THE DOVER PATROL

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3096, 29 May 1917, Page 3

THE DOVER PATROL

A CORRESPONDENT'S NIGHT AT SEA

STARING FOR FRITZ

(By Harold Asliton in the "Daily Mail")

It was allowing bard in the sting of a whiplash wind when our Destroyer Patrol—the shark-hounds of tho Clianout of harbour, fooling tliuir way through tho smother to set about their day-and-night business of watching for Fritz and picking up, incidentally, any other job that happened to come their way. The sea ivas cold, vicious green, and every lifting wave seemed to have the consistency of tpun glass as wo rose to it or charged it — when it broko with a brittle crash, like champagne glasses smashing. l'rom the towering hill behind us wo could just seo the outline of the laud, grey and shimmering, like a landscape in a dream. The gulls wheeled over ic, screaming; high abovo them rodo a leash of aeroplanes balancing in the gusty morning like kestrels, and seeing; ua off the premises. . . . Only a quarter of an hour before the admiral had

wished mo a pleasant trip. That quarter of an hour now seemed aeons away. The Channel was battering us and bruising us. Aft, in tho galley, the cook had already collapsed and had been led away, with a haggard, green face, leaving tho gunner and a couple of deck hands to prevent the liver and bacon and the eoup from being jerked overboard at the hearings and convulsions of the ship. To climb to the bridge was a perilous adventure in mountaineering. Here crouched three figures, swathed from head to heel like Polar explorers. Tho glass of the wind-screen was sweating and trickling like the window of a railway carriage. From time to time the captain wiped clear patches with the finger of his fur glove and made very uncprnplimentary remarks about the snow. Behind him stood tho steersman, ' a swaddled mummy with a blue nosetip dripping icicles. "Half a point west," said the captain. "Damn this snow. ... .Wo're getting o(E our course."

"11—m—in," replied the mummy through his comforter as tho wheel swung. . ,

The skipper was surrounded by a congregation of wide-mouthed speaking tubes. Into one ho spoke—"Whack her up to 200."

. Down, in tho engine-room they whacked her up, and as shu drove her noso into tho mess the frothy wave-tops came over us like shrapnel. ,A cable's length ahead our leading ship, tlo Quarrelsomo (we were, for this special occasion, a squadron of the Q ciass) could be seen, dimly. She was getting it in tho neck badly, and began to ttlk to us with her semaphore. Tho signalman by my side spelt out the message delivered by tne widely-waving scarecrow arms —

Querulous (that was ourselves) to patrol first-line trench; Quince to proceed. We had to repeat this to tho Quack, who was immediately behind us, and she hud to pass on the word to the Quince, who was behind her, though invisible to us in the shroud of the snow_ curtain. Our semaphore broko , out into energetic physical exercises, somebody down below whacked her up to another twenty revolutions, and the captain, turning to me, said, bitterly, "Sow you know tho worst, mister. Our job to-uight's loopin , tho giddy loop!" "What particular sort of naval excrciso is that?" I asked. "In the words'of-the. late lamented Prime Minister," replied tho skipper— ">'\Yaifc and seel' " Our daylight job was dead easy. All wo had to do was to spot all shipping and to exchange sarcastio remarks with the trawlers and the "drifters hanging about in our neighbourhood, to keep our eyes-skinned for mines adrift, and to examine anything wo snw in tho water. " There was barely a twenty-mile span to manoeuvre in, but in tho snow distances seemed illimitable. You could see, perhaps, half a mile ahead through tho wrack. At one moment something -would stand out clearly, only to vanish again, like a conjuring trick. The driving snow muted all sounds and played the most amazing tricks with the visioli. The only sounds that accompanied us were the angrv slaps of tho sea on our steol skin and the everlasting, tiger-like purr-rr of the immaculate turbines. Pounce on a Trader. Presently tho captain barked something sudden and fierce into the ear of the mummy; tho wheel swung, and so did the ship as we swerved giddily to starboard and charged at a patch in tho haze. I had seen nothing—but the captain had; and with the swiftness qf a hawk he pounced upon it. The smudge materialised, all in a moment, into a ship-a friend and a brothertho King of the Trawlers. You can identify him by BO niething ( never mbl(i what) hodisplays at his mast-head. His Majesty was vacuously indignant at bemg bumped into like this Ho wagged a snorty inquiry at us—"What the blazes . . .?"

