whilst I pre­pared my­self for the worst it cul­mi­nat­ed in­to a roar as of fifty ex­press trains go­ing through a tun­nel, min­gled with the noise of a high-​pow­ered aero­plane en­gine.

The roar drummed and beat and shook the boat, then died away as sud­den­ly as it came; a mo­ment lat­er there was a se­vere jar. We had struck the bot­tom, still main­tain­ing our an­gle.

I painful­ly got to my feet and then dis­cov­ered from the nav­iga­tor that he had sud­den­ly seen two white patch­es of foam 800 yards on the star­board bow, which re­solved them­selves in­to the bow waves of a de­stroy­er ap­proach­ing at full speed to ram.

We had dived just in time, and her knife-​edged bow, driv­en by 30,000 horse pow­er, had slid through the wa­ter a very few feet above our con­ning tow­er.

Luck­ily he had not dropped any depth charges. We were not, how­ev­er, com­plete­ly free of our trou­bles, though we had cheat­ed the de­stroy­er.

Ex­am­ina­tion of the chart, showed the bot­tom to be mud, and on at­tempt­ing to move the fore­most hy­droplanes, the plane mo­tor fus­es blew out. This showed that the boat was buried in the mud right up to her fore­most planes, which were im­mov­able.

The hy­drophone watch­keep­er re­port­ed that he could still hear fast-​run­ning pro­pellers, though prob­ably some dis­tance away, and as this showed that our old en­emy was still nos­ing about we were very anx­ious not to break sur­face. We just blew “A.” [1] At least we start­ed to blow “A,” but Al­ten wise­ly de­cid­ed that, as it was a calm night with a half-​moon, the bub­bles on the sur­face might be rather con­spic­uous, so we stopped the blow and put the pump on. We al­so flood­ed “W”. [2] This had no ef­fect on her at all.

[Foot­note 1: Prob­ably their fore­most in­ter­nal tank.–ETI­ENNE.]

[Foot­note 2: Pre­sum­ably their af­ter in­ter­nal tank.–ETI­ENNE.]

We then pumped out “Q” and “P,” leav­ing “W” full, and ad­just­ed our trim to give her on­ly three tons neg­ative buoy­an­cy, just enough to keep us on the bot­tom if she came out of the mud.

In this po­si­tion we went full speed astern on the mo­tors, 1,500 amps on each, and all the crew in the af­ter-​com­part­ment. No re­sult. We then pumped the out­er div­ing tanks on the port side to give her a list to star­board. Still she re­mained fixed.

So at 2 a.m. we de­cid­ed to risk it and we put a slow blow on all tanks.

When she had about fifty tons pos­itive buoy­an­cy she sud­den­ly buck­et­ed up, and, as the mo­tors were run­ning full speed astern at the time, we came up and broke sur­face stern first. In a few sec­onds we were trimmed down again, and as a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure we pro­ceed­ed for a cou­ple of miles at twen­ty me­tres, when, com­ing up to periscope depth, we sur­faced, and find­ing all clear we pro­ceed­ed. We were put down by a trawler at dawn, though she nev­er saw us. Af­ter half an hour’s hang­ing about she moved off, which was lucky, as she was right on our bil­let.

We are now pro­ceed­ing to a spot some­what to the east­ward of Cape St. Abbs, [3] as we have in­struc­tions to do a two-​days pa­trol here and sink ship­ping.

[Foot­note 3: St. Abbs Head.–ETI­ENNE]

We ought to start busi­ness to-​mor­row morn­ing.

* * * * *

We should be in to-​night, then for my lit­tle Zoe!

But I must record what we have done. Al­ready I am get­ting much plea­sure from read­ing my di­ary. Strange how it amus­es one to see lit­tle bits of one­self on pa­per, and the less gar­nished and franker the truths the more en­ter­tain­ing it is.

[Il­lus­tra­tion: “The tor­pe­do had jumped clean out of the wa­ter a hun­dred yards short of the steam­er and had then dived un­der her.”]

[Il­lus­tra­tion: “We were put down by a trawler at dawn.”]

[Il­lus­tra­tion: A mo­ment lat­er there was a se­vere jar; we had struck the bot­tom]

The hours here are so long and bor­ing at times that I feel I want to talk in­ti­mate­ly with some­one. Fail­ing Zoe I turn to my note­books.

The first steam­er we sight­ed raised high hopes, at least her smoke did, for we saw enough smoke on the hori­zon to make us think we were to see the Grand Fleet, and we prompt­ly dived. We cruised to­wards her for about half an hour, and then hung about where we were, as we found that her course would take the ship close to us.

As the sit­ua­tion de­vel­oped, Al­ten, who was up in the con­ning tow­er at the “A” periscope, gave us a cer­tain amount of in­for­ma­tion, and we gath­ered that all this smoke was pour­ing out of the pipe-​stem tun­nel of a wretched lit­tle En­glish tramp.

I found it most ir­ri­tat­ing, stand­ing in the con­trol room (my ac­tion sta­tion) and not know­ing what was go­ing on.

There is on­ly one good job in a sub­ma­rine and that is the Cap­tain’s. He knows and de­cides ev­ery­thing. The rest of us are in his hands and take things on trust. I ob­ject on prin­ci­ple to my life be­ing held in Al­ten’s hands. It is all very well for the crew, for, to start with, they have no imag­ina­tion, and to most of them their men­tal hori­zon stops at the walls of the boat. Sec­ond­ly, they have the con­so­la­tion of me­chan­ical ac­tiv­ities; they make and break switch­es and open and close valves–they work with their hands. An of­fi­cer has imag­ina­tion, and on­ly works with his head.

As we at­tacked the steam­er, all one heard was mur­murs from Al­ten, such as: “Raise!” “Low­er!” “Take her down to ten me­tres!” “Half speed!” “Slow!” “Bring her up to five me­tres!” “Raise!” “Low­er!”

I en­deav­oured to sim­ulate an air of un­con­cern which I was far from feel­ing.

Not that I was a prey to phys­ical fear; I flat­ter my­self it is so far un­known to me, and there was no great dan­ger, but sim­ply that I longed to know what was hap­pen­ing. At length I heard the wel­come or­der:

“Star­board tube. Stand by!”

Which was fol­lowed al­most im­me­di­ate­ly by the or­der: “Fire!”

There was a kind of cough­ing grunt, and the star­board tor­pe­do pro­ceed­ed on its er­rand of de­struc­tion.

Ev­ery ear was strained for the sound of the ex­plo­sion, but all we were vouch­safed was a tor­rent of blas­phe­my from Al­ten.

The tor­pe­do had jumped clean out of the wa­ter a hun­dred yards short of the steam­er, and had then ev­ident­ly dived un­der the ship; so I gath­ered lat­er when Al­ten had calmed down some­what. We were about to sur­face and give her the gun, when luck­ily Al­ten took a good sweep round with the skyscrap­er and dis­cov­ered one of those wretched lit­tle air­ships about a mile away, com­ing to­wards the steam­er, which was wail­ing piteous­ly, on her syren.

As the chart showed forty me­tres we de­cid­ed to bot­tom and have lunch.

Over lunch we dis­cussed the mis­ad­ven­ture. Al­ten was loud in his curs­es of Tanz­er­man (the tor­pe­do lieu­tenant at Bruges), from whom he had got the tor­pe­do in guar­an­teed good con­di­tion on­ly forty-​eight hours be­fore we sailed. He launched forth in­to a tirade against the tor­pe­do staff at Bruges, and, warm­ing to his sub­ject, he round­ly abused the whole of the de­pot per­son­nel, whom he stig­ma­tized as a set of hard-​drink­ing, shore-​loaf­ing ruf­fi­ans, who were in­ca­pable of re­al­iz­ing that they ex­ist­ed for the ben­efit of the boats’ per­son­nel and “ma­te­ri­al.”

I nat­ural­ly dis­agreed, and did so the more read­ily that I con­sci­en­tious­ly dis­agree with him. I find that there is a ten­den­cy on the part of some of these sub­ma­rine of­fi­cers, who have been U-​boat­ing a long time, to get in­to nar­row grooves. Most re­serve of­fi­cers are not like this, as they have on­ly been in dur­ing the war. Al­ten is an ex­cep­tion; he left the Ham­burg-​Ameri­ka on two years’ half pay in 1912, and was, of course, kept on in 1914. Af­ter all, the de­pot staff are Ger­mans, and as such labour for the Fa­ther­land, and though their work in of­fice and work­ship is not so dan­ger­ous as ours, on the oth­er hand they have not got the stim­ula­tion be­fore their eyes, of glo­ry to be gained. Per­son­al­ly I am of the opin­ion that the tor­pe­do broke sur­face be­cause, be­ing fired from the out­side tubes, it prob­ably start­ed too shal­low, dived deep, re­cov­ered shal­low and dived deep, broke sur­face and dived very deep. A sticky mo­tor or slug­gish weight would give this ef­fect.

And are these ex­ter­nal tubes wa­ter-​tight? The­oret­ical­ly, yes, but what of prac­tice? We have been down to forty me­tres sev­er­al times dur­ing this trip, and not once have we had a chance on the sur­face of get­ting at the two ex­ter­nal tubes; add to which our depth gear, with the piv­ots of the weight ex­posed to wa­ter if the tube does flood and then you have rust, cor­ro­sion and heav­en knows what com­pli­ca­tions.

I saw a British Mark 11.50 tor­pe­do at the tor­pe­do shop at Bruges the oth­er day, and I was much struck with their deep depth gear, which is of the un­re­strained Uh­lan type, i.e., weight and valve in­ter­de­pen­dent. But then the main fea­ture is that the whole gear is con­tained in a sep­arate wa­ter-​tight cham­ber.

Our sys­tem is cer­tain­ly a great sav­ing in space, and is much neater in de­sign, whilst I pre­fer the Uh­lan prin­ci­ple of valve con­junct­ing with weight, but it would be in­ter­est­ing to know whether the British have much trou­ble with the depth-​keep­ing of their tor­pe­do.

I have writ­ten quite a dis­qui­si­tion on depth gears; I must get on with my record of events.

Af­ter lunch we had a good look round, but the small air­ship was still hang­ing about, fly­ing slow­ly in large cir­cles.

We were rather sur­prised to meet one of these de­spi­ca­ble lit­tle sausages or “Zep­pelin’s Spawn,” as the nav­iga­tor calls them, so far from land, and at dark we sur­faced and pro­ceed­ed on one en­gine on an east­er­ly course, charg­ing the bat­tery right up with the oth­er en­gine.

Dawn re­vealed a blank hori­zon, not a ves­tige of mast, fun­nel or smoke in sight.

We am­bled along in fine though cold weath­er, and I took ad­van­tage of the peace­ful­ness of ev­ery­thing to do a re­al­ly good se­ries of Müller on the up­per deck, stripped to the waist, and al­lowed the keen air to play its in­vig­orat­ing cur­rents on my tor­so.

Al­ten silent­ly watched me from the con­ning tow­er, with a sneer­ing ex­pres­sion on his face. The nav­iga­tor, who is quite a de­cent young­ster, though of no fam­ily, was, I could plain­ly see, struck by my de­vel­op­ment, and asked to be ini­ti­at­ed in­to the se­ries of ex­er­cis­es. I agreed will­ing­ly enough to show them to him. I will con­fess I wish Zoe could have seen me as I per­spired with healthy ex­er­cise.

At about 11 a.m. a cou­ple of masts, then two more, then an­oth­er, ap­peared above the hori­zon. The vis­ibil­ity was ex­treme, so we at once dived and pro­ceed­ed at full speed, ten me­tres.

We had been go­ing thus for per­haps half an hour when Al­ten re­marked that he would have an­oth­er look at the con­voy. We eased speed, came up to six me­tres, and Al­ten pro­ceed­ed up in­to the con­ning tow­er to use “A” periscope.

He had hard­ly ap­plied his eye to the lens when he sharply or­dered the boat to ten me­tres, ac­com­pa­ny­ing this or­der with an­oth­er to the mo­tor room de­mand­ing ut­most speed (_Ausser­ste Kraft_). I went up to the con­ning tow­er and found him white with ex­cite­ment.

“Look!” he ex­claimed, point­ing to the periscope, en­tire­ly for­get­ful of the fact that we were at ten me­tres. I looked, and of course saw noth­ing; fu­ri­ous at the trick I con­sid­ered he had played on me I turned on him, to be dis­armed by his apol­ogy.

“Sor­ry! I for­got! The whole British bat­tle cruis­er force is there.”

It was now my turn to be ex­cit­ed, and I rushed down to the mo­tor room de­ter­mined to give her ev­ery amp she would take. The port fore­most mo­tor was spark­ing like the dev­il, rings of cursed sparks shoot­ing round the com­mu­ta­tor, but this was no time for cer­emo­ny. I re­lent­less­ly or­dered the field cur­rent to be still fur­ther re­duced.

We were ac­tu­al­ly run­ning with an F.C. of 3.75 amps, [1] for a pe­ri­od, when the spark­ing as­sumed the ap­pear­ance of a ring of fire and, fear­ing a com­mu­ta­tor strip would melt, I or­dered an F.C. of five amps.

[Foot­note 1: The low­er the field cur­rent the faster the mo­tor goes. 3.75 is al­most in­cred­ibly low for a mo­tor of this type–at least ac­cord­ing to British prac­tice.–ETI­ENNE.]

We thus passed a quar­ter of an hour full of strain, the ten­sion of which was re­flect­ed in the at­ti­tude of all the men. Al­ten had an­nounced his in­ten­tion of us­ing the stern tor­pe­do tube af­ter his fail­ure in the morn­ing, and the crew of this tube were crouched at their sta­tions like a gun’s crew in the last few sec­onds prepara­to­ry to open­ing fire. The switch­board at­ten­dants gripped the reg­ulat­ing rheostatts as if by their per­son­al ef­forts they could urge the boat on faster. Old Schmitt, at the helm, nev­er lift­ed his eyes from the com­pass re­peater.

At length: “Slow both!” “Bring her to six me­tres!” came from the con­ning tow­er, to which place I pro­ceed­ed to hear the news.

Slow­ly the periscope was raised and I held my breath; a groan came from Al­ten and he turned away. For a frac­tion of a sec­ond I was al­most pleased at his ob­vi­ous pain, then, sick with dis­ap­point­ment, I took his place.

Yes! it was all over. There they were, and with hun­gry eyes and de­pressed heart I saw five great bat­tle cruis­ers, of which I rec­og­nized the _Tiger_ with her three great fun­nels, the _Princess Roy­al_, _Li­on_ and two oth­ers, zigzag­ging along at 25 knots, at a dis­tance of 12,000 me­tres, across our bow.

They were sur­round­ed by a nu­mer­ous screen of de­stroy­ers and light cruis­ers, the for­mer at that range through the periscope ap­pear­ing as black smudges.

It is not of­ten one is per­mit­ted such a spec­ta­cle in mod­ern war, and I could not tear my­self away from the sight of those great brutes, whom I had fought when in the _Der­fling­ger_ at Dog­ger Bank and again when in the _König_ at Jut­land. So near and yet so far, and as they rapid­ly drew away so did all the vi­sions of an Iron Cross. As soon as they were out of sight, we sur­faced in or­der to re­port what we had seen to Zee­brugge and He­ligoland.

Ev­ery­thing seemed against us. I had gone on the bridge with the nav­iga­tor; Al­ten, with a face as black as hell, had gone to the ward­room. About ten min­utes elapsed when I heard a fear­ful al­ter­ca­tion go­ing on be­low. I stepped down to find the young wire­less op­er­ator trem­bling in front of Al­ten, who was over­whelm­ing him with a flood of abuse. As I reached the ward­room, Al­ten shook his fist in the man’s face and bel­lowed:

“Make the d—- thing work, I tell you.”

“Im­pos­si­ble, Cap­tain, the main con­denser—-” the man be­gan.

Pur­ple with rage, Al­ten seized a heavy pair of par­al­lel rulers, and be­fore I could check him hurled them full in the op­er­ator’s face. Bleed­ing co­pi­ous­ly, the youth fell to the deck in a stunned con­di­tion.

It was then, for the first time, that I no­ticed a half-​emp­ty bot­tle of spir­its on the ta­ble, which colos­sal quan­ti­ty he must have con­sumed in about a quar­ter of an hour.

Turn­ing to me, this se­mi-​mad­man point­ed to the wire­less op­er­ator with his foot and growled:

“Have him re­moved.”

This I did, and then, low­er­ing the periscope, I or­dered the boat to fif­teen me­tres. We pro­ceed­ed at this depth un­til 8 p.m., when I was in­formed that the Cap­tain was in his bunk and wished to see me.

I dis­cov­ered him with his face to the ship’s side, and up­on my re­port­ing my­self he or­dered me, first­ly to throw that blast­ed bot­tle over­board (an un­nec­es­sary pro­ceed­ing, as it was emp­ty), and sec­ond­ly to sur­face and shape course for Zee­brugge.

At mid­night he re­lieved me, ap­par­ent­ly per­fect­ly nor­mal.

The wire­less op­er­ator has been laid up all day and has a nasty cut on the head. The nav­iga­tor, a great scan­dal-​mon­ger, has heard from the en­gi­neer that Al­ten was speak­ing to him alone this morn­ing, and the en­gi­neer be­lieves that Al­ten has giv­en him five hun­dred marks to say he fell down a hatch.

Hooray! Blanken­berg buoy has just been re­port­ed in sight! Soon I shall see my Zoe!

* * * * *

With what high hopes did I write the last few lines a few hours ago, and how they were dashed to the ground, for on go­ing in­to the Mess at Bruges I found amongst my let­ters a note from her, which was ter­ri­ble in its brevi­ty. She sim­ply said:

“DEAR KARL,

“I am go­ing away for some days, and as I shall be trav­el­ling it is no good giv­ing you an ad­dress. To our next meet­ing!

“ZOE.”

How hor­ri­bly vague; not an in­di­ca­tion of her des­ti­na­tion, her ob­ject, or the prob­able length of her ab­sence. Of course I rushed round to the flat, but found the place shut up. The porter told me she had gone away with her maid. He couldn’t say when she’d be back–if at all! I gave him ten marks, and he said she might be away a fort­night. If I’d giv­en him twen­ty he’d have said a week; he ob­vi­ous­ly didn’t know.

I feel I could do any­thing to-​night; any mad, evil thing would ap­peal to me.

There is a most fear­ful up­roar com­ing from the guest-​room, where a large and row­dy par­ty are en­ter­tain­ing the cho­rus of a trav­el­ling _re­vue_ com­pa­ny. I saw them when they ar­rived, hor­ri­bly com­mon-​look­ing wom­en, with legs like mine tubes.

* * * * *

An­oth­er day and still no news; I don’t know how I shall stick it. She might have had the soft­ness of heart to write to me. She knows my ad­dress.

This evening a let­ter from the lit­tle moth­er, who asks whether I can find time to go to Frank­furt when I have leave; at the end of the let­ter she men­tions that Rosa has joined the Wom­en’s Vol­un­tary Aux­il­iary Corps of Army Nurs­es. I sup­pose she thought she’d like her pho­to­graph tak­en in some fan­cy uni­form as “Rosa Frein­land, one of our Frank­furt beau­ties, now on war work!” Hold­ing the pa­tient’s hand is about the on­ly work she in­tends do­ing.

Wom­en as a class are the same the world over. We are well sup­plied with En­glish pa­pers in the Mess here; they come reg­ular­ly from Am­ster­dam, and in their pages I see, just as in ours, pic­tures of the Count­ess this and the Lord that, pho­tographed in be­com­ing at­ti­tudes do­ing war work. It seems agri­cul­tur­al pur­suits are the fash­ion in Eng­land at present–wait till our U-​boat war gets its knife well in­to their fat guts, it will be more than fash­ion­able to work in the fields then.

The British Em­pire is un­de­ni­ably a great cre­ation, or rather not so much a cre­ation as a thing ar­rived at ac­ci­den­tal­ly, but it lacks sol­idar­ity. It sprawls, a con­fused mass of races and creeds, around the world. Its very im­men­si­ty lays it open to at­tack, it has a dozen Achilles heels from Ire­land to Egypt and South Africa to In­dia.

I met a man on­ly yes­ter­day who was re­cent­ly at the pro­pa­gan­da de­part­ment of the For­eign Of­fice, and with­out go­ing in­to de­tails he gave me a very good idea of the good work that is go­ing on in Britain’s canker spots.

Ire­land is con­sid­ered par­tic­ular­ly promis­ing to those in the know.

Now for an ag­itat­ed night! To think that a girl should dis­turb me so!

* * * * *

Two days have passed, or, rather, dragged their in­ter­minable lengths away, for there is still not a ves­tige of news. I have been twice to the flat with no re­sult, ex­cept to re­ceive a piece of im­per­ti­nence from the porter the last time I was there.

No news.

* * * * *

Still no news, and we sail in forty-​eight hours.

_At sea, off the Isle of Wight_.

It is some days since I turned for so­lace and en­joy­ment, amidst the dis­com­forts of this life, to my pen and note­book.

What strange tricks fate plays with us, and how lucky it is that one can­not fore­see the fu­ture.

Here I am in U.39–but I must start at the be­gin­ning. My last en­try was the de­press­ing one of still no news. Well, I have had news, but it was like a drop of wa­ter in the mouth of a parched-​up man. An­oth­er ag­oniz­ing twen­ty-​four hours passed, and I was sit­ting in my room about ten o’clock, try­ing to re­sign my­self to the idea that the next night I should be start­ing out for my third trip with­out news of her, when the tele­phone bell rang. I lift­ed the re­ceiv­er and to my amazed joy heard a voice that I could have rec­og­nized in a thou­sand. It was Zoe!

I was quite in­ca­pable of any re­mark, and my con­fu­sion was fur­ther in­creased when, af­ter a few “Hel­lo’s,” which I id­iot­ical­ly re­peat­ed, her clear, lev­el tones said: “Is that you, Karl? How are you?” How was I? What a ques­tion to ask! I want­ed to tell her that I was bub­bling with joy, that a thou­sand-​kilo­gramme load had been lift­ed from my chest, that my blood was cours­ing through my veins, that I, usu­al­ly so cool, was trem­bling with ex­cite­ment, that I could have kissed the mouth­piece of the hum­ble in­stru­ment that linked us to­geth­er. Yet I was quite in­ca­pable of an­swer­ing her sim­ple ques­tion! I can’t imag­ine what I ex­pect­ed her to say, for up­on re­flec­tion her re­mark was a very or­di­nary one, and in­deed un­der the cir­cum­stances quite nat­ural, but, as I say, in ac­tu­al fact I was tongue-​tied.

I sup­pose I must have said some­thing, for I next re­mem­ber her say­ing: “Well, you might ask how I am;” and to my hor­ror I re­al­ized that she thought I was be­ing rude!

My ab­ject apolo­gies were cut short by her tan­ta­liz­ing laugh, and I un­der­stood that the adorable one was teas­ing me. When at length I made my­self be­lieve that I re­al­ly was talk­ing to this most elu­sive and de­light­ful wom­an I wast­ed no time in sug­gest­ing that, late though it was, I might be per­mit­ted to go round and see her. She would not per­mit this, as she said it would cre­ate grave scan­dal, and the Colonel might hear about it up­on his re­turn. I plead­ed hard and urged my de­par­ture in twen­ty-​four hours.

She was firm and re­proved me for dis­cussing move­ments over the tele­phone. She was right; I was a fool to do so; but Zoe de­stroys all my cau­tion. How­ev­er, she said that I might lunch with her next day, and that she had some new mu­sic to play to me. I ven­tured to ask where she had been, but this ques­tion was plain­ly un­pleas­ing to my la­dy, so I dropped the sub­ject. I blew her a good­night kiss over the tele­phone, to which I think I caught an an­swer, and then she rang off.

Ten min­utes had not elapsed, when a mes­sen­ger en­tered and in­formed me that I was want­ed at the Com­modore’s of­fice at once.

A strange feel­ing of un­easi­ness and that of im­pend­ing mis­for­tune over­came me. I felt like a naughty school-​boy about to in­ter­view the head­mas­ter.

I fol­lowed the mes­sen­ger in­to the Com­modore’s of­fice, and found my­self alone with the great man. He was seat­ed at a huge roll-​top desk, which was the on­ly ar­ti­cle of fur­ni­ture in a room which was to all in­tents and pur­pos­es pa­pered with large scale charts of the east and south coasts of Eng­land and of the Chan­nel and North Sea.

The Com­modore was seal­ing an en­ve­lope as I came in; he looked up and saw me, then, with­out tak­ing any fur­ther no­tice of me, he re­sumed his busi­ness with the en­ve­lope. I felt that I was in the pres­ence of a per­son­al­ity, and I was, for “Old Man Max” is one of the ten men who count in the Naval Ad­min­is­tra­tion. He had a read­ing lamp on his desk, and I re­mem­ber notic­ing that the light shin­ing through its green shade im­part­ed a yel­low parch­ment-​like ef­fect to the top of his old bald head. With dain­ty care he fin­ished seal­ing the en­ve­lope, then, pick­ing up a tele­phone trans­mit­ter, he snapped “Ad­mi­ral­ty!” In about a minute he was con­nect­ed, and to my as­ton­ish­ment I re­al­ized that he was talk­ing to the du­ty cap­tain of the op­er­ations de­part­ment in Berlin.

His words chilled my heart, for he said: “Com­modore speak­ing! U.39 sails at 2 a.m. for op­er­ation F.Q.H.–Re­peat.”

His words were ap­par­ent­ly re­peat­ed to his sat­is­fac­tion, for while I was vain­ly en­deav­our­ing to con­vince my­self that I was un­con­nect­ed with the sail­ing of U.39, he banged the re­ceiv­er in­to place (Old Man Max does ev­ery­thing in bangs) and snapped at me.

“You Lieu­tenant Von Schenk?”

I ad­mit­ted I was, and then heard this dis­gust­ing news.

“Kranz, 1st Lieu­tenant U.39, re­port­ed sud­den­ly ill, Zee­brugge, poi­son­ing–you re­lieve him. Ship sails in one hour forty min­utes from now–my car leaves here in forty min­utes and takes you to Zee­brugge. Here are op­er­ation or­ders–in­form Von Weiss­man he ac­knowl­edges re­ceipt di­rect to me on ‘phone. That’s all.”

He hand­ed me the en­ve­lope and I sup­pose I walked out­side–at least I found my­self in the cor­ri­dor turn­ing the con­found­ed en­ve­lope round and round. For one mad mo­ment I felt like rush­ing in and say­ing: “But, sir, you don’t un­der­stand I’m lunch­ing with Zoe to-​mor­row!”

Then the men­tal pic­ture which this idea con­jured up made me shake with sup­pressed laugh­ter and I re­mem­bered that war was war and that I had on­ly thir­ty-​five min­utes in which to col­lect such gear as I had handy–most of my sea things be­ing in U.C.47–and say good­bye to Zoe.

I ran to my room and made the cor­ri­dors echo with shouts for my faith­ful Adolf. The ex­cel­lent man was soon on the scene, and whilst he stuffed un­der­cloth­ing, tow­els and oth­er nec­es­sary gear in­to a bag he had pur­loined from some­one’s room, I rang up Zoe. I wast­ed ten min­utes get­ting through, but at last I heard a de­li­cious­ly sleepy voice mur­mur, “Who’s that?”

