Capture of the Trawler.
A deafening report greeted the coming of Jack and Jim and Bill and his
friends through the doorway of the companion which led to their prison.
A bullet flicked its path across their faces and buried itself in the
bale which had been thrown against the door--then there was a crack.
Sailor-like, with an agility of which one would hardly have thought
him capable, considering his burliness, Jack had leaped at the German
who had fired the shot, and, displaying much science in the manœuvre,
undercut him in a manner which astonished not only the marine, but some
deck hands standing close beside him. For the German's chin went back,
his head was jerked almost from his body, his feet left the deck a
moment later, and he measured his length on the steel plates.
It was at that precise instant that Larry seized the falling rifle, and
hardly a second later that Bill, coming swiftly after him, launched
himself like an arrow in amongst the German deck hands. Jim was there
too, following up his strokes, while another party of the sailors had
turned sharp right and were sweeping the deck hands on that side of
the vessel. As for the second marine on sentry-go, he was dealt with
in the most disagreeable and summary manner--that is, disagreeable to
himself--for one of the sailors, bobbing up from the companion like a
jack-in-the-box, gripped the muzzle of his rifle as he was in the act
of firing it, and, extending his other hand, took the German by the
nape of his neck and exerted such pressure that the man first let go
his weapon, then shouted, and later screamed with pain.
"And you ain't wanted," cried the sailor, lifting him bodily from his
feet at last, "not here! So down yer goes!" And down the German went,
falling like a bale down the companion and into the depths below, only
at that moment cleared of British prisoners.
There, too, the deck hands were hounded within less than five minutes,
leaving only the skipper of the trawler on his bridge above, an officer
by his side, and the staff of the engine-room.
"Just you carry on, young Bill," cried Jack, seeing that the decks were
cleared, and hearing at that moment a crack from a revolver as the
skipper opened fire upon them. "This 'ere was your manœuvre; carry it
through!"
Bill swung towards Larry with the thought of giving him an order,
only to discover the American already stretched flat upon the deck,
sheltering behind the mast, his rifle directed on the bridge. Indeed,
almost at that same instant his weapon spoke, and the skipper, who by
then had emptied his revolver in the direction of the escaping sailors,
lifted his arms with a sudden spasmodic movement and fell back behind
the canvas screen which crossed the front of the bridge. There, within
a short space of time, appeared the face of the other officer, just
peering over the screen, his hands raised above his head, calling
loudly that he surrendered.
"Send along a party to the engine-room hatch, and order the men up one
by one," cried Bill. "Larry, just get up on the bridge and nab that
officer. What's doing, Jack? There's a commotion. That was a gun!"
"A gun!" Jack looked worried for a little while as he peered over the
bulwarks of the trawler and looked seaward. "This 'ere trip's come off
well, young feller, but it ain't the only fightin' we've got to do this
time. That gun-shot came from aboard a sister trawler. You can see her
there, steaming up out of the mist. She's heard the shooting. Maybe she
thinks there's mutiny aboard, though, knowing there was prisoners here,
she guesses what's happened. There's another!" he exclaimed as a sharp
report sounded from the direction in which he pointed, while through
the mist there loomed the bows of another trawler. "A shot's gone just
ahead of us. Next time they'll get our range. Things then won't be very
pleasant."
Bill clambered to the bridge and looked eagerly about him in all
directions. Right aft he could see a party of the sailors standing
about the hatch, which no doubt led to the engine-room, and presently
a head appeared. A man was extricated by the scruff of his neck, and
was tossed on along the deck to the companion, out of which Bill and
his comrades had so recently emerged. There, at an order he had given
now some minutes ago, stood two burly British sailors, one of whom was
armed with a rifle, while the other had seized an axe from the rack
round the mast. On the bridge beside him stood Larry, alert, and as
eager as himself. At his feet lay the body of the skipper; and then
of a sudden his eye fell upon an object right forward, covered in
tarpaulin.
"A gun!" he shouted, and waved eagerly to Jack. "Hi!" he bellowed.
"There's a gun for'ard, Jack; see if you've got any men who understand
it. There's a locker, too, near at hand, and there will be ammunition
in it. Larry, you get along with one of the men and see if you can
discover some rifles and ammunition, for we shall have to look for a
boarding-party. If not rifles, then get axes, iron bars, shovels if you
like from the stoke-hole, anything with which to repel the Germans.
Jack, ahoy!" he shouted again, and that worthy, playing up to the young
fellow whom he had placed in command, touched his cap and aye-ayed to
him.
"Aye, aye, sir," he repeated as he came up on to the bridge, having
sent four of his men forward to the gun.
"We have been making a bad mistake," said Bill. "She's still steaming,
but now that we're taking the hands away from the engine-room she'll
soon come to a stop. Put her about; and Jim, here, will take command of
the stoke-hole. Send some men down with him, and let 'em stand over the
German boys there."
He hailed the men standing at the opening of the companion which led to
the hold.
"Order up those of the engine-room staff who have been passed down, and
send them along to their job again. Some of 'em'll understand enough
English; and just see that you get 'em!"
In between his orders, punctuating them in fact, came the thuds of the
gun aboard the other trawler, which was now clearly visible, though at
some distance. Fortunately, too, not yet had her shells reached the
vessel, though they ricochetted astern and ahead and passed over her
decks, without hitting her. As Jack put a man at the wheel and swung
the vessel round, the shots went far astern, though a little later, the
trawler turning too, they began to burst within a few feet of her bows,
and looked as though presently they would come aboard her. By then,
however, the scratch gun-crew, which Jack had sent into the bows of the
captured vessel, had thrown off the tarpaulin which covered the gun,
and very swiftly (for your British sailor is a man of parts and smart
at understanding things of that nature) they had grasped the meaning of
the various wheels and levers, and had made themselves familiar with
its breech action.
Inspection of the ammunition and a trial loading followed, and then
a shot which shook the trawler and deafened those on her decks. Not
one, but a dozen and more pairs of eyes followed the shot or fixed
themselves upon the other vessel. Then a hoarse cheer burst from the
men, for a splotch of white suddenly obliterated the bows, there was a
blinding flash, and when the smoke had cleared away it was seen that
the short bowsprit had been smashed, and that the halyards from it had
been cut adrift. What other damage had been done by this lucky shot it
would be impossible to say, but it was significant that the trawler
sheered off at once, and steered a course which took her farther away
rather than nearer to the captured vessel.
"Which just gives us time to get going," came a cool and very cheerful
voice at Bill's elbow. "Young chap, you've done mighty well. I ain't
goin' to say that me or Jim or any of the other chaps that was down
below couldn't have thought out the plan of an escape that you happened
on, but it was happening on it just then, at what you might call the
psychological moment, that just did it; and since we broke out you've
given your orders clear and sharp, and there's been only one bad one,
Mister, amongst them."
"Getting the engine-room staff up--eh?" asked Bill.
"Yep," came Larry's short rejoinder. "But that's fixed now: there's Jim
down below working like a slave-driver, standing with two other mates,
one in the stoke-hole and t'other in the engine-room, and if you'll
look at their faces you'll know, and the Germans know too, that they
ain't going to stand any sort of humbug. It's a case of shoot the first
time a German tries to mix up the engine, or to let steam go, or to do
us down in some other dirty manner. Gee! Ain't we seen something of the
Germans now? That Heinrich and his shooting of your father, and his
bombing of that other ship; and what with Jack's tale, and the hundreds
of others that we've heard of, why, don't you ask Jim nor me nor any
other American to trust a German. We'll put the handcuffs on 'em first,
and then perhaps we'll know they ain't going to do any further damage.
But you sent me for arms, young fellow; well now, this here trawler,
and probably every other one of 'em, has a sort of magazine, at least
I guessed it was that, though I couldn't read the words written on the
door--this German language ought to be abolished! But I made free to
cut a way in with an axe, and there was rifles and swords and what-not;
every one of our men is now armed. Tuck this quick-shooter into your
belt, young fellow. It ain't the sort of box-of-tricks that appeals
to me, being too easy on its trigger; here's one of my sort--a heavy,
cavalry revolver."
Automatically, not thinking at all of what he was doing, yet conscious
of the meaning of Larry's words, Bill took the weapon and pushed it
into his pocket; meanwhile he peered over the canvas screen which
lined the front of the bridge, casting his eyes in the direction of
the pursuing trawler, then turned in the direction of the gun which
some of his own men were handling. Even to him, inexperienced as he
was, the thought came that never before had he seen such calmness and
such method and order. The gallant fellows, whom Jack had put under
his command so suddenly and unexpectedly, were "carrying on" after the
traditions of their service. Handy tars that they were, they had no
sooner seized upon the ship than they settled down to the manning of
her, as if she had been in their care for weeks past. There was no fuss
or flurry about those jack tars, though, to be sure, there was haste
and hurry, frenzied movement almost, as each man at the gun carried out
the task which in every case was self-appointed. One swung her round
and sighted her, another opened the breech, the third rammed in the
shell-case, and sprang back for yet another, then all moved clear away,
the lanyard was pulled, and scarcely had the gun recoiled, and the
shell gone hurtling out toward the trawler, than the breech was flung
open, while, through the smoke which issued, the man in charge of the
ammunition pushed another shell into position. Thus, time and again
the gun spoke--twice to every shot fired by the pursuing trawler; and
if the gun were strange to these gallant fellows their shooting at any
rate was precise enough--too precise in fact for the Germans.
"They are just about getting it about the ears," grinned the man who
led the gunners. "How's that for a plunk under his bridge, getting her
skipper in his stomick or under the belt, which is all fair in this
'ere warfare. What's that?"
"That" was a blinding flash yonder on the deck of the pursuing trawler,
a burst of smoke, and then a flame which spouted up from the bridge
at which the tar had aimed. But in warfare of this sort retaliation
has to be expected, and, almost as the three men raised a cheer, a
shell screeched across the deck behind them, struck the mast just in
front of the bridge on which Bill and Larry stood, and, bursting as it
struck, brought the steel affair down with a crunching roar and a thud
across the bulwarks, bending them out of shape and denting the deck,
incidentally, too, missing the bridge by less than a foot, tearing
away its screen and leaving our two friends as it were stripped naked,
staring across an open patch of deck, now littered with the fragments
left by the bursting missile.
"Bah!" growled Larry, tilting his hat at a little more of a rakish
angle--a habit he had when greatly moved, though, to be sure, nothing
else could be seen about him to suggest excitement. As for Bill, young
though he was, he stood his ground without wincing.
"And ain't doing half bad," Jack the bos'n told the men he was then
taking along the deck to clear away the wreck of the mast. "I've had me
weather eye on him as you might say. I seed or rather heard from his
voice when he came below and joined us that that young chap had got
something good about him. Mind, I don't say as the Americans along
with him ain't just as good, better you might say, seeing as they are
older and has a right then to expect to be; but the youngster's sharp,
smart, and has lots of go, besides being cool-headed. Cut this stuff
adrift! Chuck it overboard; it's only hampering us, and if another
shell comes in the splinters might do us damage."
His words were almost prophetic; for hardly a minute later an enemy
shell burst inboard, and its shattering roar half-stunned Jack and his
men and Bill and Larry; yet by some miraculous chance not one of them
was severely hurt, though certainly shaken.
As to elsewhere--if the men at the gun, Jack and his deck hands, and
Bill and Larry, were "carrying on", to use an expression beloved both
of sailors and of soldiers, what of the men down below? Jack told the
tale some five minutes later.
"If you'll believe me, sir," he said, clambering up on to the
bridge and touching his cap for all the world as though Bill were a
full-blooded skipper, "if you'll believe me, young feller, there's
Jim, your chum, and his mates, working those Germans at the boilers as
if they were slaves. Not a-drivin' of 'em--oh, no! Only encouragin'
of 'em like. You see, now that the tables are turned, and there's Jim
and Charlie Pipkin and Joe Bent and two others--boys as I know of
well--a-standing over the Germans with rifles, instead of the Germans
a-standin' over them as they was a little while ago, the Hun's sort of
lost all his spirit. If it had been the other way about, from what I
seed of 'em--those chaps what talks about 'Kultur' and raves about the
Kaiser--they'd have pushed the muzzle of a rifle under your ear, and
they'd have made you move slippy. But, bless you, it only wants a look
from that there chap Jim; and as for Charlie, when he just cocks his
eye across one o' them Huns, the chap shrivels--fairly shrivels."
Jack burst into a roar of laughter which was hardly suppressed even
by the scream and flick of a shell which crossed the trawler a little
in front of them. He held his sides and bent back till his stout body
formed an arc, and then set to work mopping his eyes, which were
streaming. "It's a fair turn about, this," he said.
Larry cocked an eye at him in return, just as Charlie down below was
described as doing to the Germans in the engine-room.
"It was. Yep," he lisped; "only--eh? Look over yonder!"
Jack looked, Bill looked, and in spite of himself blanched just a
trifle. As for Jack, the colour surged to his bearded face and he
gripped the rail.
"Oh! Ah! I----" he spluttered.
There was good reason, too, for his exclamations, for the mist which
had been hanging over the sea when this brilliant little action opened,
and which, as it were, had clouded the scene for a while and indeed had
assisted Bill and his friends not a little, was now whisked aside by a
fresh breeze which had got up in the meanwhile and was now rippling the
surface of a sea of dull green colour on which the rays of the sun were
reflected in every direction. Looking towards the German coast there
was a haze, though no mist. The bright sun rays and the glittering
reflection from thousands of ripples seemed to have cast up there an
opaque haze, out of which the pursuing trawler emerged every now and
again, a curtain which was rent asunder every odd minute by her gun,
when a splash of flame, followed by a cloud of smoke, filled in the gap
and then subsided and was replaced by the opacity.
Towards the ocean, however, one could see a long distance, and
there, but a dot yet, though visible to all eyes, was a low-lying,
queer-shaped vessel--one of the greyhounds of the ocean, about whose
bows foamed a white crest of water and from whose deck streamed black
billowy clouds of smoke which formed, as it were, a huge screen behind
her, against which her smoke-stacks and the crest of white stood out
silhouetted sharply. It was a torpedo-boat destroyer.
"Huh!" grunted Larry.
"Hum!" coughed Bill, shielding his eyes.
Jack gripped the rails again and burst into bitter anger.
"And after all what we've done!" he blustered. "After we've been took
at sea and clapped into the hold here like so many dogs--though I
admit we might have been left to drown. After we've broke our way
out and fixed things up in fine trim, and have got almost clear away
safe from the trawler yonder, which ain't worth countin', to see
that--that--image!"
Larry produced his beloved cigar, or rather the bedraggled end of one.
He always seemed to carry one in his pocket. It went to his mouth, was
pushed home into the favourite position, then two hands groped in his
pockets for a sodden matchbox. Quite naturally he attempted to strike a
light, lifted the damp match to the cigar, and threw it to the deck the
next instant.
"How'd you know?" he asked suddenly. "She might be British."
"B--B--British?" shouted Jack. "British! By gum! she might, and in that
case----"
"She ain't," Bill ejaculated. "I'll swear we've got the best of her in
this position. We can see her clearly, standing out in the sun's rays.
Look aft at the trawler. One minute she's gone in the haze, the next
minute she comes up. So you can count that the ship yonder, or the
men aboard her, ain't yet seen us, but they've heard the guns and are
coming along to see what's happened."
"In which case," said Larry, looking aside at Bill, while Jack too
turned to the young fellow.
"In which case," said Bill. "Well, there's nothing else for it; we keep
straight on. If that's a German torpedo-boat destroyer it's bad luck;
if it's British, well, it's British."
There was no need for further argument after that, for it was quite
clear to all three of them, and indeed to the deck hands down below,
and to those standing over the staff in the engine-room, to whom the
news soon filtered, that liberty so recently won might already be
on the point of being torn from them; and if it were, what sort of
treatment might they expect from the Germans? What indeed? It was no
wonder, then, that their spirits sank to zero when, perhaps a quarter
of an hour later, the torpedo-boat destroyer having drawn much nearer,
a gun spoke from her deck and a shot sailed over them. Meanwhile, too,
the pursuing trawler had kept up her fire, so that Bill and his friends
were now attacked from two quarters. It looked like hopeless failure;
and yet, wait.
"What's that?" demanded Bill, pointing to sea eastward. "Another
ship--eh? Another torpedo-boat destroyer! A Ger----."
"German?" shouted Jack. "You can skin me if that ain't a British
torpedo-boat destroyer! You can hoist me to the top of the first
yard-arm you comes across if that there boat ain't British from the cap
of its mast down to its keel! Only, will she come up in time? that's
the puzzle."
It was a point which might well bother him and Bill and the others,
for, undoubtedly, if this second torpedo-boat destroyer was part of the
British fleet, the German had a long start of her. That gun now opening
upon the trawler might well destroy her, and the crew who had won their
liberty, long before the British boat came up. It was a moment for
quick decision and swift action.
"Swing her round! Shove her in the opposite direction! Keep her going
as hard as you can," shouted Bill. "Jack, send a message down to the
engine-room staff to stoke hard, all they can. We must knock every
ounce of speed out of the trawler."
They turned, and, as it were, dived into the haze rising from the
water, and as the engine staff laboured down below, and "whacked"--to
use a nautical expression--the utmost speed out of the boat, a bow wave
rose in front of the trawler. Behind came the other trawler, farther
aft the German pursuing boat, and still farther astern, and from a
different quarter, what everyone hoped was a rescuing British vessel.