“Watch out for that dark-faced siren.”
It was Danny’s flying pal who spoke. The dance was still on and he, Fred
Angel, was dancing with Sally.
“You mean the Captain’s yeoman?” she suggested.
“Sure I do. While you were dancing with him, she looked as if she’d like
to murder you.”
“Fred, why doesn’t she like me?”
“Can’t you guess?” He grinned.
“I might try, but I’d probably be wrong.”
“She thinks her boss is sweet on you.”
“Fred! That’s ridiculous! He’s been good to me because I’ve been lucky
enough to help out.”
“Sure! That’s it,” he agreed.
“He’s interested in just one thing, the same as the rest of us, helping
to bring this terrible war to an end.”
“The thing that most of us are interested in,” Fred corrected her. “Some
people never get their minds off themselves for long. Miss Stone is like
that. You never worked in a large organization, did you, where there
were a lot of really big shots?”
“No. I’m a small town girl.”
“That’s where you were lucky. Me, I worked with a big city outfit and I
saw a lot of private secretaries like Erma Stone.”
“Were they all like her?”
“Most of them were, the very successful ones. They work like slaves, do
the boss’s work as well as their own. By and by they get to thinking
they own the boss. Erma is like that.”
“And she thinks I’m trying to steal her property? That’s absurd!” Sally
laughed.
“That’s just part of it. Erma is a two-timer. She has got to like Danny
pretty well, too.”
“You don’t blame her, do you?” Sally spoke with feeling.
“Not a bit. Danny’s one of the swellest guys I’ve ever known. He got a
real break last trip, sank a sub all by himself, and the rest of us
never even got a look-in,” Fred replied with enthusiasm.
“So Erma set a trap to catch him, too?” Sally asked.
“That’s what she did. And now, well, you know the answer from the books
you have read. Keep an eye on her, Sally. She’ll get to you sooner or
later. She may beat your time with the Old Man, but never with Danny,
for you’re in solid there—”
“Danny,” she whispered, swallowing hard. “We may never see him again.”
“There’s a chance there, but I’m betting on Danny!”
The dance was at an end.
“I’ll keep my eyes open,” she whispered. “Fred,” her voice was low and
tense—they were walking slowly toward her post of duty, “will we go
back the way we came?”
“No one knows that.”
“But do you think we will?” she insisted.
He knew she was still thinking of Danny and wanted to help her, but
lies, he knew, never help. “Well, yes,” he spoke slowly, “the Old Man
will return this way for he never forgets his boys. Grand old boy,
Captain MacQueen is.”
“Thanks, Fred. That really helps a lot. And, Fred,” they were at the
door of the radio cabin, “if you are sent out to search for Danny on the
way back, will you take me along?”
“Well, now that—” he pondered, “yes, I will, if I can, I’ll even let
you stow away.”
“Stowaway. That’s a lovely word,” she laughed. “Shake. It’s a date.”
With a hearty handclasp, they parted.
That night Sally insisted on taking a two-hour shift with Riggs,
blinking out her messages to the ships of the convoy.
“I want to do something besides sitting and listening for trouble,” she
told him.
Truth was, a great loneliness had come sweeping over her. Perhaps the
dance had done that. Certainly it had brought back memories of other
times. Gay days at high school when she joined in the school hops which
had not been so grand but had for all that given her a feeling of
buoyant youth. There had been times too when, out with her father on a
fishing trip, she had fallen in with a jolly crowd and had danced by the
light of a campfire.
Now that the ship’s dance was over, and she stood looking at the endless
black waters rolling by, she felt very blue. But the instant the blinker
was in her hands and bright little messages came to her out of the
night, loneliness fled.
“We’re a big family,” she said to Riggs.
“A family of ships,” he agreed.
“And on those ships are enough people to populate a town as large as the
one where I was raised.”
“Quite a young city,” he agreed.
“But it seems so sad that they should all be carried away from their
home towns.”
[Illustration: Sally Stood Looking at the Endless Black Waters]
“Some of them got pretty tired of the old home town,” he mused. “But,
boy! Won’t they be happy when they get a chance to go back!”
“I hope it may be soon.”
Riggs was a fine fellow. Sally liked him a lot.
“Riggs,” she said, “if I get into trouble, really serious trouble, I’ll
come to you first thing.”
“You do just that, Sally.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “You just
spill it all to old Riggs. He’ll pull you out of it or die in the
attempt.”
“Thanks, Riggs. I feel so much better.”
“It’s the dance that did that,” he slowly insisted. “Really there must
be some change in our lives or we break. The Old Man knows that. Great
old fellow, the Captain.”
* * * * *
Sally and Nancy worked out a schedule all their own. Four hours on and
four off, day and night, turn and turn about, they stayed by the secret
radio.
“It seems such a simple thing to do!” Nancy exclaimed, after a full
twenty-four hours of it.
“Yes, I know,” Sally agreed. “Nothing ever happens. I hear a little
‘put-put-put-put-a-put’ now and then—”
“Sure! So do I but it sounds far away. The subs seem close together so
they can’t be near—
“So we just set the dials and sit and listen, and wait. But just think
what has already happened and may happen again!”
