Since sailing out of Brest and before receiving her special orders by
wireless telegraph, the _Colodia_ had made no base port where the crew
could receive either mail or cablegrams. Two weeks and more had passed.
Philip Morgan and George Belding had no idea where the _Redbird_ was, or
whether or not their relatives were safe.
“The fate of a ship at sea is an uncertain thing at best,” Phil Morgan
said seriously to his friend, “in spite of the old salt’s oft-repeated
prayer: ‘Heaven help the folks ashore on this stormy night, Bill!’”
“Don’t joke about such serious matters,” Belding replied. “Wonder how
far the folks have got toward Bahia?”
“Well, you know where we stuck the pins in the chart to-day, boy?”
“To be sure. But we don’t really know a thing about it.”
“Courage!” urged Whistler. “We are just as likely to be right in doping
out the _Redbird’s_ course as not.”
“It’s the confounded uncertainty of it that gets me,” said Belding
bitterly, and then changed the subject.
Interest in the _Colodia’s_ search for German raiders and submarines did
not flag even in the minds of these two members of her crew. For several
days, however, the destroyer plowed through the sea, hither and yon,
without picking out of the air a word regarding either the _Sea Pