Chapter VIII: With the “suicide Fleet”

High up on the foretop, on a narrow perch slung within a grey canvas cylinder that barely allowed elbow-room, Steve was on lookout duty. His eyes just topped the steel-hooped rim of his nest and a brisk breeze flattened back the brim of his white cap. It was his first go at it, and he was a little excited, a little proud and terrifically anxious. It was still early morning of the second day of patrol duty, so early that the odour of coffee was still floating up from the galley below. The _Warren_ was loafing along at some twelve knots an hour, but even so she rolled considerably and the cage swung from port to starboard and back to port, describing a good twenty degrees of an arc. Around him in every direction stretched a waste of grey-green water, a-sparkle in the sunlight save where, under the ship’s starboard side, a broad copper-hued shadow kept pace with her. Straight below, the foreshortened figure of an officer moved about the bridge. Forward of him the three-inch gun pointed an inquiring nose across the bow, gleaming dully. Turning his head, Steve could look into the cavernous mouth of the forward smokestack from which a yellow-grey vapour poured. White-capped forms moved briskly about the deck or lounged in the sheltered places. Somewhere astern was Spain, somewhere ahead, Ireland. For the rest Steve only knew that the Atlantic Ocean was beneath him――and doubtless a great deal of it, too――and that his eyes, after only twenty minutes up here in his dizzy perch were already aching with the strain.

Southeastward was the worst, for there the sunlight played queer pranks with the waves and dazzled the sight so that, to use Steve’s metaphor, muttered to himself, a dime’s worth of imagination would have easily created a whole covey of periscopes, to say nothing of subs themselves! Now and then he closed his eyes for a moment, while dark red spots glowed behind his lids, but only for a moment since he was eternally haunted by the fear that the other lookouts, or the officers on the bridge there with their glasses, would see something that he didn’t. More than once his heart missed a beat as, just for a breathless instant, some freak of sunlight conjured a distant periscope or the dark hollow of a wave took on the semblance of a dripping steel hull emerging from the sea. But it was wonderfully interesting, horribly exciting, and he wouldn’t have swapped that swaying steel-hooped cylinder for the steadiest bunk on the lower deck. In another half-hour or so his watch there would be over, for an hour of such eye-strain is all one can stand, and “one on and three off” is the rule for lookouts. The fear that he might miss something turned to the fear that there might be nothing for him to miss. He fairly ached for the sight of some object in that wide expanse of water. Even a floating log or wisp of wreckage would have answered; anything so that he might send his voice down to the bridge and prove that he was “on the job!”

The sun crept higher and the breeze, fresh and salty from the southwest, grew stronger and hummed a tune on the wireless aerial and slapped a line briskly against the mast. A flock of tiny blue-black birds swept across the bow, circled and spread low above the waves, melting into the irradiance of the sun. The navigating officer climbed the bridge ladder, sextant in hand, for his eight-o’clock observation. The appealing odour from the galley brought a wistful sigh from the foretop lookout. And then, on the heels of the sigh, came a gasp. Just on the edge of the luminous track of the sunlight was a spot. Steve stared intensely. The spot was lost to sight, danced into vision again, a tiny black something that was never a wave in the world! He closed his eyes, opened them again and looked. It was gone! No, it was there, further to the left! It was no periscope, for it was too far away, perhaps a full two miles, and it was not periscope shape. It looked――almost――like――――

Steve placed his mouth to the tube, and: “Small boat broad off the port bow!” he called.

The navigator unceremoniously tucked the sextant under his arm and two pairs of glasses swept into the sunlight.

“What distance?” called the Lieutenant. “I’ve got her! Empty, I think.” Steve put his head above the cage’s rim. Dimly he was aware of the mild commotion below and aft as the crew on deck piled to the port rail. Even an empty boat is an event after thirty-six hours of nothing. On the bridge the officers were still staring through their glasses, conversing in words too low for Steve to hear up in his roost, but the destroyer’s head was coming around and the smoke from the forward stack was heavier and greasier. Steve looked back at the dark speck. Already it seemed nearer, and as the _Warren_ turned the green, sun-flecked water from her sharp bow the object of her concern took form and shape. Minutes passed and Steve again hailed:

“She’s not empty, sir!”

