If action was what George Belding craved, he was getting it. Everybody
aboard the United States destroyer _Colodia_ was on the alert as the
craft leaped ahead to full speed for the spot where the rusty-sided
tramp steamship was popping away with her deck guns at some object as
yet not in view from the destroyer.
The merchant ship was being conned on a zig-zag course, evidently in an
attempt to dodge an expected torpedo. Her hull hid whatever she was
shooting at from the crew of the _Colodia_; but the latter did not doubt
the nature of the big ship’s erratic course.
At top speed the _Colodia_ rushed to the fray, and on suddenly rounding
the stern of the tramp, a great shout rose from the boys ranged along
the destroyer’s rail:
“There she is!”
The cry was drowned by the salvo of guns discharged at the conning tower
of the German submersible not more than a thousand yards from the tramp
ship. The position of the German craft had been excellent at first for a
shot at the merchant vessel; but her first torpedo had evidently missed
its objective. Now with the destroyer in view, the Hun let drive a
second missile and then began to submerge.
The torpedo’s wake could be seen by the lookouts on the _Colodia_ the
instant it left its tube. The tramp vessel evaded the explosive; but the
destroyer was directly in the torpedo’s path.
There was real danger at this moment. Quickly swerved as she might be,
it was not at all sure that the _Colodia_ could escape the torpedo.
Every man and boy aboard was at his station; among them Al Torrance was
placed at the starboard rail. He was armed, like many of his mates, with
a rifle.
As the destroyer shot across the path of the torpedo Torry fitted the
butt of his rifle into the hollow of his shoulder, huddled his cheek
against the stock, and brought the cross-sights of the rifle full upon
the sharklike projectile.
The rifle report was almost instantaneous with the roar of the torpedo.
The latter blew up not twenty yards from the destroyer’s rail!
“Hi! Hi! Hi!” yelled the mates of the keen-sighted Torrance.
“Well done!” called the officer of the watch through his megaphone.
“Well done, Torrance!”
The whole crew cheered again, and Al’s flaming face acknowledged their
appreciation. Mr. MacMasters came quickly to wring the lad’s hand in
appreciation.
“Good for you, Torrance,” he said. “Your name goes down on the log for
that.”
“Aw, she wouldn’t have hit us anyway,” said Al, quite overcome by so
much praise.
“Never mind. It showed accurate marksmanship and good work, too. Those
autoprojectiles are dangerous to leave drifting about the seas. You get
a good mark, my boy.”
Meanwhile the _Colodia_, swerving not a hair from her course, reached
and overran the spot where the submersible had sunk. The order rang out
and the depth bomb was dropped. Then the destroyer scurried out of the
way to escape the effect of the deep-down explosion.
Up from the depths rose a mound of muddy water. It rose twenty feet
above the surface, and the spray shot twice as high. The thundering
explosion shook the running destroyer in every part. The effect of the
discharge upon what was under the sea must have been terrible.
Half a mile away the _Colodia_ swerved and circled, to pass again over
the spot where the bomb had been dropped. The boys leaned over the rails
to watch for anything in the water that might prove that the submarine
had been wrecked. There was not a bit of wreckage; but suddenly Ikey
Rosenmeyer shrieked:
“Oil! Oil! Oh, bully! Oil!”
A roar of other voices took up the cry. Great bubbles of oil rose to the
surface. The _Colodia_ passed over a regular “slick” of fluid that could
mean nothing but that the tanks of the submersible had been ripped open
by the explosion of the depth bomb.
Morgan found George Belding standing beside him and looking back at the
oil-streaked waves with a very serious visage.
“What’s on your mind?” asked the Seacove lad.
“It seems terrible, doesn’t it, Phil?” said Belding. “All those fellows!
Gone like _that_!” and he snapped his fingers.
“Well,” returned Whistler, “you wanted action, didn’t you? Now I guess
you’ve had enough for a while.”
“I believe you,” agreed his friend solemnly.
But the work and life of the boys on the destroyer was not altogether
made up of such scenes and incidents as these that have been related.
Just at this time the troop ships were coming across from America in
great convoys and the _Colodia_ sometimes had less than half a day in
port between trips. Four or five hours ashore in the English port, or at
Brest where the greater number of ships from America landed their
freight and human cargoes, was the utmost freedom that the Navy Boys and
their mates secured.
There were extra calls, now and then, like these which have been related
herein. When an S O S call is picked up by shore or ship radio, every
Naval vessel within reach is sure to make for the point of peril.
The life was not altogether exciting, however, for there were many days
of tedious watching and waiting in which it seemed that the Hun boats
had all scurried back to their bases and the patrols scarcely raised a
porpoise, much less one of the “steel sharks of the sea.”
At Brest, well along in the month following the introduction of George
Belding to the _Colodia_, the young fellow from New York got a cablegram
from his father mentioning the date of the _Redbird’s_ sailing for Bahia
with his own family and Philip Morgan’s sisters aboard.
Whether the treasure of gold coin was to be part of the ship’s burthen
or not, the cablegram did not state. George had written his father about
his lost letters and papers and of the probability that the knowledge of
the treasure would reach those Germans who would consider the ship bound
for South America, and all she carried, their legitimate prey.
If information of the treasure of gold coin had been sent by the spy
from the Zeppelin to his associates in the United States, there might be
already afoot a plot to get possession of Mr. Belding’s gold. The boys
of the _Colodia_ had not heard of the capture of the spy who had
disappeared in George Belding’s uniform. Much as they had inquired in
England, they had been able to learn absolutely nothing.
Phil Morgan had even been to see Franz Eberhardt at the port hospital
where the young German was confined while his arm was being skilfully
treated by the English surgeons. Later the German youth had been taken
to an internment camp in one of the back shires. Before he had gone
Whistler had tried to get him to talk again about “Cousin Emil.” But
Franz had become wary.
He was no longer acting “the schmardie,” as Hans Hertig had called him.
He had begun to see something of England and had learned something of
the character of the English. To be a prisoner, and well treated as he
was, was a much more serious situation than had at first appeared.
But he refused to say anything at all of Cousin Emil. Whether it really
was Franz Eberhardt’s cousin with whom the Navy Boys and “Willum”
Johnson had had their adventure, the fact remained that as far as the
boys knew, a German spy was at large in England, And he had information
in his possession that might possibly injure Mr. Belding and his
affairs.
The Seacove boys were all now interested in the sailing of the
_Redbird_. If Whistler’s two sisters alone had been sailing for Bahia
the others would have felt a personal anxiety in the matter.
“Wish the old _Colodia_ was going to convoy that _Redbird_,” Al Torrance
said. “Eh, fellows?”
“By St. Patrick’s piper that played the last snake out of Ireland!”
declared Frenchy Donahue, “’twould be the foinest of luck if she was.”
“Oi! oi! Ain’t it so?” murmured Ikey. “And that Alice Morgan such a
pretty girl! I hope that _Redbird_ gets to Bahia safe.”
“As far as we can hear,” said Whistler cheerfully, “there are neither
submarines nor raiders now in the Western Atlantic. They seem to have
been chased out, boys.”
This supposition, however, did not prove to be founded on fact; for on
the very next occasion that the _Colodia_ was in the French port, Brest,
there was much excitement regarding a new German raider reported to have
got out of Zeebrugge and run to the southward, doing damage on small
craft along the French coast. This was before the British Captain
Carpenter with the _Vindictive_ bottled up that outlet of German ships.
Some denied that it was a raider at all, but a big, new submarine that
was built with upperworks to look like a steam carrier when she was on
the surface. However, she had a name, it being the _Sea Pigeon_, instead
of a letter and number. The whole fleet of destroyers was soon on the
lookout for this strange vessel, and the American commanders offered
liberal rewards to the owners of the sharp eyes who first spotted the
new Hun terror of the seas.
The _Colodia_ went to sea to meet a new convoy from America, “all set”
as the boys said, to make a killing if they ran across the _Sea Pigeon_.
“Well, we got the _Graf von Posen_,” Ikey Rosenmeyer said, with cheerful
optimism, “so why not this here _Pigeon_ ship? We’re the boys that bring
home the bacon, aren’t we?”
“Aw, Ikey!” groaned Frenchy Donahue. “Can’t you ever forget you were
brought up in a delicatessen shop? ‘Bring home the bacon,’ indade!”