“I don’t know, dear,” said the taxpayer’s wife.
II. A Striking Force
A Striking Force
Daybreak, drawing back the dark shroud of night from the face of the North Sea,{55} disclosed a British minelaying submarine making her way homeward on the surface. To the two oilskin-clad figures on the conning tower, chilled and streaming wet in the cheerless dawn, it also betrayed feathers of smoke above the horizon astern. The submarine promptly dived to investigate at closer quarters, and was rewarded by the spectacle of a German cruiser squadron, screened by destroyers, steering a northwesterly course at high speed.
{55}
The submarine did not attempt to attack with her torpedoes. She retired instead to where the sand-fog stirs in an endless groundswell, and the North Sea cod hover about the{56} wrecks of neutral merchantmen. In these unlit depths she lay for an hour, listening to the chunk of many propellers pass overhead and die away. She knew nothing of the mysterious chain of events which sent those cruisers venturing beyond the protection of the far-reaching German minefields. She was as ignorant of popular clamour in Germany for spectacular naval activity as she was of the presence of a large convoy of laden freighters a hundred miles away to the northward, escorted by destroyers and making for a British port. These matters were not her “pidgin.” On the other hand, having once sighted the German cruisers, she became very much concerned with getting the information through to quarters where it would be appreciated. Accordingly, when the last of the water-borne sounds ceased, the submarine rose to the surface, projected a tiny wireless mast above the wave-tops, and sent out the Call rippling through space.
{56}
It was addressed to a certain light cruiser squadron, lying at its buoys with the needles of the pressure gauges flickering and the shells fused in the racks beside each gun, waiting day and night in much the tense preparedness with which the fire brigade waits.
Within two hours the light cruisers were{57} out, ribands of foam and smoke unreeling astern of them, with their attendant destroyers bucketing and plunging on either side of them, flinging the spray abroad in the greeting of a steep easterly swell. The last destroyer swung into station ere the line of minesweepers, crawling patiently to and fro about the harbour approaches, were blotted from view in their smoke
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