I told her, and added that I was off; to my se­cret joy, an in­tense­ly dis­ap­point­ed and long-​drawn “Oooh!” came over the wire. So she does care a bit, I thought. Mad ideas of pre­tend­ing to be sud­den­ly ill crossed my mind–any­thing to gain twen­ty-​four hours–but the Fa­ther­land is above all such con­sid­er­ations, and af­ter some pleas­ant talk and many wish­es of good luck from the dar­ling girl, with a heavy heart I bade her good-​night.

The Old Man’s car, which is a six­ty horse-​pow­er Benz, was wait­ing at the Mess en­trance, and once clear of the sen­tries we raced down the flat, well-​met­alled road to Zee­brugge in a very short time. The guard at Bruges bar­ri­er had ‘phoned us through to the Zee­brugge for­ti­fied zone, and we were ad­mit­ted with­out de­lay. In three-​quar­ters of an hour from my in­ter­view with old Max I was scram­bling across a row of U-​boats to reach my new ship, U.39.

I went down the af­ter hatch, re­port­ed my­self to Von Weiss­man and de­liv­ered his or­ders to him, of which he ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt di­rect to the Com­modore ac­cord­ing to in­struc­tions. Von Weiss­man is a very dif­fer­ent stamp of man to Al­ten; of medi­um height, he has sandy-​coloured hair, steel-​grey eyes and a pro­trud­ing jaw. He is what he looks, a fine North Prus­sian, and is, of course, of ex­cel­lent fam­ily, as the Weiss­mans have been set­tled in Grinetz for a long pe­ri­od.

He struck me as be­ing about thir­ty years of age, and on his heart he wore the Cross of the sec­ond class. I have heard of him be­fore as be­ing well in the run­ning to­wards an _or­dre pour le mérite_.

An in­ter­est­ing chart is hang­ing in the ward­room, on which is marked the last rest­ing-​place of ev­ery ship he has sunk. He puts a coloured dot, the tint of which varies with the ton­nage, black up to 2,000, blue from 2,000-5,000, brown 5,000-8,000, green 8,000-11,000, and a red spot with the ship’s name for any­thing over 11,000. He has got about 120,000 tons at present. He op­pos­es the Ar­nauld de la Per­rière school of thought, which pins faith on the gun, and Weiss­man has done near­ly all his work with the good old tor­pe­do.

Al­to­geth­er, un­doubt­ed­ly a man to serve with.

The U.39 was in that buzzing and se­mi-​ac­tive con­di­tion which to a trained eye is a sure in­di­ca­tion that the ship is about to sail. Punc­tu­al­ly at five min­utes to 2 a.m. Weiss­man went to the bridge, and at 2 a.m. the wires were slipped and we start­ed on a ten days’ trip. As the dim lights on the mole dis­ap­peared and the cease­less foun­tain of star-​shells, min­gling with the flash­ing of guns, rose in­land on our port beam my mind trav­elled over­land to the flat at Bruges, and I won­dered whether Zoe was ly­ing awake lis­ten­ing to the cease­less rum­ble of the Flan­ders can­non. We went on at full speed, as it was our in­ten­tion to pass the Dover Straits be­fore dawn. Though our in­tel­li­gence bu­reau is­sues the most alarm­ing re­ports as to the fright­ful­ness of the de­fences here I was agree­ably sur­prised at the ease with which we passed. Von Weiss­man, to whom I had hint­ed that we might find the pas­sage tricky, rather laughed at my sug­ges­tion, and de­scribed to me his method, which, at all events, has the mer­it of sim­plic­ity.

He al­ways goes through with the tide, so as to take as short a time as pos­si­ble, and he al­ways de­cides on a course and steers it as close­ly as pos­si­ble, keep­ing to the sur­face un­less he sights any­thing, and div­ing as soon as any­thing shows up. Even if he dives he goes on as fast as pos­si­ble on his course, ir­re­spec­tive of whether he is be­ing bombed or not.

I must say it worked very well last night. We shaped a course to pass five miles west of Gris Nez, and when that light, which for some rea­son the French had com­modi­ous­ly lit that night, was abeam, we sight­ed a black ob­ject, prob­ably a trawler or de­stroy­er, about half a dozen miles away right ahead. Weiss­man im­me­di­ate­ly dived and, with­out de­vi­at­ing a de­gree from his course, held on at three-​quar­ters speed on the mo­tors. Some time lat­er the hy­drophone watch­keep­er re­port­ed the sound of pro­pellers in his lis­ten­ers, and that he judged them to be close at hand, so I imag­ine we passed very near­ly di­rect­ly un­der­neath what­ev­er it was.

Af­ter an hour’s sub­merg­ing we rose, and found dawn break­ing over a lead­en and chop­py sea. Noth­ing be­ing in sight, we con­tin­ued on the sur­face for an hour, charg­ing bat­ter­ies with the star­board en­gine (500 amps on each), but at 9 a.m., the clouds ly­ing low and an aeri­al pa­trol be­ing fre­quent here­abouts, we dived and cruised steadi­ly down chan­nel at slow speed, keep­ing periscope depth.

Sev­er­al times in the course of the forenoon we sight­ed small de­stroy­ers and con­voy craft [1] in the dis­tance, all steer­ing west­er­ly. They were prob­ably re­turn­ing from es­cort­ing troop­ships over to France last night. In ev­ery case we went to six­ty feet long be­fore they could have seen our “stick.” [2] Weiss­man is ev­ident­ly as cau­tious in this mat­ter as he is hardy in oth­ers; the more I see of him the more I like him; he is a man of breed­ing, and it is of val­ue to serve in this boat.

[Foot­note 1: Prob­ably “P” boats.–ETI­ENNE.]

[Foot­note 2: Periscope.–ETI­ENNE.]

As I write we are on the sur­face about ten miles east of the Isle of Wight, still steer­ing down chan­nel. To-​night at mid­night we re­port our po­si­tion to Zee­brugge, up till now we have main­tained wire­less si­lence for fear of the British and French di­rec­tion­al sta­tions pick­ing up our sig­nals and fix­ing our po­si­tion.

Af­ter sup­per this evening Von Weiss­man ex­plained to me the gen­er­al plan of our op­er­ations for the next eight days. Our cruis­ing bil­let is about 150 miles south-​west of the Scillys, at the fo­cal point where trade for Liv­er­pool and Bris­tol and the up-​chan­nel trade di­verges. Von Weiss­man says that this is a plum bil­let and we should do well.

I feel this is go­ing to be bet­ter than those pif­fling lit­tle mine-​lay­ing trips, and though we shall be away ten days, it will qual­ify me for four days’ leave in Bel­gium.

* * * * *

There was near­ly an awk­ward mo­ment last night, or, rather, there was an awk­ward mo­ment, and near­ly an awk­ward ac­ci­dent. I re­lieved the nav­iga­tor at mid­night (the pi­lot is an unas­sum­ing in­di­vid­ual called Siegel) and took on the mid­dle watch. It was blow­ing about force 4 from the south-​west, and a nasty short, lumpy sea was run­ning which caught us just on the port bow. About once ev­ery ten sec­onds she missed her step with the waves and, dip­ping her nose in­to it, shov­elled up tons of wa­ter, which, as the bow lift­ed, raced aft and, break­ing against the gun, flung it­self in clouds of spray against the bridge. In a very few min­utes ev­ery ex­posed por­tion of me was stream­ing with wa­ter.

At about 2 a.m. I had turned my back to the sea for a mo­ment, and my thoughts were for an in­stant in Bruges, when, on fac­ing for­ward once again I saw a sight which ef­fec­tu­al­ly brought me back to earth.

This was the spec­ta­cle of two black shapes, ev­ident­ly steam­ers, one on ei­ther bow, dis­tant, I should es­ti­mate, 600 or 700 me­tres. I had to make a quick de­ci­sion, and I de­cid­ed that to fire a tor­pe­do in that sea with any hope of a hit, es­pe­cial­ly with the boat on sur­face, was use­less; fur­ther­more, that at any mo­ment ei­ther of the steam­ers might sight us from their high bridge and turn and ram.

These thoughts were the work of an in­stant, and I at once rang the div­ing bell, and, push­ing the look-​out be­fore me, in five sec­onds I was in the con­ning tow­er and had the hatch down. I at once pro­ceed­ed down in­to the boat, and the first thing that struck my eye was the div­ing gauge with the nee­dle prac­ti­cal­ly sta­tion­ary at two me­tres.

The boat was not go­ing down prop­er­ly! and for an in­stant I was rude­ly shak­en, un­til a cool voice from the ward­room re­marked, “Helm hard a-​port,” an or­der that was in­stant­ly obeyed, and as she be­gan to turn the mov­ing nee­dle on the depth gauge be­gan its jour­ney round the di­al. It was the Cap­tain who had spo­ken. As soon as he heard the div­ing alarm he was out of his bunk, and a glance at the gauge he has fit­ted in the ward­room told him we were not sink­ing rapid­ly. In an in­stant he had put his fin­ger on the trou­ble, which was that we were al­most head on to the sea, with the re­sult that he had giv­en the or­der as stat­ed above, which, bring­ing us beam on to the sea, had caused her to dive with ease. He is ef­fi­cien­cy it­self!

As I ex­plained to him what had hap­pened, the noise of pro­pellers at vary­ing dis­tances from us over­head led him to state his be­lief that we had run in­to a con­voy home­ward bound to Southamp­ton from the At­lantic.

He ap­proved of my ac­tions in ev­ery par­tic­ular, save on­ly in my omis­sion to bring the boat away from the sea as I be­gan to dive.

This morn­ing we are be­gin­ning to get the full force of what is ev­ident­ly go­ing to be a south-​west­er­ly gale of some vi­olence. The seas are get­ting larg­er as we de­bouch in­to the At­lantic. This looks bad for busi­ness.

* * * * *

At the mo­ment we are prac­ti­cal­ly hove to on the sur­face, with the port en­gine just jog­ging to keep her head on to sea and the star­board tick­ing round to give her a long, slow charge of 200 amps.

The wind is force 7-8 and a very big sea is run­ning which makes it en­tire­ly im­pos­si­ble to open the con­ning tow­er hatch; the en­gine is get­ting its air through the spe­cial mush­room ven­ti­la­tor, which is ap­par­ent­ly not de­signed to sup­ply both the boat’s re­quire­ments and those of the en­gine; the whole ven­ti­la­tor gets cov­ered with sea ev­ery now and then, dur­ing which pe­ri­od un­til the baf­fle drains get the wa­ter away no air can get in, so the en­gine has a good suck at the air in the boat, the re­sult of all this be­ing a slight vac­uum in the boat. It is a very un­pleas­ant sen­sa­tion, and made me very sick. This is re­al­ly a form of sick­ness due to the rar­efied air.

I had a great sur­prise when I looked at the baro­graph this morn­ing as the nee­dle had gone right off the pa­per at the bot­tom, and at first glance I thought we had struck a trop­ical de­pres­sion of the first mag­ni­tude, which, flout­ing all the laws of me­te­orol­ogy, had some­how found its way to the En­glish Chan­nel; but the en­gi­neer ex­plained to me that, as I have al­ready stat­ed, the low at­mo­spher­ic pres­sure in the boat was due to the con­ning-​tow­er hatch be­ing shut down.

[Il­lus­tra­tion: “As the dim lights on the mole dis­ap­peared, the cease­less foun­tain of starshells min­gling with the flash­ing of guns, rose in­land on our port beam.”]

[Il­lus­tra­tion: “We hit her aft for the sec­ond time.”]

I have dis­cov­ered that Von Weiss­man is a mar­tyr to sea-​sick­ness–all day he has been ly­ing down as white as a sheet and sub­sist­ing on milk tablets and sips of brandy; yet such is the man’s in­flex­ibil­ity of will that he forces him­self to make a tour of in­spec­tion right round the boat ev­ery six hours, night and day. It is this will to con­quer which has made Ger­mans un­con­quer­able, though “Come the four cor­ners of the world in arms” against us, as the great po­et says.

We are, of course, keep­ing watch from in­side the con­ning tow­er; it is, at all events, dry, but as to see­ing any­thing one might as well be look­ing out through a small glass win­dow from in­side a break­wa­ter! To bed till 4 a.m.

* * * * *

A most un­prof­itable day. I grudge ev­ery day away from Zoe on which we do noth­ing. This morn­ing about noon the gale blew it­self out, but a heavy con­fused sea con­tin­ued to run.

At 2 p.m. we saw a most tan­ta­liz­ing spec­ta­cle. A big tank steam­er, ful­ly 600 feet long and of prob­ably 17,000 tons bur­then hove in sight, es­cort­ed by two de­stroy­ers. To at­tack with the gun was im­pos­si­ble, as we could on­ly keep the con­ning tow­er open when stern to sea, and in any case the two de­stroy­ers pre­vent­ed any sur­face work. We tried to get in for an at­tack, but we had not seen her in time, and the best we could do was to get with­in 3,000 yards, at which range it would have been ab­surd to have wast­ed a tor­pe­do, the chances of hit­ting be­ing 100 to 1 against, even if the tor­pe­do had run prop­er­ly in the sea that was on.

I had a good look at her through the fore­most periscope in be­tween the waves, and it mad­dened me to see all that oil, doubt­less from Tampi­co for the Grand Fleet, go­ing safe­ly by. The de­stroy­ers were hav­ing a bad time of it, crash­ing in­to the sea like por­pois­es, their fun­nels white with salt, and their bridges en­veloped in sheets of wa­ter and spray. They lit­tle thought that, bare­ly a mile away, amidst the tum­bling, crest­ed waves a Ger­man eye was watch­ing them!

There is no doubt these damned British have pluck, for it was the last sort of weath­er in which one would have ex­pect­ed to find de­stroy­ers at sea, and yet I sup­pose they do this through­out the win­ter.

Af­ter all, one would ex­pect them to be tough fel­lows–they are of Teu­ton­ic stock–though by their bear­ing one might imag­ine that the Cre­ator made an En­glish­man and then Adam.

Let’s hope we get some de­cent weath­er to-​mor­row. I have just been re­fresh­ing my mem­ory by read­ing of what I wrote in the book, con­cern­ing the day in the for­est with the adorable girl. There is an exquisite plea­sure in trans­port­ing the mind in­to such mem­ories of the past when the body is in such sur­round­ings as the present, if on­ly I could will my­self to dream of her!

* * * * *

A fine day in ev­ery sense of the word. The weath­er has been and re­mains ex­cel­lent, and I have been present at my first sink­ing. It was ab­surd­ly com­mon­place. At 10 a.m. this morn­ing a col­umn of smoke crept up­wards from the south­ern hori­zon.

Von Weiss­man steered to­wards it on the sur­face un­til two masts and the top of a fun­nel ap­peared. We dived and pro­ceed­ed slow­ly un­der wa­ter on a souther­ly course.

Half an hour passed and Von Weiss­man brought the boat up to periscope depth and had a look. He called to me to come and see, an in­vi­ta­tion I ac­cept­ed with alacrity.

With nat­ural ex­cite­ment I looked through the periscope and there she was, un­con­scious­ly am­bling to her doom like a fat sheep.

She was a steam­er (British) of about 4,000 tons, slug­ging home at a steady ten knots, but she was des­tined to come to her last moor­ing place ahead of sched­ule time!

We dipped our periscope and I went for­ward to the tubes. Five min­utes elapsed and the or­der in­stru­ment bell rang, the point­er flick­ing to “Stand by.” I per­son­al­ly re­moved the fir­ing gear safe­ty pin and put the re­peat to “Ready.” A breath­less pause, then a slight shake and de­struc­tion was on its way, whilst I re­al­ized by the an­gle of the boat that Weiss­man was tak­ing us down a few me­tres.

That shows his cool­ness, he didn’t even trou­ble to watch his shot.

Anx­ious­ly I watch the sec­ond hand of my stop watch. Weiss­man had told me the range would be about 500 me­tres–30 sec­onds–31–32–33–has he missed?–34–35–3–A dull rum­ble comes through the wa­ter and the whole boat shakes. Hur­ra! we have hit, and the or­der “Sur­face” comes along the voice pipe.

The cheer­ful voice of the blow­er is heard, evac­uat­ing the tanks; I run to the con­ning tow­er and close­ly fol­low Weiss­man up the lad­der. At last I am on the bridge. There she is! What a sight!

I feel that I shall nev­er for­get what she looked like, though, if all goes well, I shall see many an­oth­er fine ship go to her grave.

But she was my first; I felt the same sen­sa­tion when, as a boy, I shot my first roe-​deer in the Black For­est, one in­stant a liv­ing thing beau­ti­ful to per­fec­tion, the next my ri­fle spoke and a bleed­ing car­case lay be­neath the fine trees. So with this ship. I am a sailor, and to ev­ery sailor ev­ery ship that floats has, as it were, a soul, a per­son­al­ity, an en­ti­ty; to car­ry the anal­ogy fur­ther, a mer­chant craft is like some fat beast of util­ity, an ox, a cow, or a sheep, whilst a war­ship is a li­on if she is a bat­tle­ship, a leop­ard if she is a light cruis­er, etc.; in all cas­es wor­thy game.

But War has lit­tle use for sen­ti­men­tal­ity! and in my usu­al wan­der­ing man­ner I see that I have me­an­dered from the point and quite for­got­ten what she did look like.

What I saw was this:

I saw that the steam­er had been hit for­ward on the star­board side. The up­per por­tion of the stem piece was al­most down to the wa­ter lev­el, her fore­most hold was ob­vi­ous­ly fill­ing rapid­ly. Her stern was high out of wa­ter, the red en­sign of Eng­land flap­ping im­po­tent­ly on the en­sign staff. Her pro­peller, which was still slow­ly re­volv­ing, thrashed the wa­ter, and this height­ened the im­pres­sion that I was watch­ing the strug­gles of a dy­ing an­imal. The pro­peller was re­volv­ing in spas­mod­ic jerks, due, I imag­ine, to the fast fail­ing steam on­ly forc­ing the cranks over their dead cen­tres with an ef­fort.

A boat was be­ing low­ered with haste from the two davits abreast the fun­nel on one side, but when she was full of men and, due to the an­gle of the ship, well down by the bow, some­one in­board let go the fore­most fall or else it broke, for the bows of the boat fell down­wards and half a dozen fig­ures were pro­ject­ed in grotesque at­ti­tudes in­to the sea. For a few sec­onds the boat swung back­wards and for­wards, like a pen­du­lum.

When she came to rest, hang­ing ver­ti­cal­ly down­wards from the stern, I no­ticed that a few men were still cling­ing like flies to her thwarts. Tru­ly, any­thing is bet­ter than the At­lantic in win­ter. Mean­while the ship had ceased to sink as far as out­ward signs went.

I men­tioned this to Von Weiss­man, who was at my side with a slight smile on his face, amused doubt­less at the ea­ger­ness with which I watched ev­ery de­tail of this, to me, nov­el tragedy. He an­swered me that I need not wor­ry, that she was be­ing sup­port­ed by an air lock some­where for­ward, that the wa­ter was slow­ly creep­ing in­to her and her boil­ers would prob­ably soon go.

This re­mark­able man was ab­so­lute­ly cor­rect.

There was an in­ter­val of about five min­utes, dur­ing which an­oth­er boat, ev­ident­ly suc­cess­ful­ly low­ered from the oth­er side, came round her stern, picked up one or two men from the wa­ter and al­so col­lect­ed the sur­vivors in the hang­ing boat; then the steam­er sud­den­ly sank an­oth­er two feet, there was a dull rum­bling, as of heavy ma­chin­ery falling from a height, a muf­fled re­port, a cloud of steam and smoke, a suck­ing noise and then a pool in the wa­ter, in the mid­dle of which odd bits of wood and oth­er buoy­ant de­bris kept on bob­bing up. Noth­ing else!

No! I am wrong, there were two oth­er things: a U-​boat, rep­re­sent­ing the might of Ger­many, and a whaler with per­haps twen­ty men in it, rep­re­sent­ing the plight of Eng­land!

As she went I felt hushed and solemn, it was an im­pres­sive mo­ment; a slight chuck­le came from im­per­turbable Weiss­man; he had seen too many go to think much of it, and he gave an or­der for the helm to be put over, so that we might ap­proach the whaler.

They were hor­ri­bly over­crowd­ed, and were en­gaged in try­ing to sort them­selves in­to some sort of or­der. We passed by them at 50 yards and Weiss­man, seiz­ing his mega­phone, shout­ed in En­glish: “Good­bye! steer west for Amer­ica!” A cold hor­ror gripped my heart. It was an aw­ful mo­ment. I dare not write the thoughts that en­tered my head.

I turned away my head and faced aft, that he should not see my face; look­ing back I saw the whaler rock­ing dan­ger­ous­ly in our wash, and then a com­mo­tion took place in her stern, from which a huge beard­ed man arose and, shak­ing his fist in our di­rec­tion, shout­ed some­thing or oth­er be­fore his com­pan­ions pulled him down.

Von Weiss­man heard and his lips nar­rowed in. I held my breath in sus­pense, but he ev­ident­ly de­cid­ed against what he had been about to do, for with the or­der, “Course north! ten knots,” he went be­low.

I re­mained on deck watch­ing the rapid­ly re­ced­ing whaler through my glass­es un­til she was a mere speck–alone on the ocean, 150 miles from land, Then the nav­iga­tor came up, and with strange­ly mixed feel­ings of ex­ul­tant joy and de­press­ing sor­row I went be­low.

Von Weiss­man was in the ward­room. I watched him un­ob­served. He was hum­ming a tune to him­self and had just com­plet­ed putting a green dot on the chart. This done he lay back on the set­tee and closed his eyes–strange, in­sol­uble man!

For long hours I could not for­get that whaler; I see it now as I write. I sup­pose I shall get used to it all. What would Zoe say?

The most won­der­ful thing about man is that he can stand the strain of his own in­ven­tion of mod­ern war!

* * * * *

I am rather tired to-​night, but must just jot down briefly what has tak­en place to-​day, as there is nev­er any time in the day­light hours.

Soon af­ter dawn, at about 8 a.m., we sight­ed a fair-​sized steam­er of about 3,000 tons, which we sunk, but I can­not say what she looked like, or whether any­one es­caped, as we nev­er came to the sur­face at all, Von Weiss­man sight­ing smoke on the west­ern hori­zon just as he hit her. We ac­cord­ing­ly steered in that di­rec­tion. How­ev­er, I think she went al­most at once as Von Weiss­man put a dot (black) on the chart as we made to­wards num­ber 3.

I very much want­ed to know whether there were any sur­vivors, but I did not like to ask him at the time and he has been in such an in­fer­nal tem­per ev­er since that I haven’t had a suit­able op­por­tu­ni­ty.

The cause of his rage was as fol­lows:

Steam­er num­ber 3 turned out to be a fine fat chap (of the Clan Line, Von Weiss­man said, when we first sight­ed her). We moved in to at­tack and fired our port bow tube. I wait­ed in vain by the tubes for the ex­pect­ed ex­plo­sion–noth­ing hap­pened, but af­ter a cou­ple of min­utes a snarl came down the voice pipe: “Sur­face, GUN AC­TION STA­TIONS!”

I ran aft, and found the Cap­tain white with rage.

“Missed ahead!” he said, with in­tense feel­ing, “I’ll have to use that con­found­ed gun.”

In about three min­utes the Cap­tain and my­self were on the bridge and the crew were at their sta­tions round the gun.

For the first time I saw the ship; she was stern on and ap­par­ent­ly paint­ed with black and white stripes. As I ex­am­ined her through glass­es–she was dis­tant about 3,000 yards–I saw a flash aboard her and a few sec­onds lat­er a pro­jec­tile moaned over­head and fell about 6,000 yards over. So she is armed, thought I, and she has ac­tu­al­ly opened fire on us first.

The ef­fect of this un­ex­pect­ed re­tort on the part of the En­glish­man was to throw Weiss­man in­to a parox­ysm of rage.

“Why don’t you fire? What the dev­il are you wait­ing for?” etc., etc., were some of the re­marks he flung at the gun crew.

I did not con­sid­er it ad­vis­able to men­tion to him that they were prob­ably wait­ing his or­der to fire, and al­so his or­ders for range and de­flec­tion, as I had imag­ined that, here as ev­ery­where else, an of­fi­cer con­trols the gun-​fire. Ap­par­ent­ly in this boat it is not so, as Weiss­man takes so lit­tle in­ter­est in his gun that he af­fects to be, or else ac­tu­al­ly is, ig­no­rant of the el­ements of gun con­trol.

At any rate, un­der the lash of his tongue, the gun’s crew soon got in­to ac­tion, the gun-​lay­er tak­ing charge. Our first shot was short, very con­sid­er­ably so, as was al­so the sec­ond. Mean­while the steam­er had been keep­ing up a very cred­itably con­trolled rate of fire, strad­dling us twice, but miss­ing for de­flec­tion, as was nat­ural con­sid­er­ing that we were bows on to her.

I felt thor­ough­ly in my el­ement lis­ten­ing to the sig­nif­icant wail of the en­emy’s shell, punc­tu­at­ed by the ear-​split­ting re­port of our own gun. Weiss­man, grip­ping the rail with both hands, and to my sur­prise duck­ing when one went over­head, watched the tar­get with a fixed ex­pres­sion, but made no at­tempt to con­trol our gun-​fire, which was far from cred­itable, as is in­evitable when it is left to the mer­cy of the in­fe­ri­or in­tel­lect of a sea­man.

How­ev­er, at the tenth or eleventh round we hit her in the up­per works, as was shown by a bright red and yel­low flash near her fun­nel. This did not check her fir­ing or speed in the least, in fact she seemed to be gain­ing on us. She al­so be­gan to zigzag slight­ly and throw smoke bombs over­board, which were not so ef­fec­tive from her point of view as I had thought they would be.

Mat­ters were thus for some min­utes. We had just hit her aft for the sec­ond time, though the shoot­ing was so dis­gust­ing­ly bad that I was about to ask whether I might do the du­ties of con­trol of­fi­cer, when there was a blind­ing flash and the air seemed filled with moan­ing frag­ments. When I had re­cov­ered from my re­lief from find­ing that I was per­son­al­ly un­in­jured, I ob­served that two of the gun’s crew were wound­ed and one was ly­ing, ei­ther killed or se­ri­ous­ly wound­ed, on the cas­ing. We had been hit in the cas­ing, well for­ward, and, as was sub­se­quent­ly proved when we dived, lit­tle ma­te­ri­al dam­age was caused to the boat.

This en­emy suc­cess caused a tem­po­rary ces­sa­tion of fire. The two wound­ed men were cau­tious­ly mak­ing their way aft to the con­ning tow­er, and I called for a cou­ple of stok­ers to come up and car­ry away the third, when Von Weiss­man sud­den­ly gave the or­der to dive. The gun’s crew at once made a rush for the con­ning tow­er, and were down the hatch in a trice, one of the wound­ed men faint­ing at the bot­tom.

I was un­aware as to the rea­son of this or­der to dive, and thought that per­haps the Cap­tain had sight­ed a periscope. As I was turn­ing to pre­cede him down the con­ning tow­er hatch I dis­tinct­ly saw the man ly­ing by the gun lift his hand. I felt I could not leave him there, and in­stinc­tive­ly cried, “He is still alive!” But Von Weiss­man, who was urg­ing the crew to hur­ry down the hatch, pressed the div­ing alarm as soon as the last sailor was half in the hatch.

I knew that this meant that the boat would be un­der in 30 to 40 sec­onds, so I had no al­ter­na­tive but to get down the hatch as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

I did so with re­luc­tance, and I was fol­lowed by Von Weiss­man, who joined me in the up­per con­ning tow­er.

I forced my­self not to look out of the con­ning tow­er scut­tles dur­ing the few sec­onds that elapsed as the cas­ing slow­ly went un­der, un­til at last noth­ing but wav­ing green wa­ter showed at each lit­tle win­dow. I feared that, if I had looked, I would have seen a wound­ed man, stung in­to ac­tiv­ity by the cold touch of the At­lantic. Per­haps Von Weiss­man read my thoughts, or else he re­mem­bered my re­mark con­cern­ing the man, for he turned to me and in lev­el tones said:

“Have you any doubt that he was dead?”

I hes­itat­ed a mo­ment, and he con­tin­ued:

“By my di­rec­tion you have no doubt. He _was_!”

How bru­tal war is, and what a per­fect ex­po­nent of the art the Cap­tain proves him­self to be! To me a life is a life, a par­ti­cle of the thing di­vine; to him a life is a unit, and a half-​maimed and prob­ably dy­ing sea­man is as noth­ing in the scales when the safe­ty of a U-​boat is at stake. The sea­men are num­bered in their tens of thou­sands, the U-​boats in their tens. The steam­er had hit us once, luck­ily on­ly in the cas­ing, a sec­ond hit might well have punc­tured the pres­sure hull, and our fate in these wa­ters would have been cer­tain. There­fore, hav­ing summed these things up and bal­anced them in his mind, he dived and the sailor died.

Once be­low wa­ter Von Weiss­man seemed more his im­per­turbable self, and un­less I am mis­tak­en he is nev­er re­al­ly hap­py on the sur­face, at least when in ac­tion. He is a true wa­ter mole.

* * * * *

A day full of in­ter­est, though once again I have had to force my­self to ab­sorb the hor­rors of War. I imag­ine that I am now go­ing through the ex­pe­ri­ences of a new ar­rival on the West­ern Front, who feels a de­sire to shud­der at the sight of ev­ery corpse.

At 10 a.m. this morn­ing we sight­ed the top­sails of a sail­ing boat to the south­west. Clos­ing her on the sur­face, we ap­proached to with­in about 6,000 me­tres, when sud­den­ly Von Weiss­man or­dered “Gun Ac­tion Sta­tions.”

The gun crew came tum­bling up, but not quick enough to suit him, for as they were mus­ter­ing at the gun he gave the or­der to dive, on­ly, how­ev­er, tak­ing her down to periscope depth be­fore in­stant­ly or­der­ing sur­face and then “Gun Ac­tion Sta­tions” again. This time we opened fire on the ship, which was a Nor­we­gian bar­que and, be­ing in the barred zone, li­able to de­struc­tion.

Von Weiss­man had an­nounced overnight that at the first op­por­tu­ni­ty he would give “that —– gun’s crew a bel­ly­ful of prac­tice,” and he cer­tain­ly did. As soon as the first shot was fired, she backed her top­sails, and when our fourth shot struck her, some­where near the foot of the fore­mast, her crew could be seen hasti­ly aban­don­ing their ship.

This ac­tion on their part had no in­flu­ence with Von Weiss­man, who had tak­en per­son­al charge of the helm, and, with the en­gines run­ning at three-​quar­ter speed, he was zigzag­ging about, to make it hard­er for the gun’s crew. Ev­ery now and then he flung a gibe at the crew, such as sug­gest­ing that they should go back to the High Seas Fleet and learn how to shoot.

The sail­ing ship was soon on fire, for, con­sid­er­ing the cir­cum­stances, the shoot­ing was very fair, though had I been con­trol­ling it I could have con­fi­dent­ly guar­an­teed bet­ter re­sults. When she was blaz­ing nice­ly fore and aft, Von Weiss­man or­dered the prac­tice to cease, and sent the crew be­low. He then or­dered course south, speed ten knots, and I took over the watch.

An hour and a half lat­er, when the nav­iga­tor gave me a spell, a black cloud on the north­ern hori­zon marked the fu­ner­al pyre of an­oth­er of our vic­tims. When I went be­low, the Cap­tain had just fin­ished play­ing with his pre­cious old chart.

* * * * *

We re­ceived a mes­sage at 2 a.m. last night from He­ligoland to re­turn forth­with; it is now 2 a.m. and we are ap­proach­ing the re­doubtable Dover Bar­rage. We had no trou­ble com­ing up chan­nel to-​day, which seems sin­gu­lar­ly emp­ty, at any rate in mid-​chan­nel, where we were.

* * * * *

We got back about three hours ago, and as I was ap­point­ed tem­po­rary to the boat, Von Weiss­man kind­ly al­lowed me to leave her and come up to Bruges as soon as we got in­to the shel­ters at Zee­brugge.

I got up here just, in time for a late din­ner. Hunger sat­is­fied, I re­tired to my room and, need­less to say, at once rang up my dar­ling Zoe.

By the mer­cy of prov­idence she was in, but imag­ine my sen­sa­tions when I heard that that ac­cursed swine of a Colonel was al­so back from the front, and ex­pect­ed in at the flat at any mo­ment, be­ing then, she thought, en­gaged in his af­ter din­ner drink­ing bouts at the cav­al­ry of­fi­cers’ club. I could on­ly groan.

A laugh at the oth­er end stung me to fu­ri­ous rage, ap­peased in an in­stant by her sooth­ing tones as she told me that I should be glad to hear that he was on­ly up from the Somme on a four-​days leave, and was re­turn­ing next morn­ing by the 8 a.m. troop train. Glad! I could have danced for joy. I breathed again.

As the Colonel was ex­pect­ed back at any mo­ment she thought it ad­vis­able to ter­mi­nate the con­ver­sa­tion, which was done with ob­vi­ous re­luc­tance on her part, or so I flat­ter my­self.

He goes to-​mor­row, so far so good, but what of the in­ter­ven­ing pe­ri­od?

Could any more re­fined tor­ture be imag­ined than that I, who love her as I love my own soul, should have to sit here, whilst scarce­ly a mile away, prob­ably at this very mo­ment as I write, that gross brute is priv­ileged to kiss her, to look at her, to–oh! it’s un­bear­able. When I think of that hog, for though I’ve nev­er seen him, I’ve seen his pho­to­graph, and I know in­stinc­tive­ly that he _is_ gross, fresh, as she says, from a drink­ing bout, should at this mo­ment be per­mit­ted to raise his pigs’ eyes and look in­to those glo­ri­ous wells of vi­olet light; when I think that his is the priv­ilege to see those mass­es of black hair fall in un­con­trolled splen­dour, then I un­der­stand to the full the deep plea­sures of mur­der.

I would give any­thing to de­stroy this man, and could shake the En­glish­man by the hand who fires the de­liv­er­ing bul­let!

Steady! Steady! What do I write? No! I mean it, ev­ery word of it. Yet of all the mys­ter­ies, and to me Zoe is a mass of them, sure­ly the strangest of all is con­tained in the ques­tion: Why does she live with him?

She doesn’t love him, she’s prac­ti­cal­ly told me so. In fact, I know she doesn’t. Let me rea­son it out by log­ic. She lives with him, whether vol­un­tar­ily or in­vol­un­tar­ily. Sup­pose it be vol­un­tar­ily, then her rea­sons must be (a) Love; (b) Fas­ci­na­tion; (c) Some se­cret rea­son. If she is liv­ing with him in­vol­un­tar­ily it must be: (d) He has a hold on her; (e) For fi­nan­cial rea­sons.

I strike out at once (a) and (e), for in the case of (e) she knows well that I would pro­vide for her, and (a) I refuse to ad­mit, (b) is hard­ly cred­ible–I elim­inate that. I am left with (c) and (d) which might be the same thing. But what hold can he have on her; she can’t have a past, she is too young and sweet for that.

I must find out about this be­fore I go to sea again.

* * * * *

Three days ago, I was rack­ing my brains for the so­lu­tion of a prob­lem, and, as I see from what I wrote, I was some­what out­side my­self. In the in­ter­val things have tak­en an amaz­ing turn. I am still be­wil­dered–but I must put it all down from the be­gin­ning.

The Colonel left as she said he would, and I went round to lunch with her.

We had a de­light­ful _tête-​à-​tête_, and af­ter lunch she played the pi­ano. I was feel­ing in splen­did voice and she ac­com­pa­nied me to per­fec­tion in Tchaikowsky’s “To the For­est,” al­ways a favourite of mine. As the last chords died away, Zoe jumped up from the pi­ano and, with eyes danc­ing with ex­cite­ment, placed her hands on my shoul­ders and ex­claimed:

“Karl! I have an idea! I shall make a pris­on­er of you for two or three days.”

I laughed hearti­ly and al­most told her that she had al­ready made me a pris­on­er for life, on­ly I can nev­er get those sort of re­marks out quick enough.

But when she said, “No! I am not jok­ing, I mean it,” I felt there was more mean­ing in her sen­tence than I had at first thought. I begged to be en­light­ened, and she then un­fold­ed her scheme.

She told me for the first time, that in a for­est not far from Bruges she had a lit­tle sum­mer-​house, to which she used to re­treat for week-​ends in the hot weath­er when the Colonel was away. He knew noth­ing of this coun­try house (she was very in­sis­tent on that point), so I imag­ined she paid for it out of her dress al­lowance or in some oth­er way. The idea that had just struck her was that she had a sud­den fan­cy to go and spend two days there, and I was to go with her.

I was ready to go to Africa with her if my leave per­mit­ted, and it so hap­pened that I was due for four days’ over­seas leave (lim­it­ed to Bel­gian ter­ri­to­ry) so that this fit­ted in very well, and I told her so.

She was de­light­ed, then, with one of those quick in­tu­itions which wom­en are so clever at, she read the half-​formed thought in my mind, and said: “You mustn’t think it’s not go­ing to be con­ven­tion­al; old Ba­bette will be with us to chap­er­on me.” Old Ba­bette is an aged fe­male whom she calls her maid. I think she is jeal­ous of me.

I agreed at once that of course I quite un­der­stood it was to be high­ly con­ven­tion­al, etc., though I smiled to my­self as I vi­su­al­ized my moth­er’s shocked face and up­lift­ed hands had she heard my Zoe’s ideas on the con­ven­tions.

I was try­ing to fath­om what was at the bot­tom of it all when she re­marked: “Of course, as my pris­on­er you will have to obey all my or­ders.”

I replied that this was cer­tain­ly so.

“And one of the first things,” she con­tin­ued, “that hap­pens to a pris­on­er when he goes through the en­emy lines is that he is blind­fold­ed, and in the same way I shan’t let you know where you are go­ing.”

See­ing a doubt­ful look in my eyes as I en­deav­oured to keep pace with the un­der­ly­ing idea, if any, of this tru­ly fem­inine fan­cy, she sud­den­ly came up to me and, lift­ing her eyes to mine, mur­mured: “Don’t you trust me?”

In a mo­ment my pas­sion flared up, and rained hot kiss­es on her face as she strug­gled to re­lease her­self from my arms.

When I left that night af­ter din­ner, and, walk­ing on air, re­turned to the Mess, it was ar­ranged that I should be at her flat with my suit-​case at 6 p.m. the next evening, pre­pared, to use her own words, “to dis­ap­pear with me for 48 hours.”

She had told me of an ad­dress in Bruges which she said would for­ward on any tele­gram if I was re­called, and I had to be sat­is­fied with that, for I may as well say here that I nev­er dis­cov­ered where I went to, and I don’t know to this mo­ment in what part of Bel­gium I spent the last two nights.

I tried to find out at first, but as she ob­vi­ous­ly at­tached some im­por­tance to keep­ing the lo­cal­ity of her wood­land re­treat a se­cret, prob­ably to cir­cum­vent the Colonel, I soon gave up try­ing to get the se­cret from her, and con­tent­ed my­self with tak­ing things as they came.

To go on with my ac­count of what hap­pened–which was re­al­ly so re­mark­able that I pro­pose writ­ing it out in de­tail to the best of my mem­ory–at 6 p.m. next day I was nat­ural­ly at her flat feel­ing very much as if I was on the thresh­old of an ad­ven­ture.

Zoe was ex­cit­ed and the flat was in a tur­moil, as ap­par­ent­ly she had on­ly just be­gun to pack her dress­ing-​case.

Soon af­ter six we went down and got in­to a large Mer­cédès car which I had no­ticed stand­ing out­side when I ar­rived. We were soon on our way, and left Bruges by the East­ern bar­ri­er; we showed our pass­es and pro­ceed­ed in­to the dark­ened coun­try-​side. We had been run­ning for about a mile when she re­marked, “Pris­on­ers will now be blind­fold­ed!” and, to my as­ton­ish­ment, slipped a lit­tle black silk bag over my head.

I was so star­tled I didn’t know whether to be an­gry, or to laugh, or what to do. Even­tu­al­ly I did noth­ing, and, en­ter­ing in­to the spir­it of the game, de­clared that even a wretched pris­on­er had the right not to be sti­fled, where­upon she lift­ed the low­er por­tion of the bag and un­cov­ered my mouth. Short­ly af­ter­wards I was elec­tri­fied to feel a pair of soft lips meet mine, a sen­sa­tion which was re­peat­ed at fre­quent in­ter­vals, and, as I whis­pered in her ear, un­der these con­di­tions I was pre­pared to be tak­en pris­on­er in­to the jaws of hell.

This pleas­ant jour­ney had last­ed for about three-​quar­ters of an hour when my mask was re­moved and I was in­formed that I was “in­side the en­emy lines!” Through the win­dows of the car I could dim­ly see that an ap­par­ent­ly end­less mass of fir trees were rush­ing past on each side. This state of af­fairs con­tin­ued for a kilo­me­tre or so, when we branched to the right and soon en­tered a large clear­ing in the for­est, at one side of which stood the house. Ba­bette, Zoe and my­self en­tered the build­ing, and the car dis­ap­peared, pre­sum­ably back to Bruges.

The house, built of logs, was of two sto­ries; on the ground floor were two liv­ing rooms, and the do­mains of Ba­bette, who amongst her oth­er ac­com­plish­ments turned out to be not on­ly a most ca­pa­ble valet, but a first-​class cook. On the sec­ond sto­ry there were two large rooms. The whole house was fur­nished af­ter the man­ner of a hunt­ing lodge, with stags’ heads on the walls, and skins on the floors. In the draw­ing-​room there was a pi­ano and a few etch­ings of the wild boar by Schaf­fein.

I dressed for din­ner in my “smok­ing,” though un­der or­di­nary cir­cum­stances I should have con­sid­ered this rather for­mal, but I was glad I did, for she ap­peared in full evening _tenue_. She wore a vi­olet gown, and across her fore­head a black satin ban­deau with a Z in di­amonds up­on it. It must have cost two thou­sand marks, and I won­dered with a dull kind of jeal­ousy whether the Colonel had giv­en it to her.

I can­not re­mem­ber of what we talked dur­ing din­ner. We have a hun­dred sub­jects in com­mon, and we look at so many as­pects of the world through the same pair of eyes; I on­ly know that when I have been talk­ing to her for a pe­ri­od–there is no ex­act mea­sure­ment of time for me when I am with her–I leave her pres­ence feel­ing “com­plet­ed.” I feel that a sort of gap with­in my be­ing has been filled, that a spir­itu­al hunger has been sat­is­fied, that I have got some­thing which I want­ed, but for which I could not have for­mu­lat­ed the de­sire in words. I had re­solved that on this first night I would bring mat­ters be­tween us to a head and end this de­li­cious but in­tol­er­able un­cer­tain­ty as to how we stood; yet, when old Ba­bette had served us with cof­fee in the draw­ing-​room, as I call the sec­ond liv­ing-​room, and we were alone to­geth­er, I could not bring up the sub­ject. Part­ly be­cause I think she pre­vent­ed me so do­ing by that skil­ful shep­herd­ing of the con­ver­sa­tion in­to oth­er paths with an art­ful­ness with which God en­dows all wom­en, and al­so part­ly be­cause I could not screw my­self up to the pitch. I could not, or rather would not, put my fate to the touch. I had a pre­sen­ti­ment that in reach­ing for the sum­mit I might fall from the slope. Alas! how true was this fore­bod­ing in some sens­es–but I will keep all things in their right or­der.

[Il­lus­tra­tion: “_The track met our ram_.”]

[Il­lus­tra­tion: In the flash I caught a glimpse of his con­ning tow­er]

Let it on­ly be record­ed that when she kissed me good-​night (with the ten­der­ness of a moth­er) and left me to smoke a fi­nal cigar I had said noth­ing, and I could on­ly won­der at the strange fate that had placed me prac­ti­cal­ly alone with a girl whom I had grown to love with a deep emo­tion, and who ap­peared to love me, yet of­ten be­haved as if I was her broth­er.

The next day we were like two chil­dren. The snow was deep on the ground, and the fir trees stood like thou­sands of sen­tinels in grey uni­form round the clear­ing. Once dur­ing the af­ter­noon, as with Zoe’s as­sis­tance I was fu­ri­ous­ly chop­ping wood for the fire, a dron­ing noise made me look up, and thou­sands of me­tres over­head a small squadron of aero­planes, ev­ident­ly bound for the West­ern Front, sailed slow­ly across the sky. I thought how awk­ward it would be for them if they ex­pe­ri­enced an en­gine fail­ure whilst over the for­est, though they were up so high that I imag­ine they could have glid­ed ten kilo­me­tres, and as I think (but I am not cer­tain, and I have pledged my­self not to try and find out) we were in the For­est of Mon­tel­lan, which is bare­ly fif­teen kilo­me­tres broad, I sup­pose they could have fall­en clear of the trees.

As a mat­ter of fact I imag­ine they would have used our clear­ing–I’m glad they didn’t.

That night af­ter din­ner she played to me, first Beethoven and then Chopin. I can see her as I write; she had just fin­ished the 14th Pre­lude and, rest­ing her chin on her hand, she smiled mys­te­ri­ous­ly at me.

The hour had come, and, driv­en by strong im­puls­es, I spoke. I told her that I loved her as I had nev­er thought that a man could love a wom­an; I told her that I longed to shield her and pro­tect her, and above all things to re­move her from the clutch­es of that bes­tial Colonel, and as I bent over her and felt my sens­es swim in the sub­tleties of her per­fume, I begged her pas­sion­ate­ly to say the word that would give me the right to fight the world on her be­half.

When I had fin­ished she was silent for a long while, and I can re­mem­ber dis­tinct­ly that I won­dered whether she could hear the thump! thump! thump! of my heart, which to my ag­itat­ed mind seemed to beat with the strength of a ham­mer.

At length she spoke; two words came slow­ly from her lips:

“I can­not.”

I was not dis­cour­aged. I could see, I could feel, that a tremen­dous strug­gle was rag­ing, the out­ward signs of which were con­cealed by her avert­ed head.

At length I asked her point-​blank whether she loved me. Her si­lence gave me my an­swer, and I took her un­re­sist­ing body in­to my arms and kissed her to dis­trac­tion. Oh! these kiss­es, how bit­ter they seem to me now, and yet how I long to hold her once again. For, free­ing her­self from my em­brace and speak­ing al­most me­chan­ical­ly, she said:

“Karl! I must tell you. I can­not mar­ry you.”

I plead­ed, I prayed, I ar­gued, I de­mand­ed. It was in vain; I al­ways came up against the im­mov­able “I can­not.”

And then I crashed over the precipice to­wards whose edge I had been blind­ly go­ing. I had said for the hun­dredth time, “But you know you love me,” when with a sob she aban­doned all re­serve, and, fling­ing her arms round my neck, im­plored me to take her. Then, as I caught my breath, she quick­ly said, as if fright­ened that she had gone too far, “But I can­not mar­ry you.”

I looked down in­to those beau­ti­ful eyes, and for the first time I un­der­stood. For per­haps ten sec­onds I bat­tled for my soul and the pu­ri­ty of our love; then, tear­ing my sight from those eyes which would lure an archangel to de­struc­tion, I was once more mas­ter of my body. As my res­olu­tion grew, I hat­ed her for do­ing this thing that had wrecked in an in­stant the hopes of months, the ide­als on which I had be­gun to build afresh my life.

She felt the change, and left me.

As she went out by the door she gave me one last look, a look in which love strug­gled with shame, a look which no man has ev­er earned the right to re­ceive from any wom­an.

But I was as a stat­ue of mar­ble, dazed by this calami­ty.

As the door closed up­on her, I start­ed for­ward–it was too late.

Had she wait­ed an­oth­er in­stant–but there, I write of what has hap­pened and not what might have been.

I did not sleep that night, un­til the dawn be­gan to sep­arate each fir tree from the black mass of the for­est. Twice in the night, with shame I con­fess it, I opened my door and looked down the lit­tle pas­sage-​way; and twice I closed the door and threw my­self up­on my bed in an agony of tor­ment. It was ten o’clock when a knock at the door aroused me, and the sun­light through the win­dow-​pane was trac­ing pat­terns on the floor.

There was a note on the break­fast ta­ble, but be­fore I opened it I knew that, save for Ba­bette, I was alone in the house.

The note was brief, un­ad­dressed and un­signed. I have it here be­fore me; I have meant to tear it up but I can­not. It is a weak­ness to keep it, but I have lost so much in the last few days, that I will not grudge my­self some small rel­ic of what has been. The note says:

“I am leav­ing for Bruges at half-​past eight, when the car was or­dered to fetch us back. I go alone. Ba­bette will give you break­fast. The car will re­turn for you at eleven o’clock. I re­ly on your hon­our in that you will not ob­serve where you have been. Come to me when you want me–till then, farewell.”

It was as she said, and I hon­ourably ac­ced­ed to her re­quest. This af­ter­noon just be­fore lunch I ar­rived in Bruges, and since tea-​time I have tried to write down what has hap­pened since I left the day be­fore yes­ter­day. Oh! how could she do it, how can it be pos­si­ble that she is a wom­an like that? I could have sworn that she was not like this–and yet how can I ac­count for her life with the Colonel? There must be some rea­son, but in Heav­en’s name, what?

Mean­while I am to go to her when I want her! And that will be when I can give her my name. But oh! Zoe, I want you now, so bad­ly, oh! so bad­ly!

* * * * *

I saw her once to-​day in the gar­dens, walk­ing by her­self.

* * * * *

I have told Max’s sec­re­tary that I want to get to sea; to be here in Bruges and not to see her is more than I can bear.

I sail at dawn to-​mor­row. Shall I see her? No, it is best not.

A fright­ful noise over the New Year cel­ebra­tions to-​night. Cham­pagne flow­ing like wa­ter in the Mess. I feel the year 1917 opens bad­ly for me.

Weiss­man al­so went to sea again for a short trip in the Chan­nel, and has not re­port­ed for five days. Per­haps he has de­spised the Dover Bar­rage once too of­ten. If this is so, it is a great loss to the ser­vice: he was a man of iron res­olu­tion in un­der­wa­ter at­tack.

I feel I ought to de­spise Zoe, but I can’t. I love her too much; af­ter all, am I not per­haps en­cas­ing my­self in the robe of a Phar­isee?

She of­fered me all she had, save on­ly the one thing I asked, with­out which I will take noth­ing. I can­not rec­on­cile her be­haviour with her char­ac­ter; why can’t she trust me? why can’t she be frank with me? I will not be­lieve she is that sort.

I feel I can­not go out again with­out a _sign_–I may not re­turn, and I will not leave her, per­haps for ev­er, with this bit­ter­ness be­tween us.

* * * * *

At sea in U.C.47 again. Al­ten as surly as ev­er.

I de­cid­ed fi­nal­ly to write to Zoe, but found it dif­fi­cult to know what to say. Even­tu­al­ly I said more than I had in­tend­ed. I told her frankly that I ex­pe­ri­enced a shock, but that I had not meant to seem so cold, and that what I had done had been done for both our sakes. I told her that I still loved her, and I im­plored her once more to leave the Colonel and come to me as my wife.

Al­ready I long to know what mes­sage awaits me on my re­turn.

This will not be for three days. We left at dawn this morn­ing to lay mines off the chan­nel to Har­wich har­bour; a nest from which sub­marines, cruis­ers and de­stroy­ers buzz in and out like wasps. It will be tick­lish work.

_On the bot­tom_.

Our mines are still with us, but so are our lives, which is some­thing.

We were ap­proach­ing the ap­point­ed spot at 6 a.m. this morn­ing, when with­out the slight­est warn­ing the track of a tor­pe­do was seen streak­ing to­wards us about 50 yards on the star­board bow.

Be­fore Al­ten (who was on the bridge with me) could do more than press the div­ing alarm, the track met our ram. I breathed again, and was then re­mind­ed by an oath from Al­ten that the boat was div­ing.

It was ev­ident that we had on­ly been saved by the tor­pe­do run­ning deep un­der the cut-​away part of our bow, oth­er­wise!–well, the tan­gle of my af­fairs would have been eas­ily straight­ened.

Fur­ther pro­ce­dure on the sur­face was sui­ci­dal, and we kept hy­drophone pa­trol, twice hear­ing the mo­tors of the en­emy sub­ma­rine. At the mo­ment we are on the bot­tom wait­ing to come up and charge to-​night, and lay our mines at dawn to-​mor­row.

* * * * *

On the bot­tom in 28 me­tres and feel­ing none too com­fort­able, as there would ap­pear to be about a dozen de­stroy­ers over­head.

Last night, or rather ear­ly this morn­ing, I par­tic­ipat­ed in one of the most ex­traor­di­nary in­ci­dents that I have ev­er heard of.

It was pitch-​black dark when I took over at 4 a.m., and a fresh breeze had raised a lumpy sea, which cov­ered the bridge with spray. We were charg­ing 400 amps on each, with the in­ten­tion of lay­ing one mine di­rect­ly there was suf­fi­cient light to get a fix from some of the buoys which the En­glish stick down all over the place here in the most con­ve­nient man­ner pos­si­ble. If on­ly one could be­lieve they nev­er shift­ed them. Al­ten says it nev­er oc­curs to an En­glish­man to do a thing like that, but I’m not so sure. How­ev­er, we were pro­ceed­ing along at about five knots, crash­ing in­to the sea rather bad­ly, when out of the black beast­li­ness of the night I saw a shape close aboard on the port hand.

As I hes­itat­ed for a sec­ond as to my course of ac­tion, I was as­tound­ed to see a large sub­ma­rine which must have been British, on an op­po­site course, not more than 25 me­tres away!

This sounds ab­surd, but it re­al­ly wasn’t fur­ther. I’m not ashamed to con­fess that I was com­plete­ly dis­or­ga­nized; it did not seem pos­si­ble that the en­emy was lit­er­al­ly along­side me.

