When the boats rowed off the poor woman went mad, rushing about
wildly, with piercing shrieks, and finally, just as the German was
coming on board, throwing her baby straight into his conning tower.
What the Germans thought of this will never be known; for the baby was
made of rubber filled with high explosive, and it blew the sub to
smithereens.
CHAPTER XXVII
SURRENDER!
(1918)
As Jutland broke the spirit of the Germans who fought on the surface so
minefields, netting, convoys, patrolling, and Q boats broke the spirit
of those who fought in submarines. Drake's Sea-Dogs would take their
chance of coming home alive when the insurance on their ships used to
be made by men whom Shakespeare calls the "putters-out of five for
one." As we say now, the chances were five to one against the Sea-Dog
ship that went to foreign parts in time of war. But, when the odds
reached four to one against the German subs, the German crews began to
mutiny, refusing to go aboard of what they saw were fast becoming just
new steel coffins of the sea.
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