There was no answer, but a slight wave of the executive officer’s hand said very plainly: “Don’t bother me. I’ve got eyes of my own.” Steve relapsed into his cage. The boat came nearer and nearer, a veritable cockle-shell of a craft. Oars glinted and a figure swung slowly back and forth until, realising that help was coming and that further exertion was unnecessary, the oars were shipped. The boat held three men――no, four, for one was huddled in the bottom.

“Fishermen,” called a voice from the rail below.

“And Frenchies,” said another.

“Been strafed, I guess. They must――――” The breeze blew the rest of it away. Now Steve could almost look down into the row-boat, and the destroyer’s speed slackened and the voice of her engines died to a mere hum.

“Ahoy the boat!” called a megaphoned voice from the bridge. “Row alongside and we’ll take you on!”

A babble of unintelligible language issued from three throats and floated down-breeze. One of the men waved a wooden bailer vehemently, but his eloquence of gesture was wasted. The “exec” shrugged his shoulders, but beckoned understandably and with a renewed torrent of speech the fishermen seized their oars and rowed tiredly for the slowing destroyer. Steve watched them come over the side, limp, pale and wet, Bretons as he knew by their picturesque costumes. Two of the rescuers leaped down and lifted the fourth occupant to the reach of willing hands. And then a quick command and the _Warren_ picked up her gait again, turned to her former course and lounged away, leaving the little fishing boat empty and pathetically alone.

When Steve’s relief came, ten minutes later, he hurried down and, between gulps of beautiful hot coffee and mouthfuls of wonderful canned beef, got the story from Hearn, GM3c, which, interpreted, meant gunner’s mate of the third class.

“They’re togging themselves in dry clothing now,” explained Hearn. “No one could understand a word they said until Carrick, the little Q.M. got at ’em. Say, he talked French like a frog-eater. He says, though, that the lingo these fellows talk is a sort of Bowery French.”

“Why didn’t they call me down?” asked Steve, his mouth full of bread and beef. “I’d have talked to them all right.”

“Sure,” replied Hearn. “Just like I did. Well, anyway, they’ve been floating around for three days now. The _Trois Freres_ was their boat, a little fishing schooner, or whatever they call a schooner in these foreign parts, and the Huns popped up alongside ’em one fine morning and――yes, sure it was U-boat. I said so, didn’t I? The Germans took every blessed thing aboard, including a catch of mackerel and all the food and all the money; even took the knives out of the men’s pockets, the great big hogs! Then they bombed the schooner and set those four chaps afloat in that two-by-twice dory, only they don’t call it a dory.”

“_Bateau_,” suggested Steve gravely.

“All right. Anyway, they were almost a hundred and fifty miles from land, and they had no food, and only one pair of oars. It was a mighty lucky thing the weather was decent, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, and a lucky thing I sighted them. If it hadn’t been for me――――”

“Yah, you! Everyone aboard saw that boat long before you did, you chump.”

“Sure! And you just didn’t mention it for fear of making a noise and waking up the other lookouts, eh?”

“That’s it,” laughed Hearn. “Seen that sidekick of yours today?”

“Only for a second,” replied Steve anxiously. “He said he was feeling better. Why?”

“Just wondered. Last time I saw him he asked me to get him some poison from the doctor. I guess he will get over it pretty quick, though.”

“Gee, I hope so. I’m afraid they’ll be firing him when we get back to Queenstown.”

“There’s a rumour around this morning,” answered Hearn, “that we’re to go west and do something important in the convoy line. If it’s so it means that we’re to bring in some of our troops, I guess.”

“Honest?” exclaimed Steve. “Are they sending them over so soon?”

“That’s what I hear. Regulars, you know. I hope it’s so, and I hope we get a look at ’em. Well, I’ve got to get busy. How do you like spotting?”

“Fine,” replied Steve. “But, it surely plays hob with your eyes. Mine feel as if they were full of sand.”

“I know.” Hearn nodded sympathetically. “Better climb in your bunk and close ’em awhile.”