I don’t know how it struck the of­fi­cer in the British boat, but I must give him cred­it for do­ing some­thing first, for he fired a Very’s white light straight at me as the two boats passed. It im­pinged on the hull, and in the flash I caught a pho­to­graph­ic glimpse of his con­ning tow­er, on which was paint­ed the let­ter E, fol­lowed by two num­bers, of which one was a two I think, and the oth­er a nine.

By this time he was on my port quar­ter and rapid­ly dis­ap­pear­ing; in a fren­zy of rage I man­aged to get my re­volver out, and whilst with the left hand I pressed the div­ing alarm, with the right hand I emp­tied the mag­azine in his di­rec­tion. When we were down, Al­ten prac­ti­cal­ly re­fused to be­lieve me, which made me very pleased that in de­scend­ing I had trod on a pair of hands which turned out to be his, as he had start­ed up the lad­der to the up­per con­ning tow­er when he first heard the alarm.

I pre­sume our op­po­nent dived as well, but ev­ident­ly he had put two and two to­geth­er and used his aeri­al at some pe­ri­od, for when at dawn we poked a periscope up, a flotil­la of de­stroy­ers ap­peared to be look­ing for some­thing, which “some­thing” was us, un­less I am much mis­tak­en; so we bot­tomed, where we have been ev­er since. The Hy­droplane Op­er­ator keeps up a monotonous sing-​song to the ef­fect that “Fast run­ning pro­pellers are ei­ther re­ced­ing or ap­proach­ing.” The crew are col­lect­ed round the mine-​tubes as I write, and are singing a lugubri­ous song, the re­frain of which runs:

“Death for the Fa­ther­land! Glo­ri­ous fate, This is the end that we glad­ly await.”

Why will the sea­men al­ways be­come mor­bid when pos­si­ble? And there is not a man amongst them who is not in­ward­ly think­ing of some beer-​hall in Bruges, though I sup­pose that like their bet­ters they have their ro­mances of a ten­der­er kind.

* * * * *

The boat has been rolling about on the bot­tom in the most sick­en­ing man­ner the whole af­ter­noon. We flood­ed P and Q to ca­pac­ity, which gave her 50 tons neg­ative, but it seems to have lit­tle ef­fect in steady­ing her, and it is ev­ident that a re­al­ly heavy gale is run­ning on top.

* * * * *

Sur­faced at 10 p.m.; a very heavy sea run­ning and im­pos­si­ble to do much more than heave to. This weath­er has one point in its favour and that is that the de­stroy­ers are driv­en in.

It got steadi­ly worse all night, and at mid­night we lost our fore­most wire­less mast over­board; we have now (10 a.m.) been 48 hours with­out com­mu­ni­ca­tion. At dawn we could see noth­ing to fix by; not a buoy in sight, noth­ing but an ex­panse of foam-​topped short steep waves of dirty neu­tral-​tint­ed wa­ter; how dif­fer­ent to the great green and white surges of the broad At­lantic.

Un­der these cir­cum­stances Al­ten de­cid­ed to risk it and re­turn with­out lay­ing our mines; for once in a way I agreed with him, as it is bet­ter not to lay a mine­field at all than dump one down in some un­known po­si­tion which one may have to tra­verse one­self in the course of a month or so. We are now slow­ly, very slow­ly, strug­gling back to Zee­brugge.

A green sea came down the con­ning tow­er to-​day, and ev­ery­thing in the boat is damp and smelly and beast­ly. The pro­pellers race at fre­quent in­ter­vals and the whole boat shud­ders–I feel mis­er­able.

Al­ten has start­ed to drink spir­its; he be­gan as soon as we de­cid­ed to go back. He will be in­ca­pable by to-​night, and it means that I shall have to take her in.

What hell this is, sit­ting in sod­den clothes, with the stench of four days’ liv­ing as­sault­ing the nos­trils, and a mo­tion of the dev­il; the glass is very low and is slow­ly ris­ing, so that I sup­pose it will blow hard­er soon, though it is about force eight at present.

I won­der what Zoe will have writ­ten in re­ply to my note. When I think of what I re­ject­ed and com­pare it with my beast-​like ex­is­tence here, I can hard­ly be­lieve that I be­haved as I did–what would I not give now to be trans­port­ed back to the for­est! At this rate of progress we shall take an­oth­er 24 hours. I won­der if I can knock an­oth­er half-​knot out of her with­out smash­ing her up.

* * * * *

The ex­traor­di­nar­ily vi­olent mo­tion has up­set the _An­schutz_. [1] The bear­ing cone of the sta­bi­liz­ing gy­ro has cracked, and the mas­ter com­pass be­gan to wan­der off in cir­cles. I was just rest­ing for an hour or two, wedged up on a wet set­tee with coats equal­ly wet, when her heavy pitch­ing changed to a wal­low­ing roll, and I heard the pi­lot, who was on watch, curs­ing down the voice-​pipe, as we had sagged off our course.

[Foot­note 1: Gy­ro­scop­ic com­pass.–ETI­ENNE.]

I heard the voice of the helms­man queru­lous­ly main­tain that he was steer­ing his course by _An­schutz_, so I got up and gin­ger­ly clawed my way in­to the con­trol room, where I found by com­par­ing _An­schutz_ with mag­net­ic that the for­mer had gone to hell, the rea­son be­ing ob­vi­ous, as the sta­bi­liz­er was ex­ert­ing a strong­ly bi­ased torque. I stopped the _An­schutz_ and asked the pi­lot to give the helms­man a steady by mag­net­ic.

As we stag­gered back to our course I heard a thud in the ward­room, and on re­turn­ing to my set­tee found that Al­ten had rolled out of his bunk, where he was ly­ing in a drunk­en stu­por, and that he was face down­wards, sprawl­ing on the deck, half his face in the bro­ken half of a dirty dish which had fall­en off the ta­ble whilst I was hav­ing tea. As I couldn’t let the crew see him like this, I was obliged to strug­gle and get him back in­to his bunk. He was like a log and ab­so­lute­ly in­ca­pable of ren­der­ing me any as­sis­tance, though he did open his eyes and mut­ter once or twice as I lift­ed him up, trunk first and then his legs. He stank of spir­its and I hat­ed touch­ing him. Lord! what a tru­ly hog­gish man he is; yet I can­not help en­vy­ing him his obliv­ion to these sur­round­ings.

* * * * *

Ar­rived in, this af­ter­noon.

Al­ten quite slept off his drink, and was of­fen­sive­ly sar­cas­tic as I worked on the forepart with wires, get­ting her in­to the shel­ters along­side the mole.

I has­tened up to Bruges, and in the Mess heard sev­er­al items of news and found two let­ters. The first, in a well-​known hand­writ­ing, I opened ea­ger­ly, but re­ceived a chill of dis­ap­point­ment when I read its sin­gle line.

“I am here when you want me.–Z.”

So she thinks to break my res­olu­tion!

No! I am stronger than she, and, now that I know she loves me, I can and will bend her to my will. Even now, at this dis­tance of time, I can hard­ly un­der­stand my con­duct the oth­er day. I must have been giv­en the strength of ten. I feel that I could not do it again; had she hes­itat­ed a sec­ond longer at the door–well, I can hard­ly say what I would have done.

It is my du­ty to do so, for her sake and my own. But I know my weak­ness, and in this fact lies my strength. Cost what it may, I shall not per­mit my­self to go near her un­til she yields.

The sec­ond let­ter gave me a great sur­prise. It was from Rosa. She has passed some ex­am­ina­tion, and is com­ing _here_ of all places as a Red Cross nurse. She says she is look­ing for­ward to go­ing round a U-​boat! She as­sumes a good deal, I must say, still, I sup­pose I must be po­lite to her; but why the deuce does she sign her­self “Yours, Rosa?” She’s not mine, and I don’t want her; it seems fun­ny to me that I once thought of her vague­ly in that sort of way. Now, I feel rather dis­turbed that she is com­ing here, though I don’t quite see why I should wor­ry, and yet I won­der if it is a co­in­ci­dence her com­ing to Bruges?

I’m al­most in­clined to think it isn’t. Af­ter all, ev­ery girl wants to get mar­ried, and with­out con­ceit my fam­ily, cir­cum­stances and, in the pri­va­cy of the pages of this jour­nal I may add, my per­son­al ap­pear­ances, are such as would ap­peal to most girls–ex­cept Zoe, ap­par­ent­ly!

I’ll have to be on my guard against Miss Rosa.

I heard to-​day that I am like­ly to be ap­point­ed to the periscope school in a few weeks’ time, and mean­while I am to be at­tached as su­per­nu­mer­ary to the op­er­ations di­vi­sion on old Max’s staff.

* * * * *

The work here is most in­ter­est­ing. I feel glad that I am one of the spi­ders weav­ing the web for Britain’s de­struc­tion.

The im­passe with Zoe still con­tin­ues, and my peace of mind has been still fur­ther dis­turbed by the ac­tu­al ar­rival of Rosa. She rang me up with­in twelve hours of her ar­rival, and, of course, I was obliged to call. That was the day be­fore yes­ter­day. Rosa is at the No. 3 Hos­pi­tal here, and was hor­ri­bly ef­fu­sive. Some peo­ple would, I sup­pose, call her good-​look­ing, but to me, with my mind’s-​eye in per­pet­ual con­tem­pla­tion of my dar­ling Zoe, Rosa looked like a turnip. Her first move­ment af­ter the pre­lim­inary greet­ings was to of­fer me a cigarette! I then no­ticed that her fin­gers were stained with nico­tine, un­pleas­ant in a man, dis­gust­ing in a wom­an.

Her nose was shiny and greasy–hor­ri­ble. Af­ter a lit­tle talk she vol­un­teered the state­ment that yes­ter­day was her af­ter­noon off, and she was sim­ply long­ing to have tea in the gar­dens.

I en­deav­oured to make some fee­ble ex­cuse on the grounds of the weath­er be­ing un­suit­able, but I am no good at these so­cial lies, and I was even­tu­al­ly obliged to promise to take her there. I was the more an­noyed in that her main ob­ject was ob­vi­ous­ly to be seen walk­ing with a U-​boat of­fi­cer.

Ac­cord­ing­ly, yes­ter­day, I found my­self walk­ing about with her at my side. My feel­ings can bet­ter be imag­ined than de­scribed when I sud­den­ly saw Zoe, ac­com­pa­nied by Ba­bette, in the dis­tance. I hasti­ly al­tered course, and pray she didn’t see me.

In the course of the af­ter­noon Rosa had the im­per­ti­nence to say that at Frank­furt they were say­ing that I was in­ter­est­ed in a beau­ti­ful wid­ow at Bruges, and could she (Rosa) write and say I was heart-​whole, or else what the girl was like. I’m afraid that I lost my tem­per a lit­tle, and I told Rosa she could write to all the busy­bod­ies at home and tell them from me to go to the dev­il.

These wom­en in the home cir­cle, and es­pe­cial­ly aunts, are al­ways the same; first­ly, they bad­ger one to get mar­ried, and then if they think one is con­tem­plat­ing such a step they are all agog to find out whether she is suit­able!

* * * * *

Three more boats, two of which are U.C.’s, are over­due. It is dis­tinct­ly un­pleas­ant not know­ing how or where they go, though the U.B. boat (Friederich Al­thofen) made her in­com­ing po­si­tion the day be­fore yes­ter­day as off Dun­geness, so it looks as if the bar­rage at Dover which got Weiss­man has got Al­thofen as well. I won­der what new dev­il­ry they have put down there.

How one wish­es that in 1914, in­stead of seek­ing the cap­ture of Paris, we had re­al­ized the im­por­tance of the Chan­nel Ports to Eng­land, and struck for them!

It would not have been nec­es­sary to strike even in Septem­ber, 1914. We could have walked in­to them. Dunkirk, at all events, should have been ours; how­ev­er, we must do the best with things as they are, not that I would con­sid­er it too late even now to make a big push for the French coast.

It would seem, as a mat­ter of fact, that all the push­ing is to be at the oth­er end of the line, in the Ver­dun sec­tor, from the ru­mours I hear, though I should have thought once bit­ten twice shy in that quar­ter.

* * * * *

Saw Zoe again in the dis­tance, and I think she saw me; at all events she turned round and walked away.

This girl whom I can­not, and would not if I could, oblit­er­ate from my thoughts, is caus­ing me much wor­ry.

She shows no sign of giv­ing in, and I for one in­tend to be adamant. I shall de­feat her in time. The male in­tel­lect is al­ways ul­ti­mate­ly vic­to­ri­ous, oth­er things be­ing equal. I was read­ing Schopen­hauer on the sub­ject last night. What a brain that man had, though I con­fess his anal­ysis of the fe­male men­tal­ity is so ter­ri­bly and truth­ful­ly cru­el that it jars on cer­tain of my feel­ings.

Zoe’s res­olu­tion in this con­flict, this sex war one might call it, on­ly adds to her charm in my eyes; she is, I feel, a wor­thy mate for me, both in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly and phys­ical­ly, and she shall be mine–I have de­cid­ed it.

Met Rosa to-​day at old Max’s house, where I went to pay a du­ty call.

Her Ex­cel­len­cy is as for­bid­ding a spec­imen of her sex as any I have ev­er met. She quite fright­ened me, and in the home cir­cle the old man seemed quite sub­dued.

I es­cort­ed Rosa home, and on the way to her hos­pi­tal she gave me a great sur­prise, as af­ter much eva­sive talk she sud­den­ly came out with the news that she was en­gaged to Hein­rich Baumer, of U.C.23. I was quite tak­en aback, and will frankly con­fess that not so very long ago I imag­ined, ev­ident­ly er­ro­neous­ly, that she was dis­posed to let her af­fec­tions be­come en­gaged in an­oth­er quar­ter. How­ev­er, I was re­al­ly very glad to hear this news, and con­grat­ulat­ed her with gen­uine feel­ing.

The knowl­edge that she was a promised wom­an quite al­tered my feel­ings to­wards her, and be­fore I quite meant to, I had told her a con­sid­er­able amount about Zoe. It gave me much re­lief to be able to un­bur­den my­self, and con­fide my dif­fi­cul­ties else­where than in the pages of this jour­nal.

I have asked the girl to tea to-​mor­row.

* * * * *

A vile air raid last night. British ma­chines, of course. They seemed de­ter­mined to get over the town, and from 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. re­lays of ma­chines (of which not _one_ was shot down) at­tacked us. The din was tremen­dous, and all sleep was out of the ques­tion.

Morn­ing re­vealed sur­pris­ing­ly lit­tle dam­age, as is of­ten the case in these big raids, where­as a few bombs from a chance ma­chine of­ten work hav­oc. I was down at 50 B.C. aero­drome this morn­ing, and heard that as soon as the moon suits we are go­ing to make Dunkirk sit up as re­tal­ia­tion for last night’s ef­forts. There were al­so ru­mours of big at­tacks im­pend­ing on Lon­don as soon as the new type of Gothas are de­liv­ered. That will shake the smug se­cu­ri­ty of those cursed is­landers.

Rosa came to tea, and af­ter­wards I told her more about Zoe, and as I ex­pect any day to be ap­point­ed to the periscope school at Kiel, I asked Rosa to try and ef­fect an in­tro­duc­tion to Zoe, and do what she could for me. Rosa gave me the im­pres­sion that she was some­what sur­prised that I should have had any dif­fi­cul­ty with Zoe (of course I had not told her of the shoot­ing-​box scene). Rosa ev­ident­ly thinks any wom­an ought to be hon­oured….

Per­haps I was not so far wrong in my sur­mis­es as to Rosa’s pre­vi­ous in­cli­na­tions–I won­der; at any rate she will un­doubt­ed­ly make Baumer a good wife, and she will prob­ably be very fruit­ful and grow still fat­ter and house­wife­ly. She is of a type of wom­an ap­point­ed by God in his fore­sight as breed­ers. Zoe, my adorable one, will prob­ably not take kind­ly to ba­bies.

* * * * *

I am or­dered to re­port my­self at Kiel by next Mon­day.

I am ter­ri­bly tempt­ed to ring up Zoe on the tele­phone be­fore I leave: it seems dread­ful to leave her with­out a word; but at the same time I feel that she would in­ter­pret this as a sign of weak­ness on my part–as in­deed it would be. I must be firm, for strength of mind pays with wom­en, even more than with men.

_At Kiel_.

I left Bruges with­out a word ei­ther to or from my ob­sti­nate dar­ling.

It is tor­ture be­ing away from her. I had thought that when I was here and not ex­posed to the temp­ta­tion of go­ing round and see­ing her, that it would be eas­ier; it is not. I long to write, and how I won­der whether she is feel­ing it as I do.

I have read some­where that a wom­an’s pas­sion once aroused is more un­govern­able than a man’s. That her whole be­ing cries aloud for me can­not be doubt­ed, and if the above state­ment is true what in­flex­ibil­ity of will she must be show­ing–it al­most makes me fear–but no, I will de­feat her in this strange con­test, and she shall be my wife.

The work here is stren­uous, and the grass does not grow un­der one’s feet. The course for com­mand­ing of­fi­cers lasts four weeks, and ter­mi­nates in an ex­ceed­ing­ly prac­ti­cal but rather fear­some test–i.e., they have six steam­ers here cam­ou­flaged af­ter the En­glish fash­ion with daz­zle paint­ing, and these six steam­ers, pro­tect­ed by launch­es and har­bour de­fence craft, steam across Kiel Bay in the man­ner of a con­voy. The of­fi­cer be­ing ex­am­ined has to at­tack this group of ships in one of the in­struc­tion­al sub­marines, and in three at­tacks he must score at least two hits, or else, in the­ory, he is re­turned to gen­er­al ser­vice in the Fleet.

For­tu­nate­ly at the mo­ment I hear that ow­ing to re­cent loss­es they are dis­tinct­ly on the short side where sub­ma­rine of­fi­cers are con­cerned, so they’ll prob­ably make it easy when I do my test.

* * * * *

I see I have writ­ten noth­ing here for a fort­night; this is due to two caus­es: First­ly, I have been so ex­traor­di­nar­ily busy, and, sec­ond­ly, I have been most de­pressed through a let­ter I re­ceived from Fritz. It con­tained two items of bad news.

In the first place, I heard for the first time of the tragedy of Hein­rich Baumer’s boat, and to my as­ton­ish­ment Fritz tells me that Rosa and an­oth­er girl were in her when she was lost!

It ap­pears that she was to go out for a cou­ple of hours’ div­ing off the port as a mat­ter of rou­tine af­ter her two months’ over­haul. She went out at 10 a.m., and was sight­ed from the sig­nal sta­tion at the end of the mole at 11.30, when al­most im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter­wards there was an ex­plo­sion and she dis­ap­peared. Mo­tor-​boats were quick­ly on the scene, but on­ly de­bris came to the sur­face. Divers were sent down, and re­port­ed that she was in ten me­tres of wa­ter com­plete­ly shat­tered. It is as­sumed, for lack of oth­er ex­pla­na­tion, that she struck a chance drift­ing mine which was mov­ing down the coast on the tide.

Mean­while Rosa and an­oth­er sis­ter were miss­ing from the hos­pi­tal, and af­ter forty-​eight hours some­one put two and two to­geth­er and start­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions. It has been as­cer­tained that Baumer mo­tored down from Bruges af­ter break­fast, and that in the car were two fig­ures tak­en to be sailors, as they were muf­fled up in oil­skins. This fact was not­ed by the con­trol sen­tries, as, though the day was show­ery, it was not rain­ing hard. Oth­er scraps of ev­idence unite in show­ing that these were the two girls who had ap­par­ent­ly in­duced Baumer to take them out for a dive as a treat.

What a tragedy! How­ev­er, it must have been quite in­stan­ta­neous. Poor Rosa, with all her van­ities about war work, to think that the war would claim her like that! [1]

[Foot­note 1: It is known that a boat with wom­en on board was lost whilst ex­er­cis­ing off Zee­brugge in the Spring of 1917. This would ap­pear to be the boat in ques­tion.–ETI­ENNE.]

Fritz added that old Max is al­most off his head with rage over the whole busi­ness, and it is dif­fi­cult to say whether he is more an­gry over Baumer and the boat be­ing lost, or over the fact that Baumer be­ing dead he is un­able to ad­min­is­ter those “dis­ci­plinary ac­tions” in which he de­lights.

* * * * *

Great ex­cite­ment here, as the day af­ter to-​mor­row His Im­pe­ri­al Majesty the Kaiser and Hin­den­burg are due to pay Kiel a sur­prise vis­it. We are to be in­spect­ed and ad­dressed. Tremen­dous prepa­ra­tions are go­ing on.

* * * * *

His Majesty, ac­com­pa­nied by the great Field-​Mar­shal, in­spect­ed us this morn­ing, and made a fine speech, of which we have been giv­en print­ed copies. I shall frame mine and hang it in my boat, if I get a com­mand.

I tran­scribe it:

“Of­fi­cers and men of the U-​boat ser­vice:

“In the midst of the anx­ious mo­ments in which we live I have de­ter­mined to make time to come and wit­ness in my own per­son the labours of those on whom I and the Fa­ther­land re­ly. Fresh from the great bat­tles on the West which are gnaw­ing at the vi­tals of our hered­itary en­emies, I come to those whose glo­ri­ous mis­sion it will be to strike re­lent­less­ly at our most dead­ly and cun­ning en­emy–cursed Britain. God is on our side and will pro­tect you at sea for, in the strik­ing at the na­tion which open­ly boasts that it aims at starv­ing our wom­en and chil­dren, you are en­gaged on a mis­sion of un­doubt­ed ho­li­ness.

“You must sink and de­stroy even as of old the Is­raelites smote and de­stroyed the alien races.

“To the of­fi­cers I would par­tic­ular­ly say, my per­son is your hon­our, and I am your supreme chief. From my hands you will re­ceive hon­our, and from my hands will pro­ceed just pun­ish­ment for the un­hap­py ones who fail in their du­ty.

“To the men I would say, trust and obey your of­fi­cers as you would your God. Of­fi­cers and men! In you, your Kaiser and Fa­ther­land place their trust–let nei­ther be dis­ap­point­ed!”

Af­ter his ad­dress, His Majesty gra­cious­ly spoke a few words to in­di­vid­uals, of whom I had the sig­nal hon­our of be­ing one. I felt that I was in the pres­ence of an Em­per­or. His ges­tures, his eyes, his voice, im­pressed me as be­long­ing to a man born to com­mand and to fill high places. The Field-​Mar­shal nev­er opened his mouth. I un­der­stand from his A.D.C. that he rarely speaks in pub­lic.

* * * * *

The Colonel is KILLED! When I think about it, I am so ex­cit­ed I can hard­ly write!

I heard the great news last night, quite by ac­ci­dent. I was sit­ting in the Mess af­ter din­ner, and picked up _Die Woche_, and glanc­ing at the pic­tures, I sud­den­ly saw the por­trait of Colonel Stein, of the Bran­den­burg­ers, killed on the 7th in­stant near Ypres. I rec­og­nized the ug­ly and bloat­ed face im­me­di­ate­ly from the pho­to­graph of him which she had once shown me.

My first im­pulse was to send her a wire, but, on think­ing mat­ters over, I de­cid­ed that it would be dif­fi­cult to put all my thoughts in­to the curt sen­tences of a tele­gram, and, fur­ther, that as all wires are doubt­less ex­am­ined at the Main Post Of­fice at Bruges, it might lead to trou­ble, so I wrote her a let­ter.

This, in a way, has been an ex­hi­bi­tion of weak­ness on my part, as I had promised my­self that I would not take the first step in re­open­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion; but I feel that the for­tu­nate death of Stein has com­plete­ly al­tered the case. I told her in the let­ter that I re­al­ized that I had made mis­takes, but that if she still loved me with half the strength that I loved her, then a tele­gram to me would make me the hap­pi­est of men.

I wrote that yes­ter­day, but have had no wire. Per­haps, like me, she dis­trusts tele­grams and prefers let­ters.

* * * * *

A long let­ter from Zoe: an ac­cursed fet­ter–an abom­inable let­ter–a damnable let­ter; she still re­fus­es to mar­ry me. I leave for Bruges to-​night on forty-​eight hours’ spe­cial leave.

_Kiel, 17th._

I hate Zoe, she has bro­ken my heart.

Af­ter her pre­pos­ter­ous let­ter of the 14th, I de­cid­ed that in a mat­ter which so close­ly af­fect­ed my hap­pi­ness no stone ought to re­main un­turned to en­sure a sat­is­fac­to­ry so­lu­tion of the prob­lem, so I de­ter­mined to have a per­son­al in­ter­view. I ar­rived at Bruges af­ter tea and went at once to the flat.

I tack­led her im­me­di­ate­ly on the sub­ject of her let­ter, and told her that nat­ural­ly I un­der­stood that a de­cent in­ter­val must elapse be­fore we mar­ried; but, grant­ed this fact, I told her that I failed to see what pre­vent­ed our mar­riage.

A most un­pleas­ant and har­row­ing scene en­sued, the de­tails of which form such painful rec­ol­lec­tions that I re­al­ly can­not write them down here, though in the pas­sage of months I have ac­quired the habit of writ­ing in the pages of this jour­nal with the same free­dom as I would talk to that wife whom I had hoped to pos­sess. She main­tained an ob­sti­nate si­lence when I urged her to give me at least some tan­gi­ble rea­son as to why she would not mar­ry me. She con­tent­ed her­self and mad­dened me by re­flect­ing in a kind of mono­tone: “I love you, Karl! and am yours, but I can­not mar­ry you.”

I could have beat­en her till she was sense­less, but I had enough sense to re­al­ize that with Zoe, whose res­olu­tion, con­sid­er­ing she is a wom­an, amazes me, force is not the best method. As I con­tin­ued to press her (time was im­por­tant: had I not jour­neyed far to see her?), those glo­ri­ous eyes of hers, which I love and whose pow­er I dread, filled with tears. I was a brute! I was heart­less! I was in­con­sid­er­ate! I could not love her! I was cru­el! And I know not what oth­er ac­cu­sa­tion crushed me down.

Bro­ken-​heart­ed and dispir­it­ed, I told her to choose there and then.

She col­lapsed on to a so­fa in a storm of tears, and af­ter a se­vere men­tal strug­gle I took the on­ly pos­si­ble course, and leav­ing the room–left her for ev­er. I have re­sumed my ser­vice life de­ter­mined to cast her out from my mind.

I will not de­ceive my­self: it will be hard. Love and Log­ic are dead­ly en­emies, but Log­ic must and shall pre­vail. Though I have seen her for the last time, I can­not es­cape the net of fas­ci­na­tion which the girl has thrown over me. Per­haps in the course of time I shall slow­ly emerge and free my­self from its en­tan­gle­ments. At present I hate her for this blow she has dealt me, and yet, O Zoe! my dar­ling, how I long to be with you!

* * * * *

To-​day I went through my fi­nal test for qual­ifi­ca­tion as U-​boat com­man­der.

At 9 a.m. I pro­ceed­ed to sea in com­mand of the U.11, one of the in­struc­tion­al boats here. We pro­ceed­ed out in­to Kiel Bay. On board and watch­ing my ev­ery move­ment was a com­mit­tee con­sist­ing of a com­man­der and two lieu­tenant-​com­man­ders.