Wβ apologised handsomely. «p 0 sorry! , said our semaphore. "But we thought for the moment . . . you never know you know!" And wo danced on to take lip our station again, a hu ea hSd 81VWg . us a friend ly shove-off be"l tako off my liat to those chaps Zr iy ,' um ° l ."»d -the captain. They're It—absolutely Ifc! jf 0 weather's too bad for 'em. They're our eyes and our ears. They know evorv blessed wave m the Channel—not merely as passing acquaintances—but t'icv address 'em\ their Christian names. Inoyll do. any blessed thine ?1 f° . an S vhero ' an( J chance the dux! They're just s i m pi o iishermen, . but they run 4 e whole show, and they run it magnificently—guns, semaphore wireless— everything! They live on kippers and bread and tea, and I don't believe they over go to sleep. . . . Comedown below for five minutes and have somo tea. I here's just time before we get to the trenches which mark tho limit of our patrol." .Wo crawled down a manhole of the circumference of a pavement coal-shoot and tumbled into tho wardroom, where before an open, tiled fireplace, four young officers lay fast asleep. Tho skipper yelled "Tea!" in their ears, and they awoke to the appearance of a pantomimo teapot holding a gallon a. Gargantuan jam pot, a . huge Christmas cake, and piloa of otter jolly things. At tho same momont a wavo or dimensions to match camo along and flung us all with a crash and a clatter into the south-west corner of the wardroom. But wo managed to make a meal out of the wreckage, and when wo_ crawled up out of tho manhole again wo found that night had shut down over the sea. There was a slight sprinkle of diamond dust in the skv, but the sea was dead black. Everything was battened down; not smallest twinkle of a light showed anywhere, Our two torpedo tubes were trained outboard, muffled figures crouched at tho guns, and up on tho bridge you could see nothing hut a diso of light about the size of a saucer, which shone out of tho binnacle and illuminated the blue nose-tip of tho mummy, who was still at the wheel and seomed to be frozen there f ho Quarrelsome was still leading us a cable-length (200 ft.) ahead. She herself was invisible; all wo could sea was

tho foaming wash astern of her, Everything else was utter blackness. Eyes "Out Like Hatpogs." "Now you can sec for .yourself," said tho skipper, "tho sort of job our is. You stnre and staro at nothing for hours ami hours and hours, until you can feel your eyes sticking out like liatpegs. Looking for Kritssy—end n hundred and twenty-nine other possibilities—and any one of 'em likely to happen at any nioment! 'Specially where ive aro at this nioniont, running along I tho outer edge of tho Jirst lino of Channel trenches, where there's all .sorts of things ready and waiting for the stralin , of tho gentle Hun. And ■we're just as likely to bump into 'em as Fritz is. (Whack her up a, hit. helow 1). "To-night's tho sort of night anything might happen. Hellish dark, and smells of cheese, as tho immortal Jorrooks says. . . . I've been ou this coolies' job just over two years, and m that timo I've seen tho oneniy onco —for twenty minutes. . . ." A sudden sharp crackle overhead, as though a fivo of dry sticks was being lighted, broke into the captain's talk. "Hullo," said ho. "Wireless." In half a. minute tho message camo iip from tho wireless cabin 'mincdiatvly below our feet. "Break the glad news, vSuotty," said tho skipper to his junior, who stood by. Ibe other dived head and shoulders into a tarpaulin bag, turned <in a Httla electric bulb, and road tho message. It was a report from our old friend the Jung of the Trawlers:

"Where's lat. —, long. 4, Snotty?" asks tho shipper sharply. ■Five miles off Dieppe, sir." responds tho junior. "You'll find it on chart , sir." "That's off our heat," remarked tho captain. "Quinco's funeral—not ours. Carry on!"

. So we carried on, fantastically looping the loop in the inky darkness, and watching with cat's-ey'o keenness the danger-lino. For an hour nothing happened. Then :

, Another of the Q's had tliat littlo job j wo were too far away. (Wo heard, at dawn, that the aeroplane had recovered just in timo within n hundred rcet of immersion and had flown safely homo to roost. But tho nimblo yuinco was there, waiting for her, had slio dropped.) , Again a spell of silence. More looping tho loop. Mummy's trick at tho wheel was over, his four hours being up. Another lminimy camo to roliovo mm, and at his coming Wireless spoko again. ... ' What Vice-Admiral said is faithfully recorded m tho log of H.M.S. Quoriilous and rounded up with tho laconio remark: Action taken; Guns' crows closed "p. Everything ready for battle. • • ■• No battle. End. . And so throughout tho long, blistering .night. No sight of anything, mi sound except tho occasional cracklo of Wireless. Quiekfoot and xhe First Division of tho destroyer attacking squadron wero out and no doubt very near us, steering S.E. hell-for-leathcr. ri Ve \ captain's oyos, sticking out like hat-pegs, saw nothing. Nor did tho ears of tlio master-gunnor hear a sound, though tlioro never wero such ears in all tho Fleet. Wo stuck at it grimly, looping tho loop—up unci down, up and down,. Below they kept on whacking her up, and when tho <lawn crept up at last, cold as moonshine, there was an empty sea. heaving around us, a westerly wind' was blowin« -up a cold drizzle of rain, and Home, for all we could see,-might have been a thousand miles away.

"Nothing, doing after all!" said tho captain weahly, as ho wiped his liatpegs with a ( green silk handkerchief and attempted to roll a cigarette with frozen fingers. "What a life I"