With Beatty off Jutland: A Romance of the Great Sea Fight — Text and Context

e but an antidote to the ceaseless strain of days and nights of watch and ward.

"To get back to things mundane," persisted the engineer-lieutenant as the trio sat down to their belated meal, "will they find it?"

"It is my firm belief that they will," replied Sefton decisively. "Even if we have to mark time about here for another month."

"Heaven forbid!" ejaculated the surgeon piously, "I pine for fresh water. Your vile condenser-brewed fluid is simply appalling, my festive Box-spanner. And I yearn for newspapers less than a week old."

The engineer-lieutenant glared defiance at his medical confrère. He knew perfectly well that the water on board was brackish and insipid, but it was condensed under his personal supervision. Any disparaging remarks upon his _métier_--even if uttered in jest--touched him to the quick.

A resumption of the "scrap" seemed imminent, when a bluejacket, tapping at the ward-room door, announced: "Captain’s compliments, sir; they’ve just hooked it."

CHAPTER II--The Recovered Cable

Instantly there was a wild scramble on the part of the three officers to gain the deck, all other topics of interest vanishing before the all-important information.

A cable’s length on the port beam the _Carse o’ Gowrie_ was backing gently astern in order to close with her consort. The _Dimpled Lassie_ was pitching sluggishly. Way had been taken off her, while over her squat counter the wire hawser attached to the Lucas grapnel was "straight up and down" under the steady strain of some heavy and still submerged object.

From the destroyer’s bridge a signalman was semaphoring rapidly by means of hand-flags. The _Dimpled Lassie_ replied. The man had just finished delivering the message to Lieutenant-Commander Crosthwaite when Sefton and the other officers gained the bridge.

"There’s no doubt about it now," declared Crosthwaite breezily. "They’ve just reported that the thing is two fathoms off the bottom. The _Carse o’ Gowrie_ is going to help take the strain."

"Hope it won’t carry away, sir," remarked Sefton.

"Never fear! Where the patent grapnel grips, it holds. What water have we?"

A cast with the lead gave 19 fathoms, the tide having risen 7 feet. The tidal current was setting south-east a half east, with a velocity of 1-½ knots.

"Tide’ll be slacking in half an hour," said the skipper. "The less strain we get the better. Signalman!"

"Ask the _Dimpled Lassie_ to report the state of the dynometer."

Promptly came the reply that already the strain on the grapnel hawser was 2-½ tons.

"And the breaking strain is four, sir," Sefton reminded his chief.

"We’ll get it all right," reiterated Crosthwaite. "Never fear."

His optimism was justified when forty-five minutes later the grapnel sullenly bobbed above the surface, holding in its tightly-closed jaws the bight of a large submarine electric cable.

"Let’s hope we’ve hooked the right one," muttered the engineer-lieutenant.

"You atom of despondency!" exclaimed Stirling.

"I state a possibility, not a probability, Pills," rejoined Boxspanner. "It’s a three-to-one chance, you know."

Already a number of artificers, who had been temporarily detailed for duty on board each of the trawlers, were hard at work in connection with the retrieved cable. What they were doing in connection must remain a matter of conjecture, but the fact was patent that the success or otherwise of unremitting toil depended upon the next few minutes.

Impatiently the young lieutenant-commander of the _Calder_ awaited a further signal announcing the result of the investigations. When it came it was highly satisfactory.

"Thanks be for small mercies!" ejaculated Crosthwaite fervently. "Signal M’Kie and tell him to take due precautions in case a ground swell sets in from the east’ard."

The cable was one of three that in pre-war time connected the little Norfolk fishing-village of Bacton with the German island of Borkum. Two more ran from Borkum to Lowestoft, the whole system being partly British and partly German controlled.

Immediately upon the declaration of war the telegraph cables had been severed, both in the neighbourhood of the British coast and in the vicinity of the German island fortress. To all intents and purposes it seemed as if the cables were nothing more than useless cores of copper encased in gutta-percha, rotting in the ooze on the bed of the North Sea.

Yet in spite of the most stringent precautions on the part of the British Government to prevent a leakage of news, the disconcerting fact remained that, thanks to an efficient and extensive espionage system, information, especially relating to the movements of the Grand Fleet, did reach Germany.