First, though, after cleaning his mess kit, Steve paid a visit to Joe who was still prone in his bunk. “How are they coming, old man?” he asked. Joe opened one eye and gazed at him doubtfully.

“I――I guess I’m pretty nearly all right now,” he answered faintly, “but I’m scared to death to get up yet. I’m afraid it’ll come back. She isn’t rolling so much, is she?”

Steve, holding tightly to a stanchion, shook his head. “No, she’s as quiet as a kitten with a ball of yarn,” he said gravely. “How do you feel about a little broth?”

“Go away,” murmured Joe unhappily.

“Well, I don’t want to seem cruel, Joe, but if I was you I’d make an effort before long and try to report for afternoon watch. Did you hear about the Frenchies we picked up?”

Joe shook his head and looked mildly interested, and so Steve narrated with much detail the sighting and rescuing of the four fishermen.

“I suppose,” said Joe weakly, “you think you’re a wonderful little lookout, don’t you?”

“You’re jealous,” retorted Steve untroubledly. “Anyway, I got ’em before any of the rest did. Frankly, I don’t know what they’d do on this old tin tub if it wasn’t for me.”

Joe grunted and closed his eyes again. Then he opened the left one with an effort and fixed a wavering gaze on his chum. “Steve,” he muttered, “I was willing to die for my country when I started out on this grand career, but I didn’t think it would take so long!”

The _Warren_ patrolled an empty sea the rest of that day and at night, with all lights out, ploughed untiredly through the darkness. The next morning a British trawler was sighted and the four Brittany fishermen, clad in their own picturesque clothes again, were transferred to her. Shortly after that the destroyer turned her nose westward and went piling into a tumble of green sea that climbed aboard the bows and rattled like sleet against the canvas wind-shield of the bridge. The slender ship tossed and rolled and plunged, shivered and shook and rattled, and from her four grey stacks the oil smoke went streaking to windward in long scarfs. The engines hummed loudly and the air between decks fairly reeked of petroleum. In the hungry hour before dinner Steve and Joe and two others were huddled in the lee of the second stack. Joe, pale but determined, was keeping his eyes glued to the deck. He had eaten that morning for the first time since the _Warren_ had left Cape Clear behind her and, to use his own words, accompanied by a sickly smile, had done so not in vain. He had confided to Steve that if he once got safely ashore again he was going to ask for a transfer to the Army. Also that he hoped his folks would be willing to live abroad after the war was over, since he would never have the courage to go back to America so long as ships were the only means of getting there! Truso, second-class fireman, off duty, let his gaze roam aft to where, near the stern turret, were ranged a dozen or so depth bombs, villainous looking steel cylinders each containing some three hundred pounds of trinitrotoluol.

“Ever think what would happen to us,” mused Truso, “if a ‘moldie’ struck us astern? It’s a pleasant thought, is it not? There’s a good two tons of ‘truly rural’ back there, fellows, and it wouldn’t do a thing but spread us out for the matter of a mile. Bet you they wouldn’t find enough of the _Warren_ to put in a locket!”

“What’s the good of worrying about that?” asked Hearn. “If a German torpedo hits us most anywhere we’ll be perching on clouds.”

“’Twouldn’t more’n knock off our stern,” said Higgins, comfortingly. Higgins was a radio man, a tow-headed fellow of nearly thirty, whose rating badge on the left sleeve of his jumper showed the three chevrons and rays of an electrician of the first class and, also, two service stripes. “Leave her half her length and she’ll toddle home. I was on the _Warrington_ back in 1912 when a schooner ran foul of us and took our whole stern away aft of the fourth stack. We steered into port with the engines, all hunky. That’s what your watertight compartments do for you.”

“Two Summers ago,” chuckled Truso, “we were cruising off Maine in the _Beale_, a sister ship to this hooker, in a fog. First thing we knew, _biff-bang_ goes everything forward that’s standing, bridge stanchions, mast and number one stack, including our exec, who was on the bridge. Well, sir, it was nothing on earth but a dizzy old hay schooner. She’d swept her bowsprit right clean over us, taking everything in the way. ‘What you tryin’ tew dew?’ shouts the skipper, an old geezer of about sixty with a bunch of chin whiskers as long as my arm. ‘Run me daown?’ Well, I’d hate to tell you what our Old Man said to him, but I remember that he offered to kill him and not charge him a cent for it!”