On ar­rival at the en­trance light­ship, I was or­dered to at­tack a con­voy of cam­ou­flaged ships which were just vis­ible about fif­teen kilo­me­tres away off the Spit Bank. I had a very shrewd idea as to the course they would steer, and on com­ing up for my fi­nal ob­ser­va­tion I found my­self in an ex­cel­lent po­si­tion, 1,000 me­tres on the bow of the lead­ing ship. The rest was easy. I gave the lead­er the two bow tor­pe­does, and, turn­ing six­teen points, fired my stern tube at the third ship of the line. Two hits were ob­tained, and I re­turned to har­bour well pleased with my­self. There is not the slight­est chance of hav­ing failed to qual­ify.

* * * * *

My con­fi­dence in my­self was not mis­placed; I heard to-​day that I am on the com­mand list, and an­tic­ipate in a few days be­ing ap­point­ed to a boat. I won­der which craft I shall get?

* * * * *

I met the A.D.C. to the Chief of the Staff at the school, at the gar­dens, and in con­ver­sa­tion with him dis­cov­ered that he had heard that three boats were be­ing de­tached from the Flan­ders flotil­la for an un­known des­ti­na­tion. This has giv­en me an idea, for I feel that I can nev­er re­turn to Bruges, and I was rather dread­ing be­ing ap­point­ed to one of the boats there. I have dropped a line to Fritz Regels, who is on old Max’s staff, and told him that I do not wish to re­turn to Bruges, and I fur­ther hint­ed that I un­der­stood a de­tached squadron was pro­ceed­ing some­where, and, as far as I was con­cerned, the fur­ther the bet­ter, if I could get in­to it.

I have tried the night life at this place at the Mas­cotte and Tro­cadero, [1] in or­der to for­get, but it is a poor con­so­la­tion.

[Foot­note 1: Two well-​known cabarets at Kiel.–ETI­ENNE.]

* * * * *

A let­ter from Fritz, say­ing that he has an idea that Ko­rt­ing’s boat would suit me, though he could not of course give me fur­ther de­tails in a let­ter; how­ev­er, he in­forms me pos­itive­ly that I shall not be at Bruges.

On the strength of this I have wired to Fritz, and asked him to try and fix up an ex­change be­tween me and Ko­rt­ing, pro­vid­ed the lat­ter is agree­able and the peo­ple in Max’s of­fice have no ob­jec­tion. I have a rec­ol­lec­tion that Ko­rt­ing’s boat is one of the U.40–U.60 class, which would suit me ad­mirably, and, as for des­ti­na­tion, I care not where it is, pro­vid­ed on­ly that it be far from Bruges.

_At sea_.

I have quite ne­glect­ed my poor old jour­nal for sev­er­al weeks. But I have passed through an ex­traor­di­nar­ily busy pe­ri­od.

It was ap­proved that I should re­lieve Ko­rt­ing, whose boat, the U.59, I dis­cov­ered to be re­fit­ting at Wil­helmshaven. I was very pleased not to go back to Bruges, though as we steam steadi­ly north at this mo­ment I can­not es­cape a sense of deep dis­ap­point­ment that up­on my re­turn from this trip I shall not en­joy as of old the fas­ci­na­tion of Zoe. But I shall have plen­ty of time to get ac­cus­tomed to this idea, for this is no or­di­nary trip.

We are bound for the North Cape and Mur­man Coast, where we re­main un­til well in­to the cold weath­er–at any rate, for three months.

Our mis­sion is to work off that fog­bound and des­olate coast, and at­tack the con­stant stream of traf­fic be­tween Eng­land and Archangel. There are two oth­er boats be­sides our­selves on the job, but we shall all be work­ing far apart.

Our first bil­let is off the North Cape. In or­der to save time, we are to be pro­vi­sioned once a month in one of the fjords. I don’t imag­ine the Ad­mi­ral­ty will have any dif­fi­cul­ty in get­ting sup­plies up to us, as at the mo­ment we are off the Lo­fotens, and we ac­tu­al­ly have not had to dive since we left the Bight!

There seems to be noth­ing on the sea ex­cept our­selves. Where is the much vaunt­ed and im­pen­etra­ble web of block­ade which the En­glish are sup­posed to have spread around us? And yet many raw ma­te­ri­als are get­ting very short with us. I see that in this boat they have re­placed sev­er­al cop­per pipes with steel ones dur­ing her re­fit, and this will lead to trou­ble un­less we are care­ful–steel pipes cor­rode so bad­ly that I nev­er feel ready to trust them for pres­sure work.

The truth about the block­ade is that it is large­ly a pa­per block­ade, yet not in­ef­fec­tive for all that. Un­for­tu­nate­ly for us, the damned En­glish and their hang­ers-​on con­trol the ca­bles of the world, and hence all the mar­kets, and I don’t sup­pose, to take the case of cop­per, that a sin­gle pound of it is mined from the Rio Tin­to with­out the British Board of Trade know­ing all about it. The neu­tral firms sim­ply dare not risk get­ting put on to the British Black List; it means ru­ina­tion for them. And then all these dol­lar-​grab­bing Yan­kees, en­joy­ing all the ad­van­tages of war with­out any of its dan­gers–they make me sick.

This seems a most prof­itable job. I have on­ly been up sev­en days, but I’ve bagged four steam­ers, all by gun-​fire, and all fat ships, brim­ful of stuff for the Rus­sians. My prac­tice has been to make the North Cape ev­ery day or two to fix po­si­tion, as the cur­rents are the most ab­nor­mal in these parts, and I should say that the “Sail­ing Di­rec­tions Pi­lotage Hand­book” and “Tidal Charts” were com­piled by a gen­tle­man at a desk who had nev­er vis­it­ed these lat­itudes.

At the mo­ment I am stand­ing well out to sea, as the im­me­di­ate vicin­ity of the North Cape has be­come rather un­healthy.

Yes­ter­day af­ter­noon (I had sunk num­ber four in the morn­ing, and the crew were still pulling for the coast) four British trawlers turned up. These damned lit­tle craft seem to turn up wher­ev­er one goes. I longed to have a bang at them with my gun, but, apart from the un­cer­tain­ty as to what they car­ried in the way of ar­ma­ment, I have strict or­ders to avoid all that sort of thing, so I dived and steamed slow­ly west, came up at dusk and pro­ceed­ed to charge up my bat­ter­ies.

These U.6O’s are ex­cel­lent boats, and I am very lucky to get one so soon. I sup­pose Ko­rt­ing, be­ing a mar­ried man, wants to stay near his wife. I can­not write that word with­out painful mem­ories of Zoe and idle thoughts of what might have been. Well, per­haps it is for the best. I am not sure that a mem­ber of the U-​boat ser­vice has the right to get mar­ried in war-​time, for un­less he is of ex­cep­tion­al men­tal­ity it must af­fect his out­look un­der cer­tain cir­cum­stances, though I think I should have been an ex­cep­tion here. Then the anx­iety to the wom­an must be enor­mous; as ev­ery trip comes round a voice must cry with­in her, this may be the last. The con­trast be­tween the times in har­bour and the trips is so vi­olent, so shat­ter­ing and clear cut.

With a sol­dier’s wife, she mere­ly knows that he is at the front; with us, at 8 p.m. one may be kiss­ing one’s wife in Bruges, and at 6 a.m. creep­ing with nerves on edge through the un­known dan­gers of the Dover Bar­rage–but I have strayed from what I meant to write about–my first com­mand and her crew.

The quar­ters in this class are im­mense­ly su­pe­ri­or to the U.C.-boats. Here I have a lit­tle cab­in to my­self, with a knee-​hole ta­ble in it. My First Lieu­tenant, the Nav­iga­tor and the En­gi­neer have bunks in a room to­geth­er, and then we have a small of­fi­cers’ mess.

On this job up here, as we are not to re­turn to Ger­many for sup­plies, and, con­se­quent­ly, I should say we may have to live on what we can get out of steam­ers, I don’t pro­pose to use my tor­pe­does un­less I meet a war­ship or an ex­cep­tion­al­ly large steam­er.

The gun’s the thing, as Ar­nauld de la Per­rière has proved in the Mediter­ranean; but half the fel­lows won’t fol­low his ex­am­ple, sim­ply be­cause they don’t re­al­ize that it’s no use em­ploy­ing the gun un­less it is used ac­cu­rate­ly, and good shoot­ing on­ly comes af­ter long drill.

I have im­pressed this fact on my gun crew, and par­tic­ular­ly the two gun-​lay­ers, and I make Voigt­man (my young First Lieu­tenant) take the crew through their load­ing drill twice a day, to­geth­er with prac­tice of rapid man­ning of the gun af­ter a “sur­face” or rapid aban­don­ment of the gun should the div­ing alarms sound in the mid­dle of prac­tice. I have al­so im­pressed on Voigt­man that I con­sid­er that he is the gun con­trol of­fi­cer, and that I ex­pect him to make the ef­fi­cient work­ing of the gun his main con­sid­er­ation.

As re­gards the crew, they are the usu­al mixed crowd that one gets nowa­days: half of them are old sailors, the oth­ers re­cruits and new ar­rivals from the Fleet. My main busi­ness at the mo­ment is to get the young­sters in­to shape, and for this pur­pose I have been do­ing a num­ber of crash dives. It al­so gives me an op­por­tu­ni­ty of get­ting used to the boat’s pe­cu­liar­ities un­der wa­ter. She seems to have a ten­den­cy to be­come tail-​heavy, but this may be due to bad trim­ming.

Voigt­man has been in U.B.43 for nine months, and seems a ca­pa­ble of­fi­cer. So­cial­ly, I don’t think he can boast of much de­scent, but he has no airs, and treats me with pleas­ing re­spect, apart from ser­vice con­sid­er­ations.

* * * * *

A very awk­ward ac­ci­dent took place this morn­ing, which re­sult­ed in se­vere in­jury to Jo­hann Wiener, my sec­ond coxswain.

A par­ty of men un­der his di­rec­tion were en­gaged in shift­ing the stern tor­pe­do from its tube, in or­der to re­place it with a spare tor­pe­do, as I nev­er al­low any of my tor­pe­does to stay in the tube for more than a week at a time ow­ing to cor­ro­sion. The tor­pe­do which had been in the tube had been launched back and was on the floor plates.

The spare tor­pe­do, des­tined for the va­cant tube, was hang­ing over­head, when with­out any warn­ing the hook on the lift­ing band frac­tured, and the 1,000 kilo­grammes’ mass of met­al crashed down.

Won­der­ful to re­late, no one was killed, but two men were bad­ly bruised, and Wiener has been very se­ri­ous­ly in­jured. He was stand­ing astride the spare tor­pe­do, and his right leg was ex­treme­ly bad­ly crushed, most­ly be­low the knee.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly it took about ten min­utes to re­lease him from his po­si­tion of ter­ri­ble agony. I should have ex­pect­ed him to faint, but he did not. His face went dead white, and he be­gan to sweat freely, but oth­er­wise en­dured his or­deal with praise­wor­thy for­ti­tude.

[Il­lus­tra­tion: “The 1,000 kilo­grammes of met­al crashed down.”]

[Il­lus­tra­tion: “Good-​bye! Steer west for Amer­ica!”]

[Il­lus­tra­tion: “It is a snug an­chor­age and here I in­tend to re­main.”]

I am now con­front­ed with a per­plex­ing sit­ua­tion. I can­not take him back to Ger­many; I can­not even leave my sta­tion and pro­ceed south to any of the Nor­we­gian ports. If I could find a neu­tral steam­er with a doc­tor on board, I would tran­ship him to her; but the chances of this God-​send ma­te­ri­al­iz­ing are a thou­sand to one in these lat­itudes. If I sight­ed a hos­pi­tal ship I would close her, but as far as I know at present there are no hos­pi­tal ships run­ning up here. The chances of out­side as­sis­tance may there­fore be reck­oned as nil. Wiener’s hope of life de­pends on me, and I can­not make up my mind to take the step which soon­er or lat­er must be tak­en–that is to say, am­pu­ta­tion.

It is a cu­ri­ous fact, but true, nev­er­the­less, that al­though, as a re­sult of the war, men’s lives, con­sid­ered in quan­ti­ty, seem of lit­tle im­por­tance, when it comes to the in­di­vid­ual case, a per­son­al con­tact, a man’s life as­sumes all its pre-​war im­por­tance.

I feel acute­ly my re­spon­si­bil­ity in this mat­ter. I see from his pa­pers that he is a mar­ried man with a fam­ily; this seems to make it worse. I feel that a whole chain of peo­ple de­pend on me.

* * * * *

Since I wrote the above words this morn­ing, Wiener has tak­en a de­cid­ed turn for the worse.

I have been read­ing the “Med­ical Hand­book,” with ref­er­ence to the re­marks on am­pu­ta­tion, gan­grene, etc., and I have al­so been ex­am­in­ing his leg. The poor dev­il is in great pain, and there is no doubt that mor­ti­fi­ca­tion has set in, as was in­deed in­evitable. I have de­cid­ed that he must have his last chance, and that at 8 p.m. to-​night I will en­deav­our to am­pu­tate.

_Mid­night_.

I have done it–on­ly par­tial­ly suc­cess­ful.

* * * * *

Last night, in ac­cor­dance with my de­ci­sion, I op­er­at­ed on Wiener. Voigt­man as­sist­ed me. It was a ter­ri­ble busi­ness, but I think it de­sir­able to record the de­tails whilst they are fresh in my mem­ory, as a Court of In­quiry may be held lat­er on. Voigt­man and I spent the whole af­ter­noon in the study of such mea­gre de­tails on the sub­ject as are avail­able in the “Med­ical Hand­book.” We se­lect­ed our knives and a saw and ster­il­ized them; we al­so dis­in­fect­ed our hands.

At 7.45 I dived the boat to six­ty me­tres, at which depth the boat was steady. We had done our best with the ward­room-​ta­ble, and up­on this the pa­tient was placed. I de­cid­ed to am­pu­tate about four inch­es above the knee, where the flesh still seemed sound. I con­sid­ered it im­prac­ti­ca­ble to ad­min­is­ter an anaes­thet­ic, ow­ing to my ab­so­lute in­ex­pe­ri­ence in this mat­ter.

Three men held the pa­tient down, as with a firm in­ci­sion I be­gan the work. The saw­ing through the bone was an ag­oniz­ing pro­ce­dure, and I need­ed all my res­olu­tion to com­plete the task. Up to this stage all had gone as well as could be ex­pect­ed, when I sud­den­ly went through the last piece of bone and cut deep in­to the flesh on the oth­er side. An in­stan­ta­neous gush of blood took place, and I re­al­ized that I had un­ex­pect­ed­ly sev­ered the popliteal artery, be­fore Voigt­man, who was ty­ing the veins, was ready to deal with it.

I en­deav­oured to staunch the dead­ly flow by nip­ping the vein be­tween my thumb and fore­fin­ger, whilst Voigt­man hasti­ly tried to tie it. Think­ing it was tied, I re­leased it, and alas! the flow at once start­ed again; once more I seized the vein, and once again Voigt­man tried to tie it. Use­less–we could not stop the blood. He would un­doubt­ed­ly have bled to death be­fore our eyes, had not Voigt­man cau­ter­ized the place with an elec­tric sol­der­ing-​iron which was handy.

Much shak­en, I com­plet­ed the am­pu­ta­tion, and we dressed the stump as well as we could.

At the mo­ment of writ­ing he is still alive, but as white as snow; he must have lost litres of blood through that artery.

9 _p.m._

Wiener died two hours ago. I should say the im­me­di­ate cause of death was shock and loss of blood. I did my best.

* * * * *

We have been out on this ex­tend­ed pa­trol area sev­en days, but not a wisp of smoke greets our eyes.

Noth­ing but sea, sea, sea. Oh, how monotonous it is! I can­not make out where the ship­ping has got to. To­mor­row I am go­ing to close the North Cape again. I think ev­ery­thing must be go­ing in­side me. I am too far out here.

* * * * *

The North Cape bears due east. Noth­ing afloat in sight. Where the dev­il can all the ship­ping be? In ten days’ time I am due to meet my sup­ply ship; mean­while I think I’ll have to take an­oth­er cast out, of three hun­dred miles or so.

* * * * *

Noth­ing in sight, noth­ing, noth­ing.

The barom­eter falling fast and we are in for a gale. I have de­cid­ed to make the coast again, as I don’t want to fail to turn up punc­tu­al­ly at the ren­dezvous.

* * * * *

In the Stan­darak-​Land­holm Fjord–thank heav­ens.

Heav­ens! we have had a time. We were still two hun­dred and fifty miles from the coast when we were caught by the gale. And a gale up here is a gale, and no sec­ond thoughts about it. To say it blew with the force of ten thou­sand dev­ils is to un­der­state the case. The sea came on to us in huge foam­ing rollers like waves of at­tack­ing in­fantry in­tent on over­whelm­ing us.

We strug­gled east at about three knots. But she stuck it mag­nif­icent­ly. Low scud­ding clouds ob­scured the sky and came like a pro­ces­sion of ghosts from the north-​east. Sun ob­ser­va­tions were im­pos­si­ble for two rea­sons. First­ly, no one could get on deck; sec­ond­ly, there was no vis­ible sun. This last­ed for three days, at the end of which time we had on­ly the vaguest idea as to where we were.

The gale then blew out, but, con­trary to all ex­pec­ta­tions, was suc­ceed­ed by a most abom­inable fog, thick and white like cot­ton-​wool. These were hard­ly ide­al con­di­tions un­der which to close a rocky and un­known coast, but it had to be done. The trou­ble was that it was en­tire­ly use­less tak­ing sound­ings, as the twen­ty-​me­tre depth-​line on the chart went right up to the land. We crept slow­ly east­wards, till, when by dead reck­on­ing we were ten miles in­side the coast, the Nav­iga­tor ac­ci­den­tal­ly leant on the whis­tle lever; this ac­tion on his part prob­ably saved the ship, as an im­me­di­ate echo an­swered the blast. In an in­stant we were go­ing full-​speed astern. We al­tered course six­teen points and pro­ceed­ed ten miles west­er­ly, where we lay on and off the coast all night, curs­ing the fog.

Next day it lift­ed, and we spent the whole time try­ing to find the en­trance to the S. Land­holm Fjord. The coast ap­peared to bear no re­sem­blance to the chart what­so­ev­er.

The cliffs stand up to a height of sev­er­al hun­dred me­tres, with oc­ca­sion­al clefts where a stream runs down. There are no trees, hous­es, an­imals, or any signs of life, ex­cept sea birds, of which there are myr­iads. The En­gi­neer de­clares he saw a rein­deer, but five oth­er peo­ple on deck failed to see any signs of the beast.

Af­ter hours of nos­ing about, dur­ing which my heart was in my mouth, as I quite ex­pect­ed to fetch up on a pin­na­cle rock, items which are of­fi­cial­ly de­scribed in the Hand­book as be­ing “very nu­mer­ous,” we round­ed a bluff and got in­to a place which seems to an­swer the de­scrip­tion of S. Land­holm. At any rate, it is a snug an­chor­age, and here I in­tend to re­main for a few days, and hope for my store-​ship to turn up.

I’ve post­ed a day­light look-​out on top of the bluff; it would be very awk­ward to be caught un­awares in this place, which is on­ly about 150 me­tres wide in places.

I’m tak­ing ad­van­tage of the rest to give the crew some ex­er­cis­es and ex­ecute var­ious mi­nor re­pairs to the Diesels.

* * * * *

Yes­ter­day we fought what must be one of the most re­mark­able sin­gle-​ship ac­tions of the war.

At 9 a.m. the look-​out on the cliffs re­port­ed smoke to the north­ward.

I got the an­chor up and made ready to push off, but still kept the look-​out ashore. At 9.30 he re­port­ed a de­stroy­er in sight, which seemed se­ri­ous if she chose to look in­to my par­tic­ular nook.

At any rate, I thought, I wouldn’t be caught like a rat, so I got my look-​out on board–a mat­ter of ten min­utes–and then pro­ceed­ed out, trimmed down and ready for div­ing.

When I drew clear of the en­trance I saw the en­emy dis­tant about a thou­sand me­tres. I at once rec­og­nized her as be­ing one of the old­est type of Rus­sian tor­pe­do boats afloat. When I es­tab­lished this fact, a dev­il en­tered in­to my mind, and did a most fool­hardy act.

I de­cid­ed that I would not re­treat be­neath the sea, but that I would fight her as one ser­vice ship to an­oth­er.

When I make up my mind, I do so in no un­cer­tain man­ner–in­de­ci­sion is ab­hor­rent to me–and I sharply or­dered, “Gun’s Crew–Ac­tion.”

I can still see the com­ical look of won­der­ment which passed over my First Lieu­tenant’s face, but he knows me, and did not hes­itate an in­stant. We drilled like a bat­tle­ship, and in six­ty-​five sec­onds–I timed it as a mat­ter of in­ter­est–from my or­der we fired the first shot. It fell short.

Ex­traor­di­nary to re­late, the tor­pe­do boat, with­out fir­ing a gun, put her helm hard over, and start­ed to steam away at her full speed, which I sup­pose was about sev­en­teen knots.

I ac­tu­al­ly be­gan to chase her–a sub­ma­rine chas­ing a tor­pe­do boat! It was lu­di­crous.

With broad smiles on their faces, my good gun’s crew rapid­ly fired the gun, and we had the sat­is­fac­tion of strik­ing her once, near her af­ter fun­nel, but it did no vi­tal dam­age, as a few min­utes af­ter­wards she drew out of range! What a pack of in­com­pe­tent cow­ards!

They nev­er fired a shot at us. I sup­pose half of them were drunk or else in a state of se­mi-​mutiny, for one hears strange tales of af­fairs in Rus­sia these days.

The whole in­ci­dent was quite hu­mor­ous, but I re­al­ized that I had hard­ly been wise, as with­out doubt the En­glish will hear of this, and these trawlers of theirs will turn up, and I’m cer­tain­ly not go­ing to try any hero­ics with John Bull, who is as tough a fight­er as we are.

Mean­while, what of the sup­ply ship, for I’m sup­posed to meet her here, and it’s al­ready twen­ty-​four hours since yes­ter­day’s epoch-​mak­ing bat­tle and I ex­pect the En­glish any mo­ment.

* * * * *

My doubts were re­moved for me since I re­ceived spe­cial or­ders at noon by high-​pow­er wire­less from Nor­dre­ich, and on de­cod­ing them found that, for some rea­son or oth­er, we are or­dered to pro­ceed to Muck­le Flug­ga Cape, and thence down the coast of Shet­lands to the Fair Is­land Chan­nel, where we are di­rect­ed to cruise till fur­ther or­ders. Spe­cial warn­ing is in­clud­ed as to en­coun­ter­ing friend­ly sub­marines.

It ap­pears to me that a spe­cial con­cen­tra­tion of U-​boats is be­ing or­dered round about the Orkneys, and that some big scheme is on hand.

We are now steer­ing south-​west­er­ly to make Muck­le Flug­ga, which I hope to do in four days’ time if the weath­er holds.

These North­ern wa­ters have proved very bar­ren of ship­ping in the last few weeks, and this fact, cou­pled with the ap­proach­ing win­ter weath­er, which must be fiendish in these lat­itudes, makes me quite ready to ex­change the Archangel bil­let for the work round the Orkneys and Shet­lands, though this is damnable enough in the win­ter, in all con­science.

There is on­ly one fly in the oint­ment, and that is that this pre­ma­ture re­turn to North Sea wa­ters might con­ceiv­ably mean a vis­it to Zee­brugge, though this class are not like­ly to be sent there.

Though it is many weeks since I left Zoe, I have not been able to for­get her. I con­tin­ual­ly won­der what she is do­ing, and of­ten when I am not on my guard she wan­ders in­to my thoughts.

Whilst I am up here, it does not mat­ter much, ex­cept that it caus­es me un­hap­pi­ness, but if I found my­self at Bruges it would be very hard. How­ev­er, I don’t sup­pose I shall ev­er see her again.

* * * * *

Sight­ed Muck­le Flug­ga this morn­ing, and shaped course for Fair Is­land.

* * * * *

Oh! what a hell I have passed through. I can hard­ly re­al­ize that I am alive, but I am, though whether I shall be to-​mor­row morn­ing is doubt­ful–it all de­pends on the weath­er, and who would will­ing­ly stake their life on North Sea weath­er at this time of the year?

Curs­es on the man who sent us to the Fair Is­land Chan­nel. Where the dev­il is our In­tel­li­gence Ser­vice? If we make Flan­ders I have a sto­ry to tell that will open their eyes, blind bats that they are, lux­uri­at­ing in the com­fort of their fat staff jobs ashore.

The Fair Is­land Chan­nel is an En­glish death-​trap; it stinks with death. By cursed luck we ar­rived there just as the En­glish were try­ing one of their new de­vices, and it is the dev­il. Ex­act­ly what the sys­tem is, I don’t quite know, and I hope nev­er again to have to in­ves­ti­gate it.

For forty-​sev­en, hours we have been hunt­ed like a rat, and now, with the pres­sure hull leak­ing in three places, and the boat half full of chlo­rine, we are strug­gling back on the sur­face, prac­ti­cal­ly in­ca­pable of div­ing at least for more than ten min­utes at a time. Even on the sur­face, with all the fans work­ing, one must wear a gas mask to pen­etrate the fore com­part­ment. Oh! these En­glish, what dev­ils they are!

Here is what hap­pened:

Fair Is­land was away on our port beam when we sight­ed a large En­glish trawler, which I sus­pect­ed of be­ing a pa­trol. To be on the safe side, I dived and pro­ceed­ed at twen­ty me­tres for about an hour.

At 5 p.m. (ap­prox­imate­ly) I came up to periscope depth to have a look round, but quick­ly dived again as I dis­cov­ered a trawler, steer­ing on the same course as my­self, about a thou­sand me­tres astern of me. This was the more dis­con­cert­ing, as in the short time at my dis­pos­al it seemed to me that she was re­mark­ably sim­ilar to the craft I had seen in the af­ter­noon, and yet this hard­ly seemed like­ly, as I did not think she could have sight­ed me then.

On div­ing, I al­tered course nine­ty de­grees, and pro­ceed­ed for half an hour at full speed, then al­tered an­oth­er nine­ty de­grees, in the same di­rec­tion as the pre­vi­ous al­ter­ation, and div­ing to thir­ty me­tres I pro­ceed­ed at dead slow. By mid­night I had been div­ing so much that I de­cid­ed to get a charge on the bat­ter­ies be­fore dawn; I al­so want­ed to be up at 1 a.m. to make my po­si­tion re­port.

I sur­faced af­ter a good look round through the right periscope, which, as usu­al, re­vealed noth­ing. I had hard­ly got on the bridge, when a flash of flame stabbed the night on the star­board beam and a shell moaned just over­head.

