"I shouldn't be surprised if there were another U-boat knocking around," remarked Vernon. "From our limited experience we know that they work either in pairs or threes."
"Then the worse for them," rejoined Barry. "It would be a great wheeze to bag two of them in one day. Desperate diseases need desperate remedies, you know."
Therein the Sub voiced the unanimous opinion of the British Navy. At the commencement of the war, the torpedoing of several battleships and cruisers by German submarines aroused no enmity within the hearts of the British tars. They realized that a warship is "fair sport" to the submarines of the opposing side. To run the risk of being blown up was one of the excitements to undergo in the course of duty. But when it came to torpedoing helpless merchantmen, and jeering at the death-struggles of the unfortunate crews, Jack Tar began to regard the unterseebooten in the light of pirates and murderers. The wanton destruction of the _Lusitania_, accompanied by the appalling death-roll of non-combatants, women and children, literally sounded the death-knell of the crews of von Tirpitz's jolly-Roger-flying submarines. In their methods of "frightfulness" they had overreached themselves. They had sown a wind: they were now reaping a whirlwind with a vengeance.
And now the great silent Navy was paying back von Tirpitz in almost, but not quite, his own coin. While the much-advertised blockade of Great Britain was petering out, British submarines were playing havoc with German shipping in the Baltic--a sea which the Teutons regarded as being almost their very own. Yet what a difference marked the methods adopted by the humane commanders of our submarines when dealing with German mercantile shipping. A punctilious regard for the safety of the crews of overhauled merchantmen won admiration even from the seamen of the destroyed vessels. Humiliation and reproach seemed to haunt the white-bearded dotard, whose hands had sought in vain to wrest the trident from Britannia's virile grasp.
At about five in the afternoon the _Capella_ arrived at her station off Beachy Head, relieving her sister ship the _Markab_, that, with three other motor-driven craft, had been engaged in a vigorous, but for the most part uneventful, patrol.