Chapter VI: Pete to the Rescue

After a seemingly interminable time Dave came sputtering back to the surface, breathless, dazed, feeling very much as if he had been shot from a mortar. His head rang and he was conscious of lameness in his arms. For a moment, satisfied to keep his head out of water, he trusted to the buoyancy of his life-vest and tried hard to realize what had happened. Failing, he took stock of his chances of rescue. At first they looked very slim. About him nothing was visible save the golden mist, which, seen from the surface, was slowly writhing under the first breath of a gentle breeze. Then the sharp bark of a rapid-fire gun shattered the silence. It came from his left. He started to strike out in that direction, but after a few strokes stopped. From back of him had come a second shot, and of the two the latter somehow sounded more like the bark of the _944’s_ three-inch guns. He swung about and swam in the new direction, and as he did so a third shot rang out, and then a fourth, and he thought he could hear the sing of the shells. Two shots answered from the other gun, which now seemed in a new quarter. He judged that he was safely out of range and that the chaser and U-boat were engaged in a running fight. How either could be visible to the other in the mist he could not understand, not realizing that the mist, while heavy just above the water, was fast burning off above. The firing continued briskly for several minutes and then stopped, and by that time both guns sounded much farther away and he realized with a sinking heart that the _944_ had abandoned him.

That knowledge and the fact that it hurt him horribly to use his arms stopped his labors and he let himself float. Fortunately, the sea was almost as calm as the proverbial millpond, as though the blanket of mist was holding it smooth. His life-vest held his shoulders just above the surface, and, he reflected, as long as the calm lasted, he would be able to bob about until hunger or exhaustion did its work. Somehow, the chance of being picked up didn’t enter far into his calculations. He seemed so absolutely alone and so tiny in that immensity of ocean! Perhaps, he thought, when the mist cleared off his plight wouldn’t look so hopeless, but just now he was thoroughly despairing.

His thoughts jumped from one subject to another in a way that left his mind tired and confused, and he ended by trying not to think at all. That, however, was impossible, and he was soon back at it. He wondered whether his mother would give up the home at Sparrensville and join his sister and her husband in California, whether the _944_ had escaped from the submarine, how Tom Stearns’s leg was, what Pete Rooney was doing, and whether Pete would miss him, whether there were sharks in those waters, what time it was――

Well, he could easily find that out, and he lifted his right arm to look at the little silver watch that had been strapped about his wrist. But it wasn’t there, and he remembered taking it off when his arm was being bandaged because the blood had trickled down and stained the leather. He had dropped it in a pocket, but he didn’t care enough now to search for it. Besides, he reflected dismally, the water had probably stopped it before this. For some reason that seemed the last straw, and he sniffed a few times and felt tears gathering in his eyes. Then the absurdity of crying because his watch had stopped struck him and he laughed aloud, a trifle hysterically, and felt better. After all he wasn’t dead yet. Lots and lots of folks had been rescued in mid-ocean, and why not he? Hadn’t Pete declared just the other day that he was never born to be drowned? He began to take courage again. Things might have been worse, he told himself, with an attempt at philosophy. The water might have been much colder and ten times rougher, and it might have happened at night. Now the sun was making itself felt more every minute and its warmth was good. He was talking aloud to himself by this time, and the sound of his own voice was cheering. To prove that he was not altogether downhearted he pursed his lips to whistle.

The whistle didn’t come, though, for at that moment he heard a faint cry from the mist. It sounded so much like his own name that he feared for a second that his mind was wandering. But there it was again:

“Ki-i-id!”

He must be dreaming. Or had he only heard the cry of a gull? But he answered, putting all his breath in a long shout of “Hello!” Then he waited, his heart beating so loudly that he feared he would not hear the response if it came. But he did. From afar trailed the faint thread of sound: “Shout ... again!”

He shouted, not only again but many times. They were seeking for him in a boat. His troubles were over or soon would be. He forgot the pains in his arms and shoulders and struck out vigorously toward the distant voice. It was nearer now, and its message was, “Coming, Kid!” It was Pete.

Through the golden haze, now fast thinning, the two voices drew nearer and nearer. Dave listened for the sound of oars, and was puzzled at not hearing them. Then Pete’s cheerful tones were almost at hand, and Dave, pausing in his swimming, strained his eyes to find him.

“Are you all right?” called Pete.

“Yes. Where are you?”

“Coming as fast as I can, Kid! It’s slow work, but――”

And then out of the haze not many yards distant something took shape, something just above the water that was never in the world a boat! Dave stared bewilderedly as into his vision floated the grinning countenance of Pete, freckles and all. He was swimming and pushing ahead of him one of the chaser’s big life buoys!

“Get aboard,” called Pete. “Gee, that’s the craziest thing I ever tried to shove!”

“Where――where did you come from?” gasped Dave.