I crash-​dived at once, but could not get un­der be­fore the en­emy fired a sec­ond shot at us, which for­tu­nate­ly missed us. As we dived I or­dered the helm hard a star­board, to coun­ter­act the ex­pect­ed depth-​charge at­tack. We must have been a hun­dred and fifty me­tres from the first charge and a lit­tle be­low it, five oth­ers fol­lowed in rapid suc­ces­sion, but were fur­ther away, and we suf­fered no dam­age be­yond a cou­ple of bro­ken lights. The sit­ua­tion was now ex­treme­ly un­pleas­ant. I did not dare ven­ture to the sur­face, and thus missed my 1 a.m. sig­nal from Head­quar­ters. I want­ed a charge bad­ly, and so pro­ceed­ed at the low­est pos­si­ble speed. At reg­ular in­ter­vals our en­emy dropped one depth-​charge some­where astern of us, but these re­ports al­ways seemed the same dis­tance away.

At dawn I very cau­tious­ly came up to periscope depth, and had a look. To my con­ster­na­tion I dis­cov­ered our re­lent­less pur­suer about 1,500 me­tres away on the port quar­ter. In some ex­traor­di­nary man­ner he had tracked us dur­ing the night.

I dived and al­tered course through nine­ty de­grees to south.

At 9 a.m. a tremen­dous ex­plo­sion shook the boat from stem to stern, smash­ing sev­er­al lights, and giv­ing her a big in­cli­na­tion up by the bow.

As I was on­ly at twen­ty me­tres I feared the boat would break sur­face, and our en­emy was ev­ident­ly very near­ly right over us. I at once or­dered hard to dive, and went down to the great depth of nine­ty-​five me­tres.

A se­ries of shat­ter­ing ex­plo­sions some­where above us showed that we were marked down, and we were on­ly saved from de­struc­tion by our great depth, the En­glish charges be­ing set ap­par­ent­ly to about thir­ty me­tres.

At noon the sit­ua­tion was crit­ical in the ex­treme. My bat­tery den­si­ty was down to 1,150, the few lamps that I had burn­ing were glow­ing with a faint, dull red ap­pear­ance, which elo­quent­ly told of the falling volt­age and the dy­ing strug­gles of the bat­tery.

The mo­tors with all fields out were just go­ing round. The faces of the crew, pal­lid with ex­haus­tion, seemed of an ivory white­ness in the dusky gloom of the boat, which nev­er re­sem­bled a gi­gan­tic and fan­tas­ti­cal­ly or­na­men­tal cof­fin so close­ly as she did at that time.

The air was fetid. I struck a match; it went out in my fin­gers. The slight­est ef­fort was an agony. I bent down to take off my sea-​boots, and cold sweat dropped off my fore­head, and my pulse rose with a kind of jerk to a rapid beat­ing, like a ham­mer.

I left one sea-​boot on.

At 1 p.m. a dep­uta­tion of the crew came aft, and in whis­pered voic­es im­plored me to sur­face the boat and make a last ef­fort on the sur­face. A muf­fled re­port, as our im­pla­ca­ble en­emy dropped a depth-​charge some­where astern of us, added point to the con­ver­sa­tion, and showed me that our ap­pear­ance on the sur­face could have but one end.

At 3 p.m. the sec­ond coxswain, who was work­ing the hy­droplanes, fell off his stool in a dead faint.

At 3.30 p.m. the supreme cri­sis was reached: two more men faint­ed, and I re­al­ized that if I did not sur­face at once I might find the crew in­ca­pable of start­ing the Diesels.

At the or­der “Sur­face,” a fee­ble cheer came from the men.

We sur­faced, and I dragged my­self-​up to the con­ning tow­er. Luck­ily we start­ed the Diesels with ease, and in a few min­utes gusts of beau­ti­ful air were cir­cu­lat­ing through the boat.

Mean­while, what of the en­emy? I had half ex­pect­ed a shell as soon as we came up, and it was with great anx­iety that I looked round. We had been slight­ly favoured by for­tune in that the on­ly thing in sight was a trawler away on the port beam. It was our hunter.

I trimmed right down, hop­ing to avoid be­ing seen, as it was es­sen­tial to stay on the sur­face and get some am­peres in­to the bat­tery. I al­so al­tered course away from him.

It was about 5 p.m. that I saw two trawlers ahead, one on each bow. By this time the boat’s crew had quite re­cov­ered, but I did not wish to dive, as the bat­tery was still pitiably low. I grad­ual­ly al­tered course to north-​east, but af­ter half an hour’s run I al­most ran on top of a group of pa­trols in the dusk.

I crash-​dived, and they must have seen me go down, as a few min­utes lat­er the boat was vi­olent­ly shak­en by a depth-​charge.

We were at twen­ty me­tres, still div­ing at the time. I con­sult­ed the chart, but could find no bot­tom­ing ground with­in fifty miles, a dis­tance which was quite be­yond my pow­ers.

At 11 p.m. I sim­ply had to come up again and get a charge on the bat­ter­ies.

From 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., at reg­ular half-​hourly in­ter­vals, a depth-​charge had gone off some­where with­in a ra­dius of two miles of me. Need­less to say, I was on­ly crawl­ing along at about one knot and al­ter­ing course fre­quent­ly. What was so ter­ri­ble was the patent fact that the pa­trols in this area had ev­ident­ly got some de­vice which en­abled them to keep in con­tin­ual touch with me to a cer­tain ex­tent.

These monotonous and reg­ular depth-​charges seemed to say: “We know, Oh! U-​boat, that we are some­where near you, and here is a depth-​charge just to tell you that we haven’t lost you yet.” [1]

[Foot­note 1: Karl was quite right; it is ev­ident that he had the mis­for­tune to en­counter one of our new hy­drophone-​hunt­ing groups, just start­ed In the Fair Is­land Chan­nel. The in­ci­dent of the depth-​charges ev­ery half-​hour was known as “Tick­ling up.” Prob­ably the pa­trol on­ly heard faint nois­es from him.–ETI­ENNE.]

As an hour had elapsed since the last depth-​charge, I felt fair­ly hap­py at com­ing up, and on mak­ing the sur­face I was de­light­ed to find a pitch-​black night and a con­sid­er­able sea. From 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. I ac­tu­al­ly had three hours of peace, and in this pe­ri­od I man­aged to cram a con­sid­er­able amount of stuff in­to the bat­ter­ies. The den­si­ties were ris­ing nice­ly and all seemed well, when I did what I now see was a very fool­ish thing.

I made my 1 a.m. wire­less re­port to Nor­dre­ich, in which I re­quest­ed or­ders at 3 a.m. and re­port­ed my po­si­tion, to­geth­er with the fact that I had been bad­ly hunt­ed.

In twen­ty-​five min­utes they were on me again! I had most id­iot­ical­ly as­sumed that the En­glish had no di­rec­tion­al wire­less in these parts. They have. They’ve got ev­ery­thing that they have ev­er tried up there; it was con­cen­trat­ed in that in­fer­nal Fair Is­land Chan­nel.

I was on­ly saved by see­ing a de­stroy­er com­ing straight at me, sil­hou­et­ted against, the low-​ly­ing cres­cent of a new moon. When I dived she was about six hun­dred me­tres away. As I have con­fessed to do­ing a fool­ish thing, I give my­self the plea­sure of record­ing a clev­er­er move on my part. I an­tic­ipat­ed depth-​charge at­tack as a mat­ter of course, but in­stead of go­ing down to twen­ty-​five me­tres, I kept her at twelve.

The depth-​charges came all right, sev­en smash­ing ex­plo­sions, but, as I had cal­cu­lat­ed, they were set to go off at about thir­ty me­tres, and so were well be­low me.

The boat was thrown bod­ily up by one, and I think the top of the con­ning tow­er must have bro­ken sur­face, but there was lit­tle dan­ger of this be­ing seen in the pre­vail­ing wa­ter con­di­tions.

* * * * *

I have just had to stop record­ing my ex­pe­ri­ences of the past forty-​eight hours, as the Nav­iga­tor, who is on watch, sent down a mes­sage to say that smoke was in sight.

The next hour was full of anx­iety, but by haul­ing off to port we man­aged to lose it. I then had a lit­tle food, and I will now con­clude my ac­count be­fore try­ing again to get some sleep.

_The ac­count con­tin­ued._

All my hopes of get­ting up again that night, both for the pur­pose of charg­ing and of get­ting the 3 a.m. sig­nal, were doomed to be dis­ap­point­ed, as the hy­drophone op­er­ator kept on re­port­ing the noise of de­stroy­ers over­head. Oc­ca­sion­al dis­tant thuds seemed to in­di­cate a nev­er-​end­ing sup­ply of depth-​charges, but they were about four or five miles from me. Per­haps some oth­er un­for­tu­nate dev­il was go­ing through the fires of hell.

At day­light on the sec­ond day my po­si­tion was still mis­er­able. The bat­tery was get­ting low again, the sea had gone down, and when I put my periscope up at 9 a.m. the hori­zon seemed to be ringed with pa­trols. I felt as if I was in an in­vis­ible net, and though I en­deav­oured to con­ceal my ap­pre­hen­sion from the crew, I could see from the list­less way they went about their du­ties that they re­al­ized that once again we were near the end of our re­sources.

All the forenoon we crept along at thir­ty me­tres, un­til the ten­sion was bro­ken at 1 p.m. by a fu­ri­ous depth-​charge at­tack. In some ex­traor­di­nary way they had lo­cat­ed me again and closed in up­on me. The first charges were some lit­tle dis­tance off, and as they got clos­er a feel­ing of des­per­ation over­came me, and I se­ri­ous­ly con­tem­plat­ed end­ing the agony by sur­fac­ing and fight­ing to the last with my gun.

Cu­ri­ous­ly enough, the pro­ce­dure that I adopt­ed was the ex­act op­po­site. I de­cid­ed to dive deep. I went down to 114 me­tres. At this ex­cep­tion­al depth, three riv­ets in the pres­sure hull be­gan to leak, and jets of wa­ter with the rigid­ity of bars of iron shot in­to the boat. I held on for five min­utes, which was suf­fi­cient to save me from the depth-​charge at­tack, though two which went off al­most above me broke some lamps. I then came up to twen­ty me­tres and slow­ly crawled on. Through­out the long af­ter­noon, though we were not di­rect­ly at­tacked again, I heard depth-​charges on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions suf­fi­cient­ly close to me to demon­strate that these im­pla­ca­ble and tire­less dev­ils had an idea of the area I was in.

By a supreme ef­fort, work­ing one mo­tor at the on­ly speed it would go, viz., “Dead slow,” I man­aged to squeeze out the bat­tery un­til I es­ti­mat­ed it must be dusk.

There was on­ly one thing to do–I sur­faced. It was not as dark as I had hoped, and I saw a fair­ly large sloop-​like ves­sel, about eight thou­sand me­tres away, on the port beam. She must have seen me si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, as the flash of a gun dart­ed from her, the shell falling short.

I couldn’t dive; there seemed on­ly one thing to do: fight and then die. I or­dered the gun’s crew up, and the un­equal du­el be­gan. We were go­ing full speed on the Diesels, and my course was east by north. A good deal of wa­ter and spray was fly­ing over the gun, and my crew had lit­tle hope of do­ing much ac­cu­rate shoot­ing, but I have of­ten found that when one is be­ing fired at there is noth­ing so com­fort­ing as the sound of one’s own gun.

Our en­emy was armed with two large guns, fif­teen cen­time­tres or over, but had no speed, a dis­cov­ery which raised my hopes again. It was soon ev­ident that, pro­vid­ed we were not head­ing for an­oth­er pa­trol, if we could sur­vive ten min­utes’ shelling, we should be saved for the time be­ing by the fad­ing light, which was ev­ident­ly caus­ing our en­emy in­creas­ing dif­fi­cul­ties, as his shots al­ter­nat­ed be­tween very short and very much over.

I was ac­tu­al­ly con­grat­ulat­ing the Nav­iga­tor on our es­cape, and I had just told the gun’s crew to cease fir­ing at the blurred out­lines on the port quar­ter from which the ran­dom shells still came, when there was a sheet of yel­low flame and a jar which threw me against the sig­nal­man. The lat­ter had been stand­ing near the con­ning-​tow­er hatch, and un­for­tu­nate­ly I knocked him off his bal­ance, and he fell with a thud in­to the up­per con­ning tow­er. He had the good for­tune to es­cape with a cou­ple of ribs bro­ken, but when I re­cov­ered my­self and got to my feet, far worse con­se­quences met my eyes.

By the worst of ill-​luck, a shell which must have been fired prac­ti­cal­ly at ran­dom had hit the gun just be­low the port trun­nion.

The re­sult of the ex­plo­sion was very se­vere. Four of the sev­en men at the gun had been blown over­board, the breech work­er was un­in­jured, though from the way he swayed about it was ev­ident that he was dazed, and I ex­pect­ed to see him fall over the side at any mo­ment. The re­main­ing two men were as dead as horse-​flesh.

The ma­te­ri­al dam­age was even more se­ri­ous. The gun had been prac­ti­cal­ly thrown out of its cra­dle, but in the main the trun­nion blocks had held firm, and the whole pedestal had been car­ried over to star­board.

The re­al­ly ter­ri­ble ef­fects of this in­jury were not ap­par­ent at first sight, but I soon re­al­ized them, for an hour lat­er (we had shak­en off the sloop) I saw red flame on the hori­zon, which plain­ly in­di­cat­ed flam­ing at the fun­nel from some de­stroy­er doubt­less look­ing for us at high speed.

I dived, in­tend­ing to sur­face again as soon as pos­si­ble. With this in­ten­tion in my head, I did not go be­low the up­per con­ning tow­er. We had bare­ly got to ten me­tres, when loud cries from be­low and the dis­qui­et­ing noise of rush­ing wa­ter told me that some­thing was wrong. I blew all tanks, sur­faced, left the First Lieu­tenant on watch and went be­low.

There were five cen­time­tres of wa­ter on the bat­tery boards, and I un­der­stood at once that we could nev­er dive again.

For the pedestal of the gun, in be­ing forced over, had strained the lon­gi­tu­di­nal seam of the pres­sure hull, to which it is bolt­ed, and a show­er of wa­ter had come through as soon as we got un­der.

It might have been hoped that this was enough, but no! our cup was not yet full. Chlo­rine gas sud­den­ly be­gan to fill the fore-​end. The salt wa­ter run­ning down in­to the bat­tery tanks had found acid, and though I or­dered quan­ti­ties of so­da to be put down in­to the tank, it be­came, and still is at the mo­ment of writ­ing, im­pos­si­ble to move for­ward of the con­ning tow­er with­out putting on a gas mask and oxy­gen hel­met. So we are help­less, and at the mer­cy of any lit­tle trawler, or even the weath­er.

We have no gun; we can­not dive. The En­glish must know that they have hit us, and ev­ery hour I ex­pect to see the hull of a de­stroy­er climb over the hori­zon astern.

We are for­tu­nate in two re­spects: in that for the time be­ing the weath­er seems to promise well, and our Diesels are thor­ough­ly sound.

We are or­dered to Zee­brugge–I could have wished else­where for many rea­sons, but it does not mat­ter, as I can­not be­lieve we are in­tend­ed to es­cape.

I feel I would al­most wel­come an en­emy ship, it would soon be over; but this un­cer­tain­ty and anx­iety drags on for hour af­ter hour–and now I can­not sleep, though I haven’t slept prop­er­ly for over sev­en­ty hours. I am so worn out that my body screams for sleep, but it is de­nied to me, and so, lest I go mad, I write; it is bet­ter to do this, though my eyes ache and the let­ters seem to wrig­gle, than to stand up on the bridge look­ing for the smoke of our en­emies, or to lie in my bunk and count the rev­olu­tions of the Diesels; thou­sands of thou­sands of thud­ding beats, one af­ter the oth­er, re­lent­less ham­mer strokes.

I have en­dured much.

_NOTE BY ETI­ENNE_

_A break oc­curs in Karl von Schenk’s di­ary at this junc­ture. For­tu­nate­ly the main out­lines of the sto­ry are pre­served ow­ing to Zoe’s long let­ter, which was in a small pack­et in­side the cov­er of the sec­ond note­book. Zoe’s let­ter will be re­pro­duced in this book in its prop­er chrono­log­ical po­si­tion, but in or­der to save the read­er the trou­ble of read­ing the book from the let­ter back to this point, a brief sum­ma­ry of what took place is giv­en here. The en­tries in his di­ary which fol­low the words “I have en­dured much,” are very mea­gre for a pe­ri­od which seems to have been about a month in length. There is no fur­ther men­tion of the lat­ter stages of Karl’s pas­sage in the wrecked boat to Zee­brugge, so it is pre­sumed that he made that port with­out fur­ther ad­ven­ture. He was ev­ident­ly on the verge of a ner­vous break­down, and ap­pears to have been suf­fer­ing from very se­vere in­som­nia. He had been hunt­ed for two days, dur­ing which he was per­pet­ual­ly on the verge of de­struc­tion, and the cu­mu­la­tive ef­fect of such an ex­pe­ri­ence is bound to leave its mark on the strongest man. When he got back to Zee­brugge he must have been at the end of his teth­er, and whether by chance or de­sign it was when Karl was, as he would have said, “at a low men­tal ebb” that Zoe made her last and suc­cess­ful at­tack up­on his res­olu­tion not to see her again un­less she con­sent­ed to mar­ry him. It is plain from her let­ter that when he left her af­ter the stormy in­ter­view in which he vowed nev­er to see her again, Zoe did not lose hope. She seems to have kept her­self _au courant _with his move­ments, and ac­tu­al­ly to have known when he was ex­pect­ed in.

We know that she had many friends amongst the of­fi­cers, and it is prob­able that from one of these she was able to get in­for­ma­tion about Karl’s move­ments.

Bruges was prob­ably a hot-​bed of U-​boat gos­sip, and, not un­like the con­di­tions at cer­tain oth­er Naval ports dur­ing the war, the ladies were of­ten too well in­formed. At any rate it ap­pears that Zoe rushed to see Karl di­rect­ly he ar­rived at Bruges, and found him a men­tal and phys­ical wreck, suf­fer­ing from acute in­som­nia.

With the im­petu­ous vigour which ev­ident­ly guid­ed most of her ac­tions, she took com­plete charge of Karl, and, as he was due for four days’ leave, she whisked him off to the for­est.

Karl may have protest­ed, but was prob­ably in no state to wish to do so. At her shoot­ing-​box in the for­est Zoe achieved her de­sire, and the stub­born strug­gle be­tween the lovers end­ed in vic­to­ry for the wom­an. There is an en­try in Karl’s di­ary which may re­fer to this pe­ri­od; he sim­ply says, “Slept at last! Oh, what a joy!”

If this en­try was writ­ten in the for­est, it seemed as if Karl had been un­able to sleep un­til Zoe car­ried him off to the for­est peace of her shoot­ing-​box and sur­round­ed him with the at­mo­sphere of her ten­der sym­pa­thy.

There is no ev­idence of the light in which Karl viewed his de­feat, when, hav­ing re­gained his strength, he was able to take stock of the changed sit­ua­tion. It is rea­son­able to sup­pose that his si­lence up­on this mat­ter in the pages of his di­ary is ev­idence that he was ashamed of what he must have con­sid­ered a great act of weak­ness on his part.

At all events he re­al­ized that he had crossed the Ru­bi­con and that he had bet­ter ac­qui­esce in the_ fait ac­com­pli.

_He seems to have been in har­bour for about six weeks, dur­ing which he lived with Zoe, and the lovers en­joyed a brief spell of hap­pi­ness be­fore Karl set out on his next trip.

Karl seems to have found those six weeks very pleas­ant ones, though his di­ary mere­ly con­tains brief ref­er­ences, such as: “A. day in the coun­try with Z.”; “Z. and I went to the Cav­al­ry dance,” and oth­er triv­ial en­tries–of his thoughts there is not a word.

About the end of 1917 Karl’s boat was re­paired, and he left for the At­lantic; and once more re­sumed full en­tries in his di­ary._

ETI­ENNE.

_Karl’s Di­ary re­sumed_.

Sailed at 9 p.m. last night, and we are now sev­en­teen miles off Beachy Head. The Straits of Dover were fright­ful; the glare of the acety­lene flares on the bar­rage showed for miles. Seen from a dis­tance it gave me the im­pres­sion of the gates of hell, through which we had to pass.

I dived, ten miles away, and went through with the tide at a depth of forty me­tres.

Two hours and three quar­ters of sus­pense, and at dawn we came up, hav­ing passed safe­ly through the great death­trap. At the mo­ment there is noth­ing in sight, ex­cept a lit­tle smoke on the hori­zon. I am go­ing to dive again till dusk.

2 _a.m._

We are thrash­ing down the Chan­nel with a south-​west­er­ly wind right ahead. My in­struc­tions are to work for two days be­tween the Lizard and Kin­sale Head, and then pro­ceed far out in the At­lantic, where the con­voys are sup­posed to meet the de­stroy­ers.

That Fair Is­land Chan­nel ex­pe­ri­ence was enough for a life­time. Death, quick, short and sud­den, this I am ready for. But tor­ture, slow, long and drawn-​out, is not in the bar­gain which in this year of grace ev­ery civ­ilized man and half the sav­ages of the world seem to have had to make with the god Mars.

As I sit in this steel, cigar-​shaped mass of ma­chin­ery, the ques­tion rings in­ces­sant­ly in my ears: “To what ob­ject is all this war di­rect­ed, when anal­ysed from the point of view of the in­di­vid­ual?”

It does not sat­is­fy any long­ing of mine. I have not got a lust for bat­tle: no one who fights has a lust for bat­tle. Ed­itors of news­pa­pers and peo­ple on Gen­er­al Staffs, pos­si­bly al­so Cab­inet Min­is­ters, have lusts for bat­tles, as long as they ar­range the bat­tle and talk about it af­ter­wards–curse them!

The on­ly thing I want is to be with Zoe. I want to live and spend long years with her, en­joy­ing life–this life of which I have spent half al­ready, and now per­haps it will be tak­en from me by some oth­er man: some En­glish­man who doesn’t re­al­ly want to take my life, reck­oned as an in­di­vid­ual.

Around me in the dark­ness are the pa­trol boats, manned by the En­glish­men who are seek­ing my life. Seek­ing it, not to grat­ify their pri­vate emo­tions, but be­cause we are all in the whirlpool of War and can­not es­cape.

Like an avalanche, it seems to gath­er strength and speed as it rolls on, this War of Na­tions. The world must be mad! I can­not see how it can ev­er stop. Eng­land will nev­er be de­feat­ed at sea. We shall con­quer on land–then what?

An in­con­clu­sive peace.

Even if we smash this is­land Em­pire and gain the do­min­ion of the world, how will it ad­van­tage me? I can see no way in which I can gain.

It would be said, if any one should read this: _Gott_! what a self­ish point of view–he thinks on­ly of his per­son­al gain, not of his coun­try.

But, con­found it all, I re­ply, an­swer me this:

Do I ex­ist for my coun­try, or does my coun­try ex­ist for me?

For ex­am­ple, does man live for the sake of the Church, or was the Church cre­at­ed for man?

Does not my coun­try ex­ist for my ben­efit?

Sure­ly it is so.

Then again, I am risk­ing my all, my life; I live in dan­ger, ap­pre­hen­sion and great dis­com­fort; I do all these things, and yet if as a rea­son­able man I pon­der what ad­van­tage I am to gain from all these sac­ri­fices I am ad­judged self­ish.

It is all mad­ness; I can­not fath­om the mean­ing of these things.

* * * * *

In po­si­tion on the Bris­tol line of ap­proach, the weath­er is bad.

_At twen­ty me­tres._

Once again Death has stretched forth his bony fin­gers to catch me by the throat, and on­ly by a chance have I wrig­gled free.

Yes­ter­day af­ter­noon at 5 p.m. we sight­ed a small steam­er fly­ing Span­ish colours and steer­ing for Cardiff. The weath­er was chop­py, but not too bad, and I de­cid­ed to ex­er­cise the gun’s crew, though I did not think there would be much do­ing, as the Spaniards soon give in.

I opened fire at six thou­sand me­tres, and pitched a shell ahead of her and ran up the sig­nal to heave-​to. The wretched lit­tle craft paid no at­ten­tion, and con­tin­ued on her lum­ber­ing course. I sus­pect­ed the pres­ence of an En­glish­man on her bridge, and de­ter­mined to hit.

This we did with our sixth shot, and she stopped dead and wal­lowed in the trough, with clouds of steam pour­ing out of her en­gine-​room; we had ev­ident­ly got the en­gine-​room.

As we closed her, it was ev­ident that a tremen­dous pan­ic was tak­ing place on board. The port sea boat was be­ing launched, but one fall broke and the oc­cu­pants fell in­to the wa­ter. My Nav­iga­tor begged me to give her an­oth­er, which I did, and hit her right aft. Two boat­loads of ges­tic­ulat­ing in­di­vid­uals now ap­peared from the shel­ter of her lee side and be­gan pulling wild­ly away from the ship.

The Nav­iga­tor, whose eyes were danc­ing with ex­cite­ment, was very keen to play with them by spray­ing the wa­ter with ma­chine-​gun bul­lets; but it seemed to me to be waste of am­mu­ni­tion, and I would not per­mit it.

Mean­while we had ap­proached to with­in about four hun­dred me­tres of her port bow. I was de­bat­ing whether to ac­cel­er­ate her sink­ing, when I no­ticed that a fire had bro­ken out aft, and I be­came pos­sessed with a child­ish cu­rios­ity to see the fire be­ing put out as she sank. It was a kind of con­test be­tween the el­ements.

As I watched her, I was star­tled to hear three or four re­ports from the re­gion of the fire.

“Am­mu­ni­tion!” shout­ed the pi­lot, with wide-​opened eyes.

In an in­stant I pressed the div­ing alarm as I re­al­ized our dead­ly per­il. Fool that I had been, she was a de­coy-​ship. They must have re­al­ized on board that I had seen through their dis­guise, for as we be­gan to move for­ward, un­der the mo­tors, a trap-​door near her bows fell down, the white en­sign was bro­ken at the fore, and a 4-inch gun opened fire from the em­bra­sure that was re­vealed on her side.

We were for­tu­nate in that our con­ning tow­er was al­ready right ahead of the en­emy, and as I dropped down in­to the con­ning tow­er, I saw that as she could not turn we were safe.

A few shells plunged harm­less­ly in­to the wa­ter near our stern, and then we were un­der.

We came up to a periscope depth, and I sur­veyed her from a po­si­tion off her stern. She was sink­ing fast, but I felt so fu­ri­ous at be­ing near­ly trapped that I could not re­sist giv­ing her a tor­pe­do; det­ona­tion was com­plete, and a mass of wreck­age shot in­to the air as the hull of the ship dis­ap­peared. As to the two boats, I left them to make the best course to land that they could.

As they were fifty miles off the shore when I left them and it blew force six a few hours af­ter­wards, I rather think they have joined the list of “Miss­ing.” We are now steer­ing due west to our sec­ond po­si­tion.

* * * * *

Re­ceived or­ders last night to re­turn to base forth­with on the north about route. [1]

[Foot­note 1: This means in­to the North Sea round Scot­land.–]

I have shaped course to pass fifty miles north of Muck­le Flug­ga; no more Fair Is­land Chan­nel for me.

* * * * *

Stat­landlet in sight, with the Nor­we­gian coast look­ing very love­ly un­der the snow–we nev­er saw a ship from north of the Shet­lands to this place, when we saw a light cruis­er of the town class steam­ing south-​west at high speed.