“Was it a steel bowsprit?” asked Steve.

“Steel? Naw, nothing but a piece of spruce wood. If it wasn’t for splinters, I guess they’d make these things out of spruce instead of steel. They’d ought to, seeing the way that bowsprit raked us clean!”

“What’s the news in the world, Jack?” asked Hearn of the radio operator.

“Nothing much doing last night. Same old story. H.M.S. _Something or other_ wants H.M.S. _Whatshername_ to relieve her of escort; tramp steamer reports floating mine; some fellow reports a schooner on fire off Penmarch; _Cassin_ says she sighted a periscope and fired three shots and ‘thinks she hit,’ and so on. There were orders this morning, though. Came just as I switched off. Didn’t hear them decoded, but I have a hunch.”

“Well, open up. What’s the game? Why all the good old smelly fuel going up in smoke?”

Higgins winked solemnly. “Rules is rules, Sammy. You go ask the Old Man, or stick your head in the wardroom and ask the M.D. Bones is a great little confider, he is. There’s chow, praises be! I’m going to swallow mine lying down. Holding on today won’t get you anything. Observe the poor blighter in the foretop. He’s got a fine healthy swing up there!”

That afternoon there were two false alarms which supplied instant and hectic excitement but nothing else. Oddly enough the excitement was invariably shown by all hands in a more than usually quiet and contained demeanour. Steve and Joe found it quite natural to speak more slowly than ever when word came down from the foretop that a periscope was sticking up somewhere and to saunter to the side with an exaggerated carelessness. But that didn’t alter the fact that inside they were terrifically jumbled, and that they were always afraid their voices might break into a squeak if they spoke. One of the reported periscopes quickly resolved itself into nothing and the other into a floating spar. Later, the _Warren_ resumed standard speed, fourteen knots. Toward evening two trawlers waddled past, homeward bound, and that ended the day’s sensations. But shortly after four bells, in the middle of the “graveyard watch,” the engines began to hum again and the news leaked from wardroom to second deck that they were off in answer to an S O S to find a sinking cargo boat, a good two hundred miles south. With all four boilers steaming at just under twenty-nine knots, and the _Warren_ fairly throwing herself in and out of the seas, sleep was impossible. One could only brace every muscle and hope to stay in the bunk. On deck――topside in the vernacular――one dodged along the sloping spray-drenched surface in the manner of a monkey climbing about his cage. In the wireless hutch Higgins, receiver clamped to his ears, listened and wrote as the blue sparks darted and sputtered, while at the wardroom table, with the lead-backed code books open before him, the ship’s surgeon worked under the small-focussed light and turned the messages into King’s English: “Please hurry, going down fast”: “Broadcast submarine reported eight miles southeast, steamers keep off”: “H.M.S. _Spindrift_ struck by mine, latitude ――, longitude ――; no danger, relay east”: “All ships. Fresh-laid mine adrift ten miles E. S. E. Trawler notified.”

Once a sister destroyer blinked at them across leagues of tumbled water, she, too, evidently on the errand of succor. The _Warren_ had outdistanced her by daylight and about breakfast time was alone, searching the wastes for sign of ship or survivors. All day she doubled and crossed and never found so much as a floating spar until, just as a red sun sank past the rim of the watery world, a stove-in life-boat, almost awash, was picked up by the lookout and run down. That was all they ever found of the steamer and neither Steve nor Joe ever learned the fate of those aboard her, although the popular verdict on the destroyer that evening was that the small boats had got away long before the _Warren_ had reached the scene and were either making for the French coast or had been taken in tow. There were orders from the flagship then and the _Warren_ limped back the way she had come at a twelve-knot gait, her oil-tanks much too low to waste fuel on speed. A day later she zig-zagged her way past the cape and dropped anchor off Queenstown just as the lights began to show ashore.