Suddenly the red edge of the sun appeared above the eastern sea line. He
had not forgotten to rise! For an instant--the length of the intake of
the breath the two astonished boys drew--the mirage painted by nature
against the western sky was flooded with the rising glory.
Then the wonderful picture was erased, disappearing like a motion
picture fade-out, and there no longer remained any sign of the startling
vision in the sky, save a mass of formless and tumbled cloud.
“What do you know about that?” murmured Ikey Rosenmeyer, in amazement.
“You’ll never see the like of it again, boys--not in a hundred years,”
Ensign MacMasters said with confidence. “That was a wonderful mirage!”
“But, Mr. MacMasters,” cried Whistler Morgan, “that vision was the
reflection of something real, wasn’t it? An actual picture of a part of
the sea?”
“So they tell us.”
“Where do you suppose that piece of water lies?” demanded the youth
eagerly.
“I have no idea. ‘Somewhere at sea’! It may be north, east, south, or
west of the _Colodia’s_ present position. As I tell you, there is no
means of making sure--that I know anything about,” he added, shaking his
head.
“Oi, oi!” exclaimed Ikey. “Then we don’t know any more than we did
before where that super-submarine is.”
“If that was a picture of her,” said Whistler thoughtfully.
“It is truly ‘all in the air’, boys,” laughed Ensign MacMasters. “We saw
something wonderful. Every mirage is that. But it is a mystery, too.”
“Maybe that wasn’t the picture of the submarine, after all,” Ikey
suddenly suggested. “Maybe that was the mirage of a real freighter we
saw. Two stacks and as long as this old destroyer, I bet! Maybe it only
looked as though it rose from the sea.”
“I’d wager money on it’s being a picture of a huge German submarine,”
said Whistler with confidence.
“Why so sure, Morgan?” asked the ensign with curiosity.
“You couldn’t see the water pouring off her sides as she came up in that
mirage,” scoffed Ikey.
“No; but another thing I did notice,” Whistler declared, answering both
the doubting ones. “She had no flag or ensign flying!”
“Good point!” cried Mr. MacMasters.
“If she had been a regular steamship, no matter what her business might
be, she would have shown at least a pennant. And we would have seen it
fluttering, for there is a good breeze.”
“Right, my boy,” admitted Mr. MacMasters. “I must report to the chief.
But, of course, we can have no surety as to the direction of the craft,
nor of her distance from us.”
The mirage caused considerable excitement and a good deal of discussion
aboard the destroyer. Aside from the more or less “scientific”
explanations offered by the old-time garbies in the crew, Ikey
Rosenmeyer suggested one very pertinent idea: As he had sighted the ship
which two other witnesses agreed was a submarine, was he not entitled to
the twenty-dollar gold piece which was Commander Lang’s standing offer
for such a discovery?
“Catch Ikey overlooking any chance for adding to his bank account,” Al
Torrance declared. “Why, he’s got the first quarter he ever earned and
keeps it in a wash-leather pouch around his neck.”
“Bejabbers!” agreed Frenchy in his broadest brogue, “an’ that’s the
truth. Did yez iver see the little flock of trained dimes Ikey’s got?
Wheniver they hear the spindin’ of money mintioned, they clack in Ikey’s
pocket as loud as a police rattle.”
“You certainly can stretch the truth, Frenchy,” admonished Belding.
“Truth in your facile fingers becomes a piece of India rubber.”
“Gab, gab, gab!” ejaculated Ikey, seriously. “It doesn’t prove anything.
I want to know if I am going to get the twenty? I saw the submarine
first.”
“A mirage,” scoffed Frenchy.
“That’s all right. It was a reflection of a real ship. Mr. MacMasters
said so. If I’d seen a submarine picture in a looking glass, rising
right off yonder,” and he pointed over the rail of the destroyer,
“wouldn’t I have yelled, ‘There she blows!’ and got the double-eagle?”
“But you gave no alarm,” grinned Al. “Did he, Whistler?”
“I guess he did call the attention of an officer to it,” Whistler
responded, with great gravity. “Are you going right up to the Commander
with your claim, Ike?”