She had prob­ably been on pa­trol off this place, where the In­ner and Out­er Leads join up and ships have to leave the three-​mile lim­it.

She was well away from me, and an at­tack would have been use­less. I did not shed any tears; I have lost much of the fire-​eat­ing ideas which filled my mind when I first joined this ser­vice.

* * * * *

We are due off the mole at 8 p.m. tonight, and my heart leaps with joy at the thought of see­ing my Zoe; al­ready I can al­most imag­ine her love­ly arms round my neck, her face raised to mine, and all the oth­er won­der­ful things that make her so glo­ri­ous in my eyes.

_NOTE BY ETI­ENNE_

Be­fore quot­ing the next en­try in Karl’s jour­nal it is nec­es­sary to ex­plain the sit­ua­tion which con­front­ed him when he ar­rived in Zee­brugge. In his ab­sence, his beloved Zoe had been ar­rest­ed as an Al­lied Agent, and she was tried for es­pi­onage with­in a day or two of his ar­rival. There is no record of how he heard the news, and the blow he sus­tained was prob­ably so ter­ri­ble that whilst there was yet hope he felt no de­sire to write; but, as will be seen, there came a time when he turned to his jour­nal as the last friend that re­mained to him. It is a cu­ri­ous fact that, with the ex­cep­tion of an en­try at the be­gin­ning of this jour­nal, Karl makes lit­tle men­tion of his moth­er and home at Frank­furt. Though he does not say so, it seems pos­si­ble that his moth­er had heard of his en­tan­gle­ment with Zoe, and a bar­ri­er had risen be­tween them; this sug­ges­tion gains strength from the fact that in his black­est mo­ments of de­spair he nev­er seems to con­sid­er the ques­tion of turn­ing to Frank­furt for sym­pa­thy. In­ter­est is nat­ural­ly aroused as to the de­tails of Zoe’s tri­al. The avail­able ma­te­ri­al con­sists sole­ly of the long let­ter she wrote to him from Bruges jail. It may be that one day the Ger­man archives of the pe­ri­od of oc­cu­pa­tion will re­veal fur­ther de­tails. In­for­ma­tion on the sub­ject is pos­si­bly at the dis­pos­al of the British In­tel­li­gence Ser­vice, but this would be kept se­cret. All we know on the mat­ter is de­rived from the let­ter, which has been pre­served in­side the sec­ond vol­ume of Karl’s di­ary.

There seems no doubt that she was caught red-​hand­ed, but to say more would be to an­tic­ipate her own words.

It was a mat­ter of some dif­fi­cul­ty to know where best to in­tro­duce Zoe’s let­ter, but with a view to se­cur­ing as much con­ti­nu­ity of thought in the sto­ry as pos­si­ble it has been de­cid­ed to quote it at this junc­ture, al­though he did not re­ceive it un­til af­ter he had made the en­try in the jour­nal which will be quot­ed di­rect­ly af­ter the let­ter.

I would like to ap­peal to any read­er who may hap­pen to be en­gaged in ad­min­is­tra­tive or re­con­struc­tive work in Bel­gium, to com­mu­ni­cate with me, care of Messrs. Hutchin­son, should he han­dle any pa­pers deal­ing with Zoe’s tri­al.

_ETI­ENNE_.

ZOE’S LET­TER

MY BEST BELOVED,

When you get this let­ter cease to sor­row for what will have hap­pened, for I shall be at rest, and in peace at last, freed from a world in which I have known bit­ter sor­row and, un­til you came in­to my life, but lit­tle joy.

For these past months I am grate­ful to God, if such a be­ing ex­ists and reg­ulates the con­duct of a world gone mad.

For in a few hours I am to die.

It is hard­er for you than for me; one mo­ment of agony I suf­fered, a mo­ment that seemed to last a cen­tu­ry, when, amidst the sea of faces that swam in a con­fused mass be­fore me at the tri­al, I saw your eyes and the tor­ture that you were suf­fer­ing. When I saw your eyes I knew that the Pres­ident had said I must die. I am glad that I was told this by you, the on­ly one amongst all these men who loved me. I sup­pose the Pres­ident spoke; I nev­er heard him, but I saw your eyes and I knew.

My dar­ling, it was cru­el of you to come, cru­el to me and cru­el to your­self, but I loved you for be­ing there; it showed me that up till the last you would stand by me, and un­til you read this you can­not know all the facts. That to you, as to the oth­ers, I must have seemed a wom­an spy and that nev­er­the­less you stood by me, is to me a rec­ol­lec­tion of un­sur­pass­able sweet­ness, com­pared with which all oth­er thoughts of you fade in­to in­signif­icance.

Know now, oh, well beloved, that I was not un­wor­thy of your love.

I have a sto­ry to tell you, and I have such a lit­tle time left that I must write quick­ly. The priest who has been with me comes again an hour be­fore the dawn, and he has promised to de­liv­er these my last words of love in­to your hands.

My re­al name is Zoe Xe­nia Ol­ga Sbeiliez, and I was born twen­ty-​nine years ago at my fa­ther’s coun­try house at Inko­vano, near Konies­fol. I am Pol­ish; at least, my fa­ther was, and my moth­er comes from the Don coun­try. There was a day when my fa­ther’s an­ces­tors were Princes in Poland. Poor Poland was torn by the vul­tures of Eu­rope, just as your coun­try­men, my Karl, are tear­ing poor Bel­gium and France, and so my fam­ily lost es­tates year by year, and my grand­fa­ther is buried some­where in the drea­ry steppes of Siberia be­cause he dared to be a Pol­ish pa­tri­ot.

My fa­ther bowed be­fore the storm, and un­der my moth­er’s in­flu­ence he nev­er be­came mixed up with pol­itics. Thus he lived on his es­tates at Inko­vano, and nursed them for my younger broth­er, Alexan­drovitch, the child of his old age. Alex would be nine­teen now, had he lived. The es­tates were large as these things go in West­ern Eu­rope, but they were but a gar­den as com­pared with the lands held by my great-​grand­fa­ther, Boris Sbeiliez.

My fa­ther had a dream, and he dreamed this dream from the day Alex was born to the day they both died in each oth­er’s arms.

My fa­ther dreamt that one day the Tsars would soft­en their heart to Poland, and raise her up from the dust to a place amongst the na­tions, and my fa­ther dreamt that Alexan­drovitch Sbeiliez would be­come a lead­er of Poland, as his an­ces­tors had been be­fore him. And so my fa­ther nursed his es­tates and pinched and saved, in prepa­ra­tion for the day when his beau­ti­ful dream should come true.

[Il­lus­tra­tion: “A trap­door near her bows fell down, the White En­sign was bro­ken at the fore, and a 4-inch gun opened fire from the em­bra­sure that was re­vealed on her side.”]

[IL­LUS­TRA­TION: “I sight­ed two con­voys, but there were de­stroy­ers there….”]

My poor ide­al­is­tic fa­ther nev­er re­al­ized, oh, my Karl, that when one wants a thing one must fight–to the death. Alex was the ap­ple of his eye, but I was much loved by my moth­er; per­haps she dreamed a dream about me–I know not, but she de­ter­mined that I should have all that was nec­es­sary. Paris, Berlin, Mu­nich, Dres­den, and a sea­son in Lon­don, then I came home at twen­ty-​one, per­fect­ly ed­ucat­ed ac­cord­ing to the world, beau­ti­ful ac­cord­ing to men, and dressed ac­cord­ing to Paris. But I was on­ly to find out how lit­tle I knew. My moth­er and I used to take a house in War­saw for the sea­son, and I met many no­table men and wom­en. In these days I, al­so, thought I could do some­thing for Poland, but af­ter two or three sea­sons I found that I, too, was on­ly dream­ing idle dreams. Oh! my beloved, be­ware of dream­ing idle dreams.

Lis­ten! I once met the Prime Min­is­ter of all Rus­sia at a re­cep­tion. I cap­ti­vat­ed him, and thought, now! now! I shall do some­thing.

I sat next to him at din­ner; I talked of Poland–and I knew my sub­ject–I talked bril­liant­ly; he lis­tened, he hung on my words, and he, the Prime Min­is­ter of all Rus­sia, the Tsar’s right-​hand man, asked me to drive with him next day in his sledge. I, an al­most un­known Pol­ish girl!

When I ac­cept­ed, I was in the sev­enth heav­en of de­light.

Next day he called and we set forth; at a de­sert­ed spot in the woods near War­saw he tried to kiss me–I struck him in the face with the butt of his own whip.

That was why he had hung on my words, that was why he had tak­en me for my drive; it was my Pol­ish body that in­ter­est­ed _him_–not Poland.

The Prime Min­is­ter of Rus­sia was con­fined to his room for two days, “ow­ing to an in­dis­po­si­tion.” How I laughed when I saw the bul­letin in the pa­per, signed by two doc­tors, but it taught me a les­son; I nev­er dreamt idle dreams again.

No, I am wrong, my beloved. I dreamt an idle dream, a love­ly dream about you and I. An af­ter-​the-​war dream, if this war should ev­er end, but like oth­er dreams it has end­ed–in dreams.

But I must hur­ry, for my lit­tle watch tells me that one hour of my five has gone, and I have much to say.

I could have mar­ried, and mar­ried bril­liant­ly, but Poland held me back. I did not know what I could do for my coun­try, it all seemed so hope­less, and yet I felt that per­haps one day … and I felt I ought to be sin­gle when that day came.

It was not easy, my Karl, some­times it was hard; one man there was, Sergius was his Chris­tian name; he loved me mad­ly, and some­times I thought–but no mat­ter, he is dead now, killed at Tan­nen­berg, and I–well, I will tell you more of my sto­ry.

When the war broke out and cloud­ed over that last beau­ti­ful sum­mer in 1914 (I won­der will there ev­er be an­oth­er like it in your life­time, my Karl? No, I don’t think it can ev­er be quite the same af­ter all this!), we were all in the coun­try. Alex was back from his school in Pet­ro­grad, and my fa­ther kept him at home for the au­tumn term.

How well I re­mem­ber the ex­cite­ment, the mo­bi­liza­tion, the bless­ing of the colours, the wave of pa­tri­otism which swept over the coun­try; even I, un­der the in­flu­ence of the specious procla­ma­tions that were is­sued broad­cast by the Gov­ern­ment, with their promis­es of re­form, and re­dress for Poland af­ter the war was over, felt more Rus­sian than Pol­ish. Lies! Lies! Lies! that was what the Gov­ern­ment promis­es were, my Karl.

Un­der the stress of war the rot­ten­ness of that great whit­ed sepul­chre, Rus­sia, feared the re­vival of the Pol­ish spir­it; it might have been awk­ward, and so they lied with their tongues in their cheeks, and we sim­ple Poles be­lieved them; the peas­antry flocked to their de­pots, lit­tle know­ing whom they fought, but the procla­ma­tions which were read to them told them they fought for Poland, and we wom­en worked and prayed for the suc­cess of Rus­sian arms.

Then the tide of war swept west­ward, and all day long and ev­ery day the troops, and the guns and the mo­tor-​cars and the wag­ons rolled through the vil­lage to the west.

Guard­ed hints in the pa­pers seemed to say that all was not well in France, but France was so far away, and all the time the Rus­sians were go­ing west through our vil­lage. Mighty Rus­sia was putting forth her strength, and the Aus­tri­an de­ba­cle was in full swing; these were great days, my Karl, for a Rus­sian!

Then one day the long columns of men and all the traf­fic seemed to hes­itate in the slug­gish west­ward flow, and then it stopped, and then it be­gan to go east. The weeks went on, and one day, very, very faint­ly, there was a rum­bling like a dis­tant thun­der­storm. It was the guns! The front was com­ing back.

Have you ev­er seen for­est fires, my Karl? We had them ev­ery au­tumn in our woods. If you have, then you know how all the small an­imals and the birds, the rab­bits and the fox­es, and per­haps a wolf or two, and the deer, and the thrush­es and the lin­nets come out from the shel­ter of the trees, flee­ing blind­ly from the great per­il, anx­ious on­ly to save their lives. So it was when the front came back. Herds of mou­jiks, the old men, the wom­en, the chil­dren, the poor lit­tle ba­bies, strug­gled blind­ly east­wards through the vil­lage.

Push­ing their mis­er­able house­hold gods on hand­carts, or stag­ger­ing along with loads on their backs, and weary chil­dren drag­ging at their arms, the hu­man tide flowed east­wards, round our house, begged per­haps a drink of wa­ter, and then wan­dered fever­ish­ly on­wards.

They knew not in nine­ty-​nine cas­es out of a hun­dred where they were go­ing; their on­ly des­ti­na­tion was summed up in the words, “Away from the Front”–away from the omi­nous rum­bling which be­gan to get loud­er, away from that west­ern hori­zon which was be­gin­ning to have a lurid glow at nights, like a sun­set pro­longed to dawn.

Then, as the Ger­mans ad­vanced more and more, the char­ac­ter of the tide changed, the civil­ian el­ement was out­num­bered by the mil­itary. Com­pa­nies, bat­tal­ions, brigades, some­times in good or­der, some­times in no or­der, marched through the vil­lage. They would of­ten halt for a short time, and the of­fi­cers would come up to the house, where my moth­er and I gave them what we could. My fa­ther lived amongst his books and ac­counts, and be­moaned the ex­trav­agance of the war. Then there were the de­sert­ers, the strag­glers, the walk­ing wound­ed, the–but you know, my Karl, what an army in re­treat means.

I must pro­ceed with my sto­ry, for time moves re­lent­less­ly on.

One day a des­per­ate­ly wound­ed of­fi­cer, a young Lieu­tenant of the Guard, a boy of twen­ty-​five, was tak­en out of a mo­tor am­bu­lance to die.

The am­bu­lance had stopped op­po­site our gates, and ly­ing on his stretch­er he had seen our gar­den, my gar­den. He knew he was to die, and he had begged with tears in his eyes to the doc­tor that he might be left in the gar­den.

Who could refuse him?

He died with­in two hours, amongst our flow­ers, with Alex and I at his side.

Be­fore he died, he begged us, im­plored us, al­most or­dered us, to move east be­fore it was too late.

We re­peat­ed his ar­gu­ments to my fa­ther, but the lat­ter was ob­du­rate, and he swore that a reg­iment of an­gels would not move him from his an­ces­tral home. So we made up our minds to stay.

Things got worse and worse, and one day shells fell in the grounds and we hid in the cel­lars. That night all our ser­vants ran away, and my fa­ther cursed them for cow­ards. Next day in the ear­ly morn­ing we heard ma­chine guns fire out­side the vil­lage, and then all was still.

At six o’clock Alex, white-​faced, came run­ning in­to the house. He had been down to the gates and he had seen the en­emy. They were drunk, he said, and go­ing down the street fir­ing the hous­es and shoot­ing the peo­ple as they came out.

It seemed im­pos­si­ble and yet it was true. It was grow­ing dark, when we heard shouts and saw lights, and from the top of the house I saw a crowd of singing and shout­ing sol­diers, with pine torch­es, half run­ning, half walk­ing up the drive.

They massed in a body op­po­site the house. Paral­ysed with ter­ror, I looked down on the scene, and shud­dered to see that ev­ery sec­ond man seemed to have a bot­tle. One of them fired a shot at the house, and next I re­mem­ber a flood of light on the drive, and, in the cir­cle of light, my fa­ther stand­ing with hand raised. What my fa­ther in­tend­ed can nev­er be known, for, as he paused and faced the mob, a soli­tary shot rang out, and he fell in a hud­dled heap.

As he fell, a boy­ish voice from the door shout­ed “Mur­der­ers!” It was Alex. With his lit­tle pis­tol I had giv­en him for a birth­day present in his hand, he ran for­ward and, stand­ing over my fa­ther’s body, head thrown back, he point­ed his pis­tol at the mob and fired twice. A man dropped, there was a flash of steel, the crowd surged for­ward, and–and, oh! my Karl, they had mur­dered my beloved broth­er, my dar­ling Alex.

The next mo­ment they were in the house. I es­caped from my win­dow on to the roof of the dairy, and from there down a wa­ter-​pipe, across the yard to an old hay-​loft. For a long time they ran in and out of the house, like ants, loot­ing and pil­lag­ing; then there was a great shout, and for some time not a soul came out of the house. I guessed they had got in­to the cel­lars. At about mid­night I saw that the house was on fire. In a few min­utes it was an in­fer­no and the drunk­en sol­diers came pour­ing out, fir­ing their ri­fles in all di­rec­tions.

I had found a piece of rope in the loft. One end I placed on a hook and the oth­er round my neck. I was close to the up­per doors of the loft, with a drop to the court­yard, and thus I stayed, for I feared that some sol­dier, more sober than the rest, might ex­plore the out­hous­es and find me. I was watch­ing this un­earth­ly spec­ta­cle, and nev­er, my best beloved, did I con­ceive that man could be­come low­er than the beasts, but be­fore my eyes it was so, when I no­ticed that the great gates at the south­ern end of the court­yard were open­ing. As they opened I saw that be­yond them were drawn up a line of men. An of­fi­cer gave an or­der, and two ma­chine guns were placed in po­si­tion in the gate en­trance; round the guns lay their crews, and the seething mass of rev­ellers saw noth­ing. I felt that a fear­ful tragedy was im­pend­ing, and as I held my breath with anx­iety the of­fi­cer gave a short, sharp move­ment with his hand and a hideous rat­tle rose above all nois­es. The pan­de­mo­ni­um that en­sued was in­de­scrib­able. Some ran help­less­ly in­to the burn­ing house, oth­ers ran round and round in cir­cles, oth­ers tried to get in­to the dairy; one man got up­on its roof and fell back dead as soon as his head ap­peared above the out­er wall. The place was sur­round­ed. It was hor­ri­ble. A few tried to rush for the gate, they melt­ed away like snow be­fore the sun, as their bod­ies met the piti­less stream of bul­lets. I sup­pose two hun­dred men were killed in as many sec­onds. The ma­chine guns ceased fire. Am­bu­lance par­ties came in­to the yard, col­lect­ed the dead and liv­ing, and with­in half an hour there was not a soul save my­self in the place. Dis­ci­pline had re­ceived its obla­tion of men’s lives.

As an ex­am­ple, it was one of the most won­der­ful things I have ev­er known in your won­der­ful army, my Karl, but it was ter­ri­ble–ter­ri­bly cru­el.

I nev­er knew what be­came of my moth­er, though I feel she is dead–mur­dered, per­haps, like my fa­ther and my dar­ling Alex, or per­haps she hid some­where in the house and re­mained pet­ri­fied with ter­ror till the flames came. Next morn­ing I left my hid­ing-​place and walked about. Not a Ger­man was to be seen, but in the wood was a huge new­ly-​made grave. It was all open war­fare then, and this fly­ing col­umn, which was miles in ad­vance of the main body, had moved on. The house was a smok­ing mass of ru­ins, but the farm build­ings had been spared, and I let out all the poor an­imals and turned them in­to the woods, so that they might have their chance.

All day I searched for my fa­ther and broth­er, but not a sign was to be seen, and at dusk I stood alone, faint and bro­ken, amongst the ru­ins of my an­ces­tors’ home. As I looked at this scene of des­ola­tion and I con­trast­ed what had been my life twen­ty-​four hours be­fore and what it was then, some­thing seemed to snap in my brain, and for the first time I cried. Oh! the blessed re­lief of those tears, my Karl, for I was a poor weak, help­less girl, and alone with death and bit­ter­ness all round me. Late that night I hid once more in my hay-​loft and next morn­ing I left Inko­vano for ev­er. Be­fore I left, I made a vow. It is be­cause of this vow, my beloved, that I am to die. For I vowed by the body of our Saviour and the mur­dered bod­ies of my fam­ily that, whilst life was in me and the war was main­tained, for so long would I work un­ceas­ing­ly for the Al­lies against Ger­many. As the war ran its fiery course, I have seen more and more that the Al­lies are the on­ly ones who will do any­thing for Poland, my beloved coun­try, so have I been strength­ened in my vow.

I struck south on my feet, as a poor girl–I, the daugh­ter of a prince­ly fam­ily of Poland! No hard­ships were too great for me, pro­vid­ed I could reach Al­lied ter­ri­to­ry. I trav­elled from vil­lage to vil­lage as a singing girl, and once I was driv­en away with stones by vil­lagers set up­on me by a fa­nat­ical priest. I came by Cra­cow, and across the Carpathi­ans, helped to pass the lines by a Hun­gar­ian Lieu­tenant–but I tricked him of his re­ward; I was not ready for that sac­ri­fice. Then across the Hun­gar­ian plains to Bu­da-​Pesth, where I re­mained three weeks, singing in a third-​rate café, to make some mon­ey for my next stage. But I had to leave too soon–the old sto­ry!–this time it was the pro­pri­etor’s son. What beasts men are, my Karl! And yet to me you are above all oth­er men, a prince amongst your fel­lows, and nev­er did I love you so dis­tract­ed­ly as that first night at the shoot­ing-​box, when I read the scorn in your eyes as you re­ject­ed me. I have no shame in telling you this. Am I not al­ready in the grave? And then I must be silent and can on­ly await your com­ing. Af­ter many strug­gles, weari­some to re­late, I came to Her­manstadt, and there, whilst push­ing my trade as a dancer, came in­to touch with a Hun­gar­ian band of smug­glers, work­ing across the moun­tain pass­es be­tween East­ern Hun­gary and Rou­ma­nia. I did cer­tain work for these men, and in re­turn crossed with them one bit­ter night in a thun­der­storm in­to Rou­ma­nia. At Bukharest I got a good en­gage­ment, and when I had saved a thou­sand marks, I bought a pass­port for five hun­dred, and came to Ser­bia, then stag­ger­ing be­neath the great Aus­tri­an of­fen­sive.

Once again I was in the hor­rors of a re­treat, but I es­caped, reach­ing Val­ona, and crossed to Brin­disi, by the aid of a French of­fi­cer to whom I told my sto­ry and who be­lieved me. His name is Pierre Le­man­sour, and he lives at Bor­deaux.

If for­tune places him in your pow­er, be kind to him, my Karl, for your Zoe’s sake.

I came to Rome; and thence to Paris. I stayed here three weeks, singing in a cabaret. Whilst here I tried to ad­vance my plans in vain! What could I, a poor girl, do for the Al­lies? The Em­bassy laughed at me, all ex­cept one young at­taché who tried to make love to me.

Then I thought of Eng­land–Eng­land, and her cold, hard is­landers, phleg­mat­ic in move­ments, slow to hate, slow to move, but once roused–ah! they nev­er let go, these is­landers!

One of their po­ets has said: “The mills of God grind slow­ly, but they grind ex­ceed­ing small.”

That, my Karl, is like Eng­land.

They are your most ter­ri­ble en­emies, and you know it.

Do not be an­gry with me when you read this.

For me it is Poland, for you Ger­many.

Where I am go­ing in a few hours there is no Poland, no Ger­many, no Eng­land, no war. And per­haps, per­haps, no love.

You and I, Karl, have loved, too well, per­chance, but our love was above even the love of coun­tries.

God made the love of men and wom­en, then men and wom­en cre­at­ed their coun­tries.

I see the fu­ture be­fore me, Karl, and I fore­see that the strug­gle will be at the end of all things, be­tween Eng­land and Ger­many. One will be in the dust.

Thus, I crossed to Eng­land and was swal­lowed up in the great city of Lon­don. Eng­land has al­ways had a cor­ner of her cal­cu­lat­ing heart for the small na­tions, and in Lon­don there is a Pol­ish or­ga­ni­za­tion. I ap­plied there, and one day I was tak­en to the For­eign Of­fice, and found my­self alone with a great En­glish­man. His name was–No, I promised, and it will not mat­ter to you, for though he gave me my chance, I have no love for him, and he will nev­er be in your pow­er. Even as I write these words, he has prob­ably tak­en a list from a locked safe and neat­ly ruled a red line through the name Zoe Sbeiliez. I tell you they know ev­ery­thing, these En­glish­men. I told him my sto­ry, and then he asked me whether I was pre­pared to do all things for the Al­lies. I told him I was. He then said that I could go as agent for a back area in Bel­gium, and my cen­tre would be Bruges. I agreed, and asked him in­no­cent­ly enough how I was to live in Bruges. He looked up from his desk and said:

“You will be giv­en fa­cil­ities to cross the Bel­gium-​Hol­land fron­tier, as a Ger­man singer.”

“And then?” I asked.

“You will go to Bruges and make friends with an Army of­fi­cer; he must be high up on the staff.”

I guessed what he meant, but hoped against hope, and I said: “How?”

I can still see his fish-​like face, hair brushed back with scrupu­lous care, as with­out a shad­ow of emo­tion he looked up, puffed his pipe, and said in mat­ter-​of-​fact tones:

“You have a pret­ty face and an ex­cel­lent fig­ure. Need I say more?”

I could have struck him in the face. I was speech­less, my mind a whirl of con­flict­ing emo­tions. I was roused by the lev­el tones again.

“Is it too much–for Poland?”

Oh! the cun­ning of the man; he knew my weak­ness. Me­chan­ical­ly, I agreed. Cer­tain de­tails were set­tled, and he pressed a bell. With­in five min­utes I was walk­ing back to my lodg­ings.

Thanks to a mar­vel­lous or­ga­ni­za­tion, which your po­lice will nev­er dis­cov­er, my Karl, with­in _three weeks_ I was singing on the Bruges mu­sic-​hall stage, and ac­cept­ed with­out ques­tion as be­ing what I was not, a Ger­man artist from Dantzig. The men were soon round me, but I had no use for young­sters with mon­ey. I want­ed a man with in­for­ma­tion. At last I found my man–the Colonel. He was on the Head­quar­ters staff of the XIth Army, the army of oc­cu­pa­tion in Bel­gium, when I first met him. Sub­se­quent­ly he went back to reg­imen­tal work; but by the time he was killed (and to re­al­ize what a re­lease that meant for me, you would have had to have lived with him) I had es­tab­lished reg­ular sources of in­for­ma­tion con­cern­ing which I will say no more. Let your coun­try’s agents find them if they can. This must I say for the Colonel: he was a brute and a drunk­ard, but in his own gross way he loved me, and he licked my boots at my de­sire, but I had to pay the price. You are a man, and with all your lov­ing sym­pa­thy you can but dim­ly re­al­ize what this costs a wom­an. To me it was a du­al sac­ri­fice of hon­our and life, but it was for Poland, and the mem­ories of my par­ents and Alex steeled me and strength­ened my res­olu­tion, and so, and so, my Karl, I paid the price.

My spe­cial work was on the mil­itary side, and con­sist­ed in mak­ing quar­ter­ly re­ports on the gen­er­al dis­po­si­tions of large bod­ies of troops, the mass­ing of corps for spring of­fen­sives, and big push­es and ham­mer blows.

Then you came in­to my life! When the Colonel used to go away it was my habit to mix in the de­mi-​mondaine so­ci­ety of Bruges, to try and live a few hours in which I could for­get–oh! don’t think the worst! _That_ sort of thing had no at­trac­tion for me. I didn’t seek obliv­ion in that di­rec­tion! I had nev­er even kissed any­one in Bruges un­til I kissed you that first night we met at din­ner–I was at­tract­ed to you from the very first; the Colonel was due back in a few days, and I sud­den­ly felt mad, and kissed you. I sup­pose you put me down as one of the usu­al kind, out to sell my­self at a price vary­ing be­tween a good din­ner and the rent of a flat! You will now know that I had al­ready mort­gaged my body to Poland.

