He led them very swiftly to a flight of stairs. There was a monstrous
bellowing on the carrier's deck. Something dark went hurtling down its
length, with a tail of pale-blue flame behind it. It vanished. Men were
still running. The elevator shot into full-speed ascent. A plane rolled
off it. The elevator dropped.
An engine roared. Another. Yet another. A second dark and deadly thing
flashed down the deck and was gone. There was a rumbling.
The battle gongs cut off. The rumbling below seemed to increase. There
was a curious vibration. The ship moved. Coburn could feel that it
moved. It was turning.
The ensign led them somewhere and said: "This is a good place. You'd
better stay right here."
He ran. They heard him running. He was gone.
They were in a sort of ward room--not of the morning conference--and
there were portholes through which they could look. The city which was
Naples seemed to swing smoothly past the ship. They saw other ships. A
cruiser was under way with its anchor still rising from the water. It
dripped mud and a sailor was quite ridiculously playing a hose on it. It
ascended and swayed and its shank went smoothly into the hawse-hole.
There were guns swinging skyward. Some were still covered by canvas
hoods. The hoods vanished before the cruiser swung out of the porthole's
line of vision.
A destroyer leaped across the space they could see, full speed ahead.
The water below them began to move more rapidly. It began to pass by
with the speed of ground past an express train. And continually,
monotonously, there were roarings which climaxed and died in the
distance.
"The devil!" said Coburn. "I've got to see this. They can't kill us for
looking."
* * * * *
He opened the door. Janice, holding fast to his arm, followed as he went
down a passage. Another door. They were on the deck side of the island
which is the superstructure of a carrier, and they were well out of the
way, and everybody in sight was too busy to notice them.
The elevator worked like the piston of a pump. It vanished and
reappeared and a plane came off. Men in vividly-colored suits swarmed
about it, and the elevator was descending again. The plane roared, shot
down the deck, and was gone to form one of the string of climbing
objects which grew smaller with incredible swiftness as they shot for
the sky. Coburn saw another carrier. There was a huge bow-wave before
it. Destroyers ringed it, seeming to bounce in the choppy sea made by so
many great ships moving so close together.
The other carrier, too, was shooting planes into the air like bullets
from a gun. The American Mediterranean fleet was putting out to sea at
emergency-speed, getting every flying craft aloft that could be gotten
away. A cruiser swung a peculiar crane-like arm, there was a puff of
smoke and a plane came into being. The crane retracted. Another plane. A
third.
The fleet was out of the harbor, speeding at thirty knots, with
destroyers weaving back and forth at higher speeds still. There were
barges left behind in the harbor with sailors in them,--shore-parties or
details who swore bitterly when they were left behind. They surged up
and down on the melee of waves the fleet left behind in its hasty
departure.
On the fleet itself there was a brisk tenseness as it sped away from the
land. Vesuvius still loomed high, but the city dwindled to a mere
blinking mass of white specks which were its buildings. The sea was
aglitter with sunlight reflected from the waves. There was the smell of
salt air.
Men began to take cryptic measures for the future. They strung cables
across the deck from side to side. Arresting gear for planes which would
presently land.
Their special ensign found Coburn and Janice. "I'm supposed to stay with
you," he explained politely. "I thought I could be of use. I'm really
attached to another ship, but I was on board because of the hassle last
night."