The boys from Seacove and George Belding--but especially the last and
Phil Morgan--had a second topic of daily conversation quite as
interesting, if not as exciting, as that of the German raider, in chase
of which the _Colodia_ was now driving at top-speed into the southwest.
This topic was the fruitful one of the _Redbird_ and her cruise to
Bahia. If the big sailing ship had left New York on the date promised,
then the Belding family and Phil’s sisters would now be off
Hatteras--perhaps even farther south.
“For you can believe me, Belding,” Al Torrance declared earnestly, and
speaking with all the sea-wisdom acquired during his naval experience,
“that Captain Lawdor would not sail right out across the Gulf Stream and
make the Azores or the Canaries a landfall, as he might have done before
Hun submarines got to littering up the Atlantic as they do now.”
“We cannot be altogether sure of his course,” murmured George Belding.
“Sailing vessels hate to head into the current of the Gulf Stream,”
added Whistler, likewise in doubt.
“You chaps are determined to expect the very worst that can happen,
aren’t you? Like a fellow going to have a tooth extracted,” said Al,
with disgust. “Now, listen here! It stands to reason that news of this
new raider, the _Sea Pigeon_, or whatever it is they call her, was
transmitted to the other side of the periscope pond. George’s father and
the captain of the _Redbird_ would be warned before they sailed from New
York of this new danger--if not afterward, by wireless. Of course the
ship has a radio plant, hasn’t she?”
“Of course,” agreed the shipowner’s son.
“Nuff said! They never in this world, then, would take the usual course
of sailing ships for South America. They would not cross the Gulf
Stream. It will take the _Redbird_ a little longer to buck the northerly
set of the current; but that is what Captain Lawdor will do, take it
from me! I figure they are now about off Hatteras, following the usual
course of the coasting vessels.”
“Not much leeway for a big sailing ship,” muttered George.
“Better hugging the shore, even stormy old Hatteras, which _we_ know
something about, eh, fellows?” added Al, “than dodging subs and raiders
out in the broad Atlantic.”
He had an old chart and was marking off the possible course of the
_Redbird_ with a lead pencil.
“Good work, Torry,” said Frenchy Donahue. “It’s navigation officer
you’ll be next.”
They were all five deeply interested, and each day they worked out the
probable course of the sailing ship, as well as figuring the distance
she probably had sailed during the elapsed twenty-four hours.
“I only hope,” George Belding said, “that we overtake this _Sea Pigeon_
and finish her before her commander takes it into his head to steam
across the ocean to the western lanes of travel. If the raider should
intercept father’s ship----”
“Ah, say!” cried Frenchy, “that ‘if’ is the biggest word in the
language, if it has only two letters. Don’t worry, Belding.”
That advice was easy to give. George and Whistler remained very anxious,
however; indeed, they could not help being. Nor did the activities
aboard the destroyer during the next few days much take their thought
off the _Redbird_ and her company and cargo.
They talked but little--even to their closest boy friends--about the
possibility of there being a great store of coined gold aboard the
_Redbird_. Just the same, this fact they knew would cause the ship to be
an object of keen attraction to any sea-raider who might hear of it.
The spy from the Zeppelin had secured George Belding’s letters in which
the gold treasure was mentioned and Mr. Belding’s voyage in the
_Redbird_ explained. More than a month had elapsed between the spy-chase
behind the little English port and the sailing of the square-rigged ship
from New York for Bahia, Brazil.
“And you know,” George once said, “a whole lot can happen in a month.
Those Germans have an ‘underground telegraph’ that beats anything the
negroes and their Northern sympathizers had during, and previous to, our
Civil War.”
“Aw, don’t bring up ancient history,” growled Al, who tried to be
cheerful, but who found it hard work when the older boys seemed
determined to see the dark side of the shield. “I’ve forgotten ’most all
I ever knew about every war before this one we’re into with both
feet--and _then_ some!”
“Sure, Torry,” put in Frenchy Donahue, “don’t you remember the war of
that showman who antedated Barnum--the one they say got a herd of
elephants over the Alps to fight for him?”
“Oi, oi! Hannibal!” cried Ikey.
“Say! it would take a friend of yours to do that, Frenchy,” said Al in
disgust. “I’ve always had my doubts about that fellow, Hannibal.”