Then a few days lat­er you will re­mem­ber we went down for that won­der­ful day in the for­est, and for the first time, Karl, I be­gan to see that I was re­al­ly car­ing for you, and a faint re­al­iza­tion of the dan­gers and im­pos­si­bil­ities to­wards which we were drift­ing crossed my mind.

Do you re­mem­ber how silent I was on the drive back? In a fash­ion, my Karl, I could fore­see dim­ly a lit­tle of what was go­ing to hap­pen. I had a pre­sen­ti­ment that the end would be dis­as­ter, but I thrust the idea away from me. Then came the day, just be­fore one of your trips–oh! the agony, my dar­ling, of those days, each an age in length, when you were at sea–when you told me at the flat that you loved me.

How I longed to throw my arms round your neck and aban­don my­self to your em­braces, but I was still strong enough in those days to hold back for both our sakes.

Each time we were to­geth­er I loved you more and more, and each time when you had gone I seemed to see with clear­er vi­sion the fa­tal and in­evitable end­ing.

But I re­fused to give up the first re­al hap­pi­ness that had been mine in my short and stormy life, and so I clung des­per­ate­ly to my idle dream.

I prayed, I prayed for hours, Karl, that the war might end, for I felt that in this lay our on­ly hope–but what are one wom­an’s prayers, a sin­ful wom­an’s prayers, to the Cre­ator of all things, and the war ground on in its end­less agony just as it does to-​night–Karl! Karl! will this tor­ture ev­er end?

But I must hur­ry, there is still much to tell you, and Time goes on re­lent­less­ly just like the war; it is on­ly life that ends. Then came the days I took you to the shoot­ing-​box for the first time, and that night I broke down and, unashamed, of­fered you my­self. Think not too bad­ly of your Zoe, my Karl; when a wom­an loves as I do, what is con­ven­tion? A noth­ing, a straw on the wa­ters of life. I want­ed you for my own, pas­sion­ate­ly and des­per­ate­ly, for I feared that any mo­ment the end might come, and to die with­out hav­ing felt your arms around me would have added a thou­sand tor­tures to death. Though I could have wel­comed death with joy when I saw the look of sor­row­ful con­tempt which you cast up­on me that night. Heav­ens above! but you were strong, my Karl. I am not ug­ly, and yet you re­sist­ed, and I hat­ed and loved you at the same time–oh! I know that sounds im­pos­si­ble, but it isn’t for a wom­an. I slept lit­tle that night and, feel­ing that I could not look you in the face in the morn­ing, I left for Bruges be­fore you got up.

I felt that I could trust you not to try and find out the se­cret of the shoot­ing-​box.

What a re­lief it is to be able to tell you ev­ery­thing frankly, and how I hat­ed the per­pet­ual game of de­cep­tion which I had to play.

I used to rack my brains for an­swers to your per­pet­ual ques­tion, “Why won’t you mar­ry me?” It was a des­per­ate risk tak­ing you down to the for­est, but you loved me so much that you nev­er ques­tioned the rea­sons I gave you for my se­cre­cy. I can tell you now, Karl, that in the ear­ly days when I used to dis­ap­pear from Bruges, it was to the shoot­ing-​box that I went.

But I will write more of that lat­er.

Did you suf­fer the same agony as I did be­fore you left for Kiel, and your pride would not al­low you to come to me? You un­der­stand now, my dar­ling, why I could nev­er mar­ry you, and when the Colonel was killed it be­came hard­er than ev­er. Once dur­ing that ter­ri­ble in­ter­view be­fore you went up the Rus­sian coast, I near­ly gave way and promised to mar­ry you. But how could I? I had sworn my vow, and even to-​night, though I stand in the shad­ow of death, I do not re­gret my vow.

It is in­con­ceiv­able that I could have mar­ried you and car­ried on my work–a spy on my hus­band’s coun­try–and if I ev­er thought of try­ing to do this im­pos­si­ble thing, a vi­sion which has par­tial­ly come true al­ways re­strained me.

I saw a sub­ma­rine of­fi­cer dis­graced and per­haps sen­tenced to death, be­cause his wife had been con­vict­ed as a spy!

No! it was im­pos­si­ble.

But if I could not mar­ry you, I still want­ed your love.

Then you went up the Rus­sian coast, and I heard of your re­turn in a sub­ma­rine ter­ri­bly wrecked. I guessed what you must have gone through, and de­ter­mined to see you, but when I en­tered your room and saw you ly­ing open-​eyed on your bed, with no one but a clum­sy sol­dier to nurse you, I could have wept. You know the rest; you can per­haps hard­ly re­mem­ber how I led you to my car and took you down to the for­est. Oh, Karl, are you an­gry with me for what hap­pened? Do you some­times think that I took an un­fair ad­van­tage of your weak­ness? Please! Please for­give me, you were so help­less, and I loved you so.

Then came those un­for­get­table weeks whilst your boat was be­ing re­paired, weeks which opened to me the door of the par­adise I was nev­er to en­ter. Oh! Karl, I pray that all those mem­ories may re­main sweet and un­cloud­ed all your life. Think of those days when you think of your Zoe. Alas! they came to an end too soon, and you left for the At­lantic. When you came back all was over; I had been caught at last.

The ev­idence at the tri­al was clear enough. I have no com­plaints. I was fair­ly caught. You re­mem­ber the big open space in front of the shoot­ing-​box? I do not mind say­ing now that five times have I been tak­en up from there in an En­glish aero­plane, and land­ed there again af­ter two days. Each time I took over a full re­port on mil­itary af­fairs. Not a word of naval news, my Karl; you will re­mem­ber I nev­er tried to find out U-​boat in­for­ma­tion. I even warned you to be cau­tious. Well, they caught me as I land­ed; the En­glish boy who had flown me back tried hard to save me, but it on­ly cost him his own life.

My first thought was of you, and there is not a jot of ev­idence against you, save on­ly your friend­ship for me. Re­mem­ber this fact, if they per­se­cute you. Ad­mit noth­ing, be­lieve noth­ing they tell you, de­ny ev­ery­thing; they have no ev­idence; but they are cer­tain to try and trap you.

It was no­ble of you, Karl, to en­gage Mon­sieur Labor­din in my de­fence, but it was use­less and may do you harm.

I al­so know of your ef­forts with the Gov­er­nor. I hoped noth­ing from him, but what you did has made me ready to die; I trem­ble lest you are com­pro­mised.

If on­ly I could feel ab­so­lute­ly cer­tain that I have not dragged you down in my ru­in I should face the ri­fles with a smile.

For my sake be care­ful, Karl.

When it is all over, cause a few lit­tle flow­ers to cov­er my rest­ing-​place, if this is per­mit­ted for a spy. Or­der them, do not place them your­self; you _must not_ be com­pro­mised.

I have told my sto­ry, and the end is very near. What else is there to say?

Mere words are emp­ty husks when I try to ex­press my thoughts of you.

Do not sor­row for your Zoe, to whom you have giv­en such hap­pi­ness.

I am not afraid to die and cross in­to the un­known, which, how­ev­er ter­ri­ble it is, can­not be much worse than this aw­ful war.

Karl! Karl! how I long to kiss you and feel your strong arms crush­ing the breath from this body of mine which has caused so much sor­row.

Oh, Moth­er Mary, sup­port me in this hour of tri­al.

I can­not leave you!

May the Saints guard you and keep you through all the per­ils of war, and grant that we meet again in the per­fect peace of eter­ni­ty.

For ev­er, Your de­vot­ed and ador­ing ZOE.

_Karl’s Di­ary re­sumed._

She is dead!

They have killed her, my Zoe, my adorable dar­ling, and I am still alive–un­der close ar­rest. Per­haps they will shoot me too, in their in­sa­tiable thirst for blood. Oh! if they would! Per­haps, my Zoe, if I could on­ly die and leave this use­less world be­hind, I might find you in the mys­te­ri­ous re­gions where your spir­it now dwells.

Oh! is it well with you, Zoe? Give me a sign–a lit­tle sign–that all is well. I have knelt in prayer and asked for a sign, but noth­ing comes–all is a blank, for­bid­ding and mys­te­ri­ous. Is God an­gry with us, my Zoe, that we sinned be­fore Him? Sure­ly, sure­ly He un­der­stands. He must have mer­cy on me if He is go­ing to make me go on liv­ing. If this is my pun­ish­ment, I can bear it; I will live with­out you hap­pi­ly if on­ly I may know that all is well with you.

* * * * *

Your let­ter, Zoe! Can you read these words as I write; can you sense my thoughts? Speak! Ah! I thought I heard your voice, and it was on­ly the laugh­ter of a wom­an in the street. Your let­ter has filled me with joy and sor­row. I read and re-​read the won­der­ful words in which you say you loved me from the be­gin­ning, but when you plead that I shall not turn in loathing from your mem­ory–with these words you smash me to the ground.

Most glo­ri­ous wom­an, I nev­er loved you so well and so pas­sion­ate­ly as the day you stood at the tri­al, ringed round with the wolves, the clever lawyers, the stol­id wit­ness­es, the pon­der­ous books, the cyn­ical air of re­li­gious solem­ni­ty with which the ma­chin­ery of the law thin­ly cloaks its lust for blood–for a life.

Even when my ears heard the sen­tence, I could not be­lieve it would be car­ried out. The fir­ing par­ty, the chair, the ban­dage. Oh, God! spare me these aw­ful thoughts. To think of your breasts lac­er­at­ed by the—-Oh! this is un­en­durable! Stop, mad­man that I am!

* * * * *

I am calmer now; I have read your let­ter again and res­cued the jour­nal from the grate in­to which I flung it.

The fire was out; I am not sor­ry; my jour­nal is all I have left, and in its pages are en­shrined small, fee­ble word-​pic­tures of par­adise on earth. To read them is to catch an echo of the mu­sic we both loved so well. Mu­sic! you were all mu­sic to me, my Zoe. Your voice, your move­ments, your ca­ress­es all seemed to me to speak of mu­sic.

I ask my­self, I shall al­ways ask my­self un­til the last hour, whether all that could be done to save you was done. I tried to tele­graph to the Kaiser for you, Zoe, but the wire nev­er got fur­ther than Bruges post of­fice; they stopped it, and put me un­der ar­rest. It was on­ly open ar­rest, my dar­ling, and on that last aw­ful night I forced them to let me see the Gov­er­nor. I, Karl Von Schenk, knelt at his feet and begged for your life. He sim­ply said, “You are mad.” I left the Palace un­der close ar­rest.

Was ev­er wom­an’s no­ble­ness of char­ac­ter so ex­em­pli­fied as in your life? Be com­fort­ed, Zoe, that in all my black sor­row I cling des­per­ate­ly to my pride in your strength. I long to shout abroad what you did and why you would nev­er mar­ry me, to tell all the gap­ing world that when you died a mar­tyr to du­ty was killed. I am so un­wor­thy of what you did for me, my dar­ling, and it tor­tures me with men­tal rend­ings to think that whilst I prid­ed my­self in my strength of mind, I was drag­ging you through the fires of hell. When I think of those six weeks we had to­geth­er, my brain says, “And they might have been months had you not spurned her in the for­est.”

Oh, Zoe! if the priests say truth and all things are now re­vealed to you, for­give me for this act of mine. Come to me in spir­it and give me men­tal peace.

[Il­lus­tra­tion: “…when there was a blind­ing flash and the air seemed filled with moan­ing frag­ments.”]

[Il­lus­tra­tion: “When I put up my periscope at 9 a.m. the hori­zon seemed to be ringed with pa­trols.”]

As I write like this, as if it was a let­ter that you might read, I am com­fort­ed a lit­tle; I re­ly ut­ter­ly on the hope, which I strug­gle to change in­to be­lief, that you can read this and know my thoughts.

For when I think that had things been oth­er­wise you might have been lean­ing over my chair at this mo­ment, and run­ning your cool fin­gers through my stiff hair; when I think of this, my dar­ling, the full re­al­iza­tion comes to me of the gulf which must di­vide us for some un­cer­tain pe­ri­od, and the lines of this page run mist­ily be­fore my eyes.

Zoe, my Zoe, strange things have hap­pened in this war; wives de­clare they have seen their hus­bands, moth­ers have felt the pres­ence of their sons; if the pow­ers per­mit, come to me once again, I im­plore you, and give me strength to live my life alone.

* * * * *

Ex­am­ined be­fore the Court of In­quiry to-​day. Fools! can’t they re­al­ize that I don’t care if they do shoot me?

In the Mess, peo­ple avoid me. What do I care? Not one of them is wor­thy to stand on the same soil that holds her beloved body. They have buried her in the Cas­tle grounds. In ac­cor­dance with her wish­es, I have ar­ranged for flow­ers. Per­haps one day when all this is over I may be able to live here and tend the place where she sleeps, free at last from all her cares.

* * * * *

At the Court of In­quiry they tried to cross-​ex­am­ine me on our life to­geth­er. Dolts! what do they aim at prov­ing? That I loved you? I hard­ly lis­tened. When they fin­ished the ev­idence, the Pres­ident asked me if I had any­thing to say! Any­thing to say! I felt like telling them they were cogs in the most mon­strous ma­chine for man­ufac­tur­ing sor­row and de­struc­tion that mankind had ev­er de­vised. I could have shak­en my fist in their solemn faces and shout­ed “Beasts! you mur­dered her! You de­stroyed that most won­der­ful wom­an who low­ered her­self to love me.”

Ac­tu­al­ly there was a long si­lence, and then the Vice-​Pres­ident, Cap­tain Fruh­ling­sohn, said, “Speak; we wish you well.”

It was the first touch of sym­pa­thy, the on­ly sign of hu­man­ity I had re­ceived in all these aw­ful days, and it touched my stub­born heart and the longed-​for tears flowed at last.

I mur­mured: “Gen­tle­men, I am no traitor; but I loved her as my own soul.”

“Dis­solve the Court. Re­move the pris­on­er.” Like the clash of iron gates, of­fi­cial­dom came in­to its own again.

* * * * *

So I am not to be shot! Not even im­pris­oned! “Don’t fall in love with en­emy agents again!”–that sum­ma­rized their ver­dict.

Ha! Ha! Ha! It is all hor­ri­bly fun­ny. The re­al rea­son is that they need me. I am a trained and skil­ful slaugh­ter­er on the seas; I am an es­sen­tial part of the great ma­chine. And they haven’t got any spares! I was in the Mess yes­ter­day when the En­glish pa­pers we get from Am­ster­dam ar­rived. Oh! a pret­ty sur­prise await­ed the first man who opened _The Times_. These En­glish had pub­lished the names of 150 U-​boat com­man­ders they had caught. There they all were. Chris­tian names and all com­plete. The on­ly thing miss­ing was a blank space in which to fill in our names when the time comes.

Din­ner was a silent meal last night, and next morn­ing some rat of a Bel­gian had post­ed the list on the gatepost of the Mess. The ma­chine has of­fered five hun­dred marks for his ap­pre­hen­sion–how fool­ish; as if by shoot­ing him they would take any names off the long list.

* * * * *

I am to sail at dawn to­mor­row. I shall not be sor­ry to get away for a space from this place with its min­gled mem­ories of de­light and death.

* * * * *

Back again, and I haven’t writ­ten a word for three weeks.

My bil­let last trip was off Fin­is­terre. I sight­ed two con­voys, but there were de­stroy­ers there; they are so black and swift I don’t go near them.

I don’t want to die in a U-​boat. It’s not worth while. It is easy to avoid these con­voys. I dive and make a great fuss of at­tack­ing, then I steer di­ver­gent­ly. No­body knows where the en­emy is ex­cept me; I am the on­ly one who looks through the periscope–I take good care of that. And then how I curse and swear when I an­nounce that the con­voy has al­tered course, and there is no chance of get­ting in to at­tack. None of them are so dis­ap­point­ed as I am!

The mines get on my nerves, there is no way of dodg­ing them, and Lord! how they sprout on the Flan­ders coast.

I am to go out in six days. It is very lit­tle rest. I be­lieve they want to kill me. But I won’t die! Not I.

I went to her grave yes­ter­day for the first time. I had thought I should weep, but I did not; in fact it left me quite un­moved. I feel she’s not re­al­ly dead; she comes to me some­times, al­ways at night when I am alone and when we are at sea. There’s noth­ing very tan­gi­ble, but I catch an echo of her voice in the surge of the sea along the cas­ing, or the sound of the breeze as it plays along the aeri­al. And so I will not die un­til she calls me, for up to the present her mes­sages have told me to live and en­dure.

* * * * *

A very awk­ward in­ci­dent took place last night. We were off the Naze and saw a steam­er some dis­tance away.

We dived to at­tack. When we were about a mile away I had a look at her, and some­thing about her put me off. I half thought she was a de­coy ship, and I pri­vate­ly de­ter­mined I would not at­tack. I steered a course which brought me well on her quar­ter, and as soon as I saw that it was im­pos­si­ble to get in­to po­si­tion to fire I in­creased speed on the en­gines and shook the whole boat in ef­forts which were os­ten­si­bly di­rect­ed to get­ting her in­to po­si­tion. At length I eased speed and bit­ter­ly ex­claimed that my luck was out.

The First Lieu­tenant sug­gest­ed that we should give her gun­fire, but I point­ed out that I had good rea­son to sus­pect her of be­ing a wolf in sheep’s cloth­ing, and as he had not seen her he could hard­ly ques­tion my judg­ment. I was go­ing for­ward, when I ac­ci­den­tal­ly over­heard the Nav­iga­tor and the En­gi­neer talk­ing in the ward­room. I lis­tened.

The En­gi­neer said: “The Cap­tain doesn’t seem to have the luck he used to com­mand.”

“Or else he has lost skill!” replied Ebert. “We nev­er fired a tor­pe­do at all last trip, and it looks as if we are fol­low­ing that prece­dent this time.”

I had heard enough, and, with­out their re­al­iz­ing my pres­ence, I re­turned to the con­trol room. I con­sid­ered the sit­ua­tion, and came to the con­clu­sion that they sus­pect­ed noth­ing, but it was ev­ident that their minds were run­ning on lines of thought which might be dan­ger­ous. I looked at my watch and saw that there was still two hours of day­light left, and then de­cid­ed to play a trick on them all. I re­lieved the First Lieu­tenant at the periscope, and when a de­cent in­ter­val of about half an hour had elapsed I saw a ship. This ves­sel of my imag­ina­tion, a ver­ita­ble Fly­ing Dutch­man in fact, I pro­ceed­ed to at­tack, and, af­ter about twen­ty min­utes of fre­quent al­ter­ations of speed and course, I elec­tri­fied the boat by bring­ing the bow tubes to the ready.

The usu­al de­lay was most ar­tis­ti­cal­ly ar­ranged, and then I fired. With se­cret amuse­ment I watched the two ex­pen­sive weapons of war rush­ing along, but des­tined to sink in­glo­ri­ous­ly in the ocean, in­stead of bury­ing them­selves in the vi­tals of a ship. An oath from my­self and an or­der to take the boat to twen­ty me­tres.

With gloomy coun­te­nance I curt­ly re­marked: “The port tor­pe­do broke sur­face and then dived un­der­neath her, the star­board one missed astern.”

So far all had gone well, but ten min­utes lat­er I near­ly made a fa­tal er­ror. We had been div­ing for sev­er­al hours, the at­mo­sphere was bad, and as it was dusk I de­cid­ed to come up, ven­ti­late, and put a charge on the bat­ter­ies. I gave the nec­es­sary or­ders, and was on my way up the con­ning tow­er to open the out­er hatch. The coxswain had just an­nounced that the boat was on the sur­face, when a ter­ri­ble thought paral­ysed me, and I clung help­less­ly to the lad­der try­ing to think out the sit­ua­tion.

It had just oc­curred to me that as soon as the of­fi­cers and crew came on deck they would nat­ural­ly look for the steam­er we had re­cent­ly fired at; this ship in the time in­ter­val which had elapsed would still be in sight.

As I came down, the First Lieu­tenant was at the periscope, look­ing round the hori­zon. Quick­ly I thrust the youth from the eye­piece, and, as calm­ly as I could, said: “I thought I heard pro­pellers.”

Half an hour lat­er we sur­faced for the night. I have been won­der­ing ev­er since whether they sus­pect, for the three of them were talk­ing in the ward­room af­ter din­ner and stopped sud­den­ly when I came in.

I must be care­ful in fu­ture.

* * * * *

I was sent for this morn­ing by the Com­modore’s of­fice, and hand­ed my ap­point­ment as Se­nior Lieu­tenant at the bar­racks Wil­helmshafen.

No ex­pla­na­tion, though I sus­pect­ed some­thing of the sort was com­ing, as three days af­ter we got in from my last trip I was ex­am­ined by the med­ical board at­tached to the flotil­la.

So I am to leave the U-​boat ser­vice, and leave it un­der a cloud! It is a sad come-​down from Cap­tain of a U-​boat to Lieu­tenant in bar­racks, a job re­served for the med­ical­ly un­fit for sea ser­vice.

Am I sor­ry? No, I think I am glad. Life here at Bruges is one long painful episode. No one speaks to me in the Mess. I am left severe­ly alone with my mem­ories. The night be­fore last I found a re­volver in my room, and at­tached to it was a piece of pa­per bear­ing the words: “From a friend.”

Per­haps at Wil­helmshafen it will be dif­fer­ent, and yet, when I went down to the boat at noon and col­lect­ed my per­son­al af­fairs and stepped over her side for the last time, I could not check a feel­ing of great sad­ness. We had en­dured much to­geth­er, my boat and I, and the part­ing was hard.

_At Bar­racks_.

As I sus­pect­ed when I was ap­point­ed here, my job is dead­ly to a de­gree, and my main du­ty is to sign leave pass­es.

Our great ef­fort in France has failed, and now the Al­lies re­act fu­ri­ous­ly. The great war ma­chine is strained to its ut­most ca­pac­ity; can it en­dure the load?

Our prop­er move is to paral­yse the Al­lied of­fen­sive by strik­ing with all our naval weight at his cross-​chan­nel com­mu­ni­ca­tions. The U-​boat war is too slow, and time is not on our side, whilst a ham­mer blow down the Chan­nel might do great things. But we have no naval imag­ina­tion, and who am I, that I should ad­vance an opin­ion?

A dis­cred­it­ed Lieu­tenant in bar­racks–that’s all.

Worse and worse–there are ru­mours of trou­bles in the Fleet tak­ing place un­der cer­tain con­di­tions.

It is the be­gin­ning of the end!

Last night the High Seas Fleet were or­dered to weigh at 8 a.m. this morn­ing.

A mutiny broke out in the _König_ and quick­ly spread.

By 9 a.m. half a dozen ships were fly­ing the red flag, and to-​day Wil­helmshafen is be­ing ad­min­is­tered by the Coun­cil of Sol­diers and Sailors.

There has been lit­tle dis­or­der; the men have been unan­imous in declar­ing that they would not go to sea for a last use­less mas­sacre, a last obla­tion on the blood­stained al­tars of war.

Can they be blamed? Of what use would such sac­ri­fice be?

Yet to an of­fi­cer it is all very sad and dis­heart­en­ing.

I have seen enough to sick­en me of the whole Ger­man sys­tem of mak­ing war, and yet if the call came I know I would glad­ly go forth and die when _tout est per­du fors l’hon­neur_.

Such in­stincts are bred deep in­to the men of fam­ilies such as mine.

We ap­proach the cul­mi­na­tion of events. To-​day Ger­many has called for an armistice. It has been in­evitable since our Al­lies be­gan falling away from us like rot­ten print.

The terms will doubt­less be hard.

* * * * *

Heav­ens above! but the terms are crush­ing!

All the U-​boats to be sur­ren­dered, the High Seas Fleet in­terned; why not say “sur­ren­dered” straight out, it will come to that, un­less we blow them up in Ger­man ports.

The end of Kaiser­dom has come; we are vir­tu­al­ly a re­pub­lic; it is all like a dream.

* * * * *

We have signed, and the last shot of the world-​war has been fired.

Here ev­ery­thing is con­fu­sion; the san­er el­ements are try­ing to keep or­der, the roughs are go­ing round the dock­yard and ships, loot­ing freely.

“Bet­ter we should steal them than the En­glish,” and “There is no Gov­ern­ment, so all is free,” are two of their cries.

There has been a lit­tle shoot­ing in the streets, and it is not safe for of­fi­cers to move about in uni­form, though, on the whole, I have ex­pe­ri­enced lit­tle dif­fi­cul­ty.

I was sum­moned to-​day be­fore the Lo­cal Coun­cil, which is run by a man who was a Pet­ty Of­fi­cer of sig­nals in the _König_. He rec­og­nized me and looked away.

I was in­struct­ed to take U.122 over to Har­wich for sur­ren­der to the En­glish.

I made no dif­fi­cul­ty; some one has got to do it, and I ver­ily be­lieve I am in­dif­fer­ent to all emo­tions.

We sail in con­voy on the day af­ter to­mor­row; that is to say, if the crew con­de­scend to fu­el the boat in time. Three loot­ers were ex­ecut­ed to-​day in the dock­yard and this has had a steady­ing ef­fect on the worst el­ements.

* * * * *

I went on board 122 to-​day, and on show­ing my au­thor­ity which was signed by the Coun­cil (which has now be­come the Coun­cil of Sol­diers, Sailors and Work­men), the crew of the boat held a meet­ing at which I was not in­vit­ed to be present.

At its con­clu­sion the coxswain came up to me and in­formed me that a res­olu­tion had been car­ried by sev­en­teen votes to ten, to the ef­fect that I was to be obeyed as Cap­tain of the boat.

I begged him to con­vey to the crew my grat­ifi­ca­tion, and ex­pressed the hope that I should give sat­is­fac­tion.

I am afraid the sar­casm was quite lost on them.

* * * * *

We are with­in six­ty miles of Har­wich and I ex­pect to sight the En­glish cruis­ers any mo­ment.

I wrote some days ago that I was in­ca­pable of any emo­tion.

I was wrong, as I have been so of­ten dur­ing the last two years.

In fact, I have come to the con­clu­sion that I am no psy­chol­ogist–I don’t be­lieve we Ger­mans are any good at psy­chol­ogy, and that’s the root rea­son why we’ve failed.

I do feel emo­tion–it’s ter­ri­ble; the shame–the hu­mil­ia­tion is un­bear­able.

I won­der how the En­glish will be­have? What a day of tri­umph for them.

The sig­nal­man has just come down and re­port­ed British cruis­ers right ahead; it will soon be over. I must go up on deck and ex­er­cise my func­tions as elect­ed Cap­tain of U.122, and rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Ger­many in de­feat. One last ef­fort is de­mand­ed, and then—-

_NOTE_

_This is the last sen­tence in the di­ary. It is prob­able that he sud­den­ly had to hur­ry on deck and in the sub­se­quent con­fu­sion for­got to res­cue his di­ary from the lock­er in which he had thrust it_.

ETI­ENNE.

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