“Yes. We stopped them. Stopped them dead. Ships and lives would have
been lost.”
“And so we must stick to our post for it may happen all over again.”
In the quiet days that followed there was an hour of dancing every
night. These were hours of real joy for Sally. The Captain, apparently
considering that he had shown her all due courtesy, seldom asked for a
dance. This left her free to enjoy Fred and his fellow fliers. Erma
Stone seemed to have forgotten her, but this, she told herself, was only
a lull before another storm.
One night while she stood by the rail, watching the black waters roll by
and thinking gloomy thoughts, she suddenly found the Captain at her
side.
“I just wanted to tell you, Sally,” there was a mellow tone in his
voice, “that I haven’t forgotten Danny. I shall never forget him. He was
one of my finest. I am hoping our paths may cross yet.”
“How—how can they?” she asked huskily.
“We are taking this convoy to a certain port in England. There it will
be split up into smaller groups and convoyed by other fighting ships to
other ports.”
“That leaves us free?” There was a glad ring in her voice.
“Yes. We will follow the same course back. We have the spot where Danny
was lost marked on the chart and have a record of currents and winds
that may carry him off our course.”
“Then you really think there is a chance?”
“Most certainly, a real chance. We shall send out planes and scour the
sea.”
“What a pity it could not have been done the hour he was lost.”
“The battle was still on, then came the fog. After that we were far away
and this great convoy hung on our shoulders like a crushing weight.” The
Skipper sounded old and very tired. “It’s war, Sally. War! God grant
that it may soon be at an end.”
As she returned to her cabin after this talk she had with the Captain
she ran upon Danny’s mother. She had seen her several times of late, but
they had never spoken of Danny. Now she had something cheery to tell.
“Come in, Mrs. Duke,” she invited. “I’ll make a cup of hot chocolate on
my electric plate, and we’ll have a talk.”
When the cocoa had been poured steaming hot, she said: “I had a talk
with the Captain.”
“Was it about Danny?” Mrs. Duke smiled knowingly.
“Yes, who else?” Sally smiled back.
“Danny’s all right, that is, up to now.”
Sally did not ask how she knew. That would have been questioning a
mother’s faith.
“And he’s going to be all right,” Sally replied cheerfully. “The Captain
says we are to turn right back the moment we reach England, and that
we’ll have a look for Danny.”
“That’s fine. Really, the Captain is a great and grand man.” Mrs. Duke
was warm in her praise.
Sally told all she knew. Danny’s mother beamed her gratitude. But as she
rose to go, a wrinkle came to her brow. “It’s going to storm,” she said.
“I feel it in my bones.”
Sally didn’t say: “That will be bad for Danny.” She said nothing at all,
just watched the older woman as she walked out into the night.
* * * * *
Those had been strange, hard days for Danny. He was not long in learning
that there is nothing so lonely as an empty sea. “If I get out of this
alive,” he told himself, “I’ll always carry some book with thin pages
and lots of reading, a Bible, a volume of Shakespeare, just anything.”
His threatened storm turned into a gentle shower. Spreading out his
coat, he caught a quart of water and poured it into a rubber bottle. The
supply of water that could be produced by his still, he knew, was
limited, and this might be a long journey.
That he was slowly going somewhere, he knew well enough. Winds and
currents would see to that. Perhaps he would in time come to land. What
land? Some wild, uninhabited island, a friendly shore, or beneath an
enemy’s frowning fortifications? He shuddered at the thought.
At times he tried reciting poetry. One verse amused him:
“‘This is the ship of pearl, which poets feign, sails the unshadowed
main.’ It’s a rubber ship,” he told himself, “but why quibble over small
details?”
As he recalled the poem it ended something like this:
“‘Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new’—(new what? Well, skip it!—)
‘Shut thee from Heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea.’
“That’s a fine idea,” he thought, “if I could make this rubber raft
grow. But I can’t, so I’d better catch me a fish.”
The sharks were gone. His fishing on that day met with marvelous
success. After a terrific struggle in which his boat was all but
capsized a dozen times, he succeeded in landing a twenty-pound king
salmon.
“Boy, oh, boy!” he exclaimed. “How did you get way out here?”
That was not an important question. After cutting off the salmon’s head,
he sliced the rich, red steaks into strips and set them drying along the
sides of his boat.
“‘Take, eat, and be content,’” he quoted. “‘These fishes in your stead
were sent by him who sent the tangled ram, to spare the child of
Abraham.’”
He didn’t know what that was all about, but it did somehow seem to fit
his case, so he liked it.
One evening his sea was visited by one more flight of small birds with
big, ugly heads. By one device and another he captured six of these.
Five went into his larder but the sixth being young-appearing and
innocent got a new lease on life. He tied it to the boat by a string. At
first his pet objected strenuously, but in the end he settled down to a
diet of dried salmon meat and was content to sit by the hour perched on
the side of Danny’s boat. He looked like a parrot but, try as he might,
Danny could not make him talk.
And then this young “ancient mariner” was visited by both hope and
despair. A lone boat appeared on the horizon. It remained there for
hours, at last came much closer, and then was swallowed up by a great
bank of clouds rolling over the surface of the sea.