While the boys and the rest of the crew were joking about the mysterious
submarine, the officers of the _Colodia_ were seriously engaged in
discussing the immediate course of the destroyer. They were under orders
to find the _Sea Pigeon_, a very fast raider; but they could not refuse
very well to try to pick up this big submersible, if she could be
overtaken.
The wireless messages from the _Que Vida_ had ceased hours before. That
afternoon they sighted a regular flotilla of small boats on the quiet
sea and knew at once that the submarine had again been at work. This
time, however, the Germans had been more merciful than usual to the crew
of the sunken ship.
Nevertheless the two life crafts and four boats were a long way from
either Fayal or Funchal. The sea was quiet, but the German submarine
commander did not know it would remain so. He had gone directly contrary
to international law in deserting these people.
They proved to be the crew and passengers of the _Que Vida_, more than
twenty-four hours in the boats. The captain had been carried away, a
prisoner, by the huge submarine that had attacked the steamship from
Buenos Aires.
The story of the chief officer of the lost ship was illuminating. The
_Que Vida_ might have escaped the Germans, being a fast vessel, had it
not been for the fact that the former appeared to be a merchant ship,
and flew a neutral flag, as did the _Que Vida_.
This enabled the submersible to get within gunfire range. Suddenly she
revealed her guns fore and aft and threw several shells at the Argentine
vessel. The latter was then so close that she was obliged to capitulate
immediately.
The German then ran down nearer and ordered her victims to abandon ship
within half an hour. She sent a boat for the captain of the merchant
vessel.
When the boats and rafts were afloat, a boatload of Germans on their way
to put bombs aboard the _Que Vida_ stopped and pillaged each boatload of
victims, taking their money, jewelry, any other valuables they fancied,
and especially pilfering the woolen garments of both men and women.
The _Que Vida_ carried some coin and her captain was evidently made to
tell of this. The Germans searched the ship before putting the time
bombs in her hold.
“Then, Señores,” said the chief officer, in concluding his story, “when
the poor _Que Vida_ was sunken, the great submarine steamed away with
Señor Capitan di Cos. Perhaps they have killed him.
“But we--Well, you see us. That gr-reat submarine is the most wonderful
ship. I would not myself have believed she could submerge did I not see
her go down with my own eyes not a mile away from our flotilla.
“And three hundred feet long she is, I assure you! As long as this
destroyer, Señores. A so wonderful boat!”
“Once we drop a depth bomb over her, we’ll knock her into a cocked hat,
big as she is,” growled one of the _Colodia’s_ petty officers in
Whistler’s hearing.
“And the captain of the Spanish ship--what of him?” murmured the Seacove
lad.
The taking aboard of the wrecked ship’s company caused considerable
excitement on the destroyer. These torpedo boat destroyers do not have
many comforts to offer passengers, women, especially.
“Cracky, Whistler!” observed Al Torrance to his chum, “there are girls
come aboard the old destroyer. What do you know about that?”
“Well, the Old Man couldn’t very well leave them to drown, could he?”
responded Morgan gravely.
“Spanish girls, too. One is a beauty; but the other is too fat,” said
Frenchy who claimed to be a connoisseur regarding girls and their looks.
“Hold him, fellows! Hold him!” advised Ikey, sepulchrally. “He’ll be off
again, look out!”
“Aw, you----”
“Don’t forget how he fell for that Flora girl when we were back there in
England.”
“Shucks!” said Belding laughing. “Flora was the goddess of flowers.”
“Ah,” said Ikey, shaking his head, “you don’t know Mike Donahue. He’ll
call this Spanish girl a goddess, yet. You just see.”
The _Colodia_, however, was driven at top speed for the nearest port,
there to be relieved of the shipwrecked company from the Argentine
steamship. So the susceptible Frenchy was soon out of all possible
danger.
There was a keen desire, on the part of both the destroyer’s crew and
officers, to overtake the craft that had brought the _Que Vida_ to her
tragic end.
It was well established now that the big submarine and the _Sea Pigeon_
were two different vessels, though they might be working in conjunction.
But either or both of the German craft would be welcome prey to the
United States destroyer. The latter continued her tedious work of
“combing the sea” for these despicable enemies.