“Oh, I just dropped over for a swim. Lay hold of this, Kid, and rest yourself. Sure you’re all right? Gee, when I saw you take a backward flip over the side I thought you was a gonner! ‘Good night!’ says I. But you came up all right just before the fog hid you an’ I guessed you wasn’t dead yet. You and the deckhouse sort of went off together, Kid!”

“What happened?” asked Dave. He put his elbows over the canvas rim of the buoy and tried to get his breath back.

“Oh, nothin’ much, except that sub sneaked up on us again an’ exploded a shell in the after-house. Why you wasn’t killed is beyond me! I was comin’ along the deck when it happened. There was a bang and the house sort of melted away an’ I saw you doing a Kellermann into the ocean. That was some dive, take it from Pete!”

“But――but I didn’t see the U-boat!”

“No more did any one until she’d lammed two shots at us. Then Tracey, in the cage, yelled down that he’d found her an’ we got busy. I didn’t stay to help, though. I just grabbed this ‘doughnut’ and lit on my tummy.”

“You mean you jumped over? What for?”

Pete viewed him disgustedly across the life buoy. “Ain’t I told you I dropped in for a swim? Say, what would you have done? Just let me go floatin’ off to Africa?”

“Oh! But――but Pete, you oughtn’t to have! Now we’ll both drown!”

“Drown! Nothin’ doin’, Kid! I ain’t got no intention of drownin’. It’s too damp. Why, say, this thing’ll float us until the war’s over an’ the United States Army’s eatin’ breakfast in Berlin!”

“Well, it was――mighty fine of you,” muttered Dave. “And plucky, but you oughtn’t to have done it. I suppose they didn’t know I was overboard?”

“You didn’t say anything to the Old Man about goin’, did you?” asked Pete, dryly. “Even if they had known, you don’t suppose they’d have stopped to pick you up, do you? Not with that U-boat hammerin’ ’em to bits! They’d have dropped a life buoy over an’ let it go at that. Well, that’s what I did. Only I went over with the buoy. You see, I argued like this. ‘The Kid’s alive all right,’ thinks I, ‘but he’s sure to have somethin’ missin’, like a head or a leg or somethin’, an’ he won’t be much good for swimmin’. So what he needs is a pal to sort o’ aid his failin’ steps, so to speak.’ Say, you ain’t lyin’, are you? You’re really all here?”

“Yes, I am really, Pete. I feel kind of bruised――”

“That’s funny, too! You was only pushed overboard by a dose of shrapnel. Some folks is easy hurt!”

Dave smiled. Then “Are any of the others wounded or――or killed, Pete?” he asked.

“None killed, I guess. Not when I left, anyway. Chuck Morgan got a splinter, and I think some of the guys at the after gun was messed up a bit, but I ain’t sure. We got away from the Fritz all right, I guess. Sounded so, anyway. They couldn’t keep up with the old _944_. It seems sort o’ wrong to run away from ’em, but those subs has got bigger guns than ours, an’ a nasty way of shootin’ straight! Now the question is, Kid, what’s the program goin’ to be?”

Dave shook his head, gazing helplessly about him. The mist was nearly gone, and what remained was writhing and twisting in the breeze. “I suppose all we can do, Pete, is sit tight and wait for some one to pick us up.”

“Sure, but we might send a radio,” answered Peter. “‘S O S to all ships, from steamer Doughnut, latitude――.’ What’s our latitude, Kid?”

“I guess you’d joke if you were dying,” grumbled Dave. Now that Pete was there to take command, Dave felt privileged to grumble a little.

“Well, I couldn’t grouch,” replied the other cheerfully. “That’s one sure thing, Kid. I don’t know whether we could both sit on this thing an’ paddle it with our feet an’ get anywhere. What do you think?”

“Would it hold us?”

There was no reply from Pete. He was staring intently across the water.

“What is it?” asked Dave eagerly.

“Well, if I saw what I think I saw,” responded Pete, “we won’t have to do no paddlin’.”

“A ship?”

“Yeah, sort of. A submarine. Maybe I was mistaken, but――no, I wasn’t neither. There she comes straight for us. See her? No, no, over this way more. You’re looking too far to the left. Got her?”

“Yes,” murmured Dave. “Do you――do you think she’s German, Pete?”

“You bet she’s German, ’cause I know that murderin’ boat like I’d know my own grandmother if I had one. She’s the one we been scrappin’ with, Kid.”

“Maybe she won’t see us.”

“No fear! She’s spied us long ago. Well, I’d rather go aboard somethin’ else, but we can’t be choosey.”

“Maybe it would be better if we just――just slipped off and went down,” faltered Dave.

“What for? Think I’m scared of a bunch o’ fat Huns? Not so you’d ever know, Kid! Only thing botherin’ me is, how’ll I be able to take dinner with the captain, not speakin’ no German?”