"In the end, because I was afraid that none of the feminine make-ups was
quite good enough not to awaken suspicion at close range--I decided that
the heaving over of the 'baby' should be done by a 'gentleman' instead
of by a 'lady.' As one of the seamen put it, it was only 'nateral that
the nipper's daddy 'ud be lookin' arter 'im in time of danger,' and I
had read of sailors being entrusted with children on sinking ships. The
man I picked for the job--the 'father of the che-ild,' as he soon came
to be called--was not the one who had proved the best in distance
throwing in the trials, but rather one on whose cold-blooded nerve I
knew I could count in any extremity.
"He was a Seaman Gunner, named R----, and was lost a year ago when a
rather desperate 'Q' stunt he had volunteered for miscarried. He had
just the touch of the histrionic desirable for the intimate little
affair in question, and the way he played his part fully justified my
selecting him."
K---- leaned back in his chair and blew smoke rings for a minute before
resuming his story. "There are some kind of stunts, like this one I've
been trying to bring off for the last two or three months," he said,
"that always seem to hang fire; and there are others where, from first
to last, everything comes up to the scratch on time, just like a film
drama. That first one I'm telling you about was like that,
everybody--even to the U-boat--coming on to its cue. Indeed, when I
think of it now, the whole show seems more like a big movie than
anything else.
"By the time we were letter perfect in our parts, there came two or
three days of just the kind of a storm I wanted to make a good excuse
for a dinky little pleasure boat being out in the middle of the North
Sea. I took care, of course, to be 'blown' to the last position at
which an enemy submarine had been reported.
"Then, where a destroyer or a M.L. might have cruised round for a month
without sighting anything but fog and the smoke of some of our own ships
on the horizon, we picked up a Fritz running brazenly on the surface the
first morning. That was first blood for my harmless appearance right
there, for he must have seen us some time previously of course, and had
we looked in the least warlike, would have submerged before even our
lookout spotted his conning-tower.
"As it was, he simply began closing us at full speed, firing as he came.
It was rotten shooting at first, as shooting from the very poor platform
a submarine affords usually is, but, at about three thousand yards, he
put a shell through the fo'c'sl', luckily above the water-line. The next
minute or two was the most anxious time I had, for, if he made up his
mind to do it that way, there was nothing to prevent his sticking off
there and putting us down with shell-fire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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