“Besides,” went on Ikey, going back to Belding’s statement, “it’s
nothing to do with ‘underground’ or any other telegraph. The Germans use
wireless. If that spy got news across the pond----”
“Right-o!” broke in George, with increased good-nature and an answering
smile. “But let’s ‘supposing.’ That spy has had ample time to transmit
to friends on the other side of the ocean information about the gold my
father is carrying to South America.”
“Why,” said Whistler, slowly unpuckering his lips, “he might even have
crossed to New York himself by this time--if the British didn’t catch
him.”
“If they had caught him wouldn’t we have been told?” asked Belding
quickly.
“How? By whom?” demanded Whistler.
“Say!” declared Al vigorously, “the British War Office makes a clam look
like it had a tongue hung in the middle and running at both ends!”
“Now you’ve said something!” muttered Frenchy.
“That’s right! The world doesn’t even know how many submarines have been
sunk and captured, already yet,” declared Ikey excitedly. “And we
_won’t_ know, it’s likely, till the end of the war.”
“What’s the odds?” growled Al.
“You got to hand it to them,” sighed Whistler. “The British have great
powers of self-restraint.”
“You said it!” again put in Frenchy.
“Well,” Ikey said, more moderately, “if that chap that came near sending
Belding here west, was that schmardie’s brother----”
“Cousin!” interposed Whistler.
“Well--anyhow and anyway--Emil Eberhardt--I say!” cried Ikey, “he might
have got free and gone over to New York by submarine, or someway, like
Whistler says.”
“What do you suppose he’d do if he wanted to get that money off the
_Redbird_?” asked Frenchy, big-eyed.
“Ask us an easier one,” begged Al Torrance.
“You kids are letting your imaginations run away with you,” put in Phil
Morgan.
But in secret the two older boys--Belding and Whistler--did not consider
the idea of the spy reaching New York before the _Redbird_ sailed at all
impossible.
“That chap with the broken arm we took off the wrecked Zep,” Belding
remarked once to Morgan, “told you his cousin, the ‘super-spy,’ was
bound for America, didn’t he?”
“He dropped such a hint,” admitted the Seacove lad. “But pshaw! we don’t
even know that Franz Eberhardt referred to the fellow we had our
adventure with.”
“I know! I know!” muttered George Belding. “But I do wish Willum
Johnson, the strong man, had got his hands on that spy.”
“‘If wishes were horses----’”
“Sure! And perhaps it is all right. At any rate, father must have got my
letter before he sailed, in which I told him all about losing the papers
and warning him about German plotters. Of course he must have got that
letter.”
But this thought would have afforded them little comfort had the two
friends known that the ship which bore George Belding’s letter of
warning had been sunk off the Irish coast by a German U-boat, and that
that particular freight or mail for the United States would probably not
be recovered until after the war.
The _Colodia_ touched at St. Michael and then at Fayal, receiving in
both ports information of the escapades of the new raider. Lastly she
had been heard of far to the west.
Perhaps she was going across the ocean to prey on the American coastwise
trade! This was a suggestion that put the Seacove boys and Belding on
edge.
There was, however, something rather uncertain about the stories
regarding the _Sea Pigeon_. Some of the merchant crews that had already
met her, declared her to be a huge new submarine--a submersible that
looked like a steam freighter when she was afloat, and that she was all
of three hundred feet long.
“Some boat, that!” observed Mr. MacMasters. “We’ve seen ’em with false
upperworks, boys. But you know, even the _Deutschland_ was no such
submarine as this one they tell about.”
Whistler put forth the idea that there were two ships working in these
waters; but not many accepted this until, the day after they left Fayal,
and the destroyer was traveling west, Sparks suddenly picked up an S O S
from the south. The Argentine steamship _Que Vida_ was sending out
frantic calls for help. She was being shelled by a monster submarine two
hundred miles off the port of Funchal of the Madeiras.
“This is the real thing--_Sea Pigeon_ or not!” the radio operator
confided to George Belding. “She’s the super-sub we’ve been hearing
about. The operator on this Buenos Aires’ ship says she came right up
out of the sea at dawn and opened fire with guns fore and aft. Has used
a torpedo, and has upperworks like a regular honest-to-goodness steam
freighter.
“There! He’s off again!” he exclaimed, as the radio began to spark, and
he turned back to the machine.
So was the _Colodia_ off again, and at full speed, dashing away in quest
of the _Que Vida_ and the great submersible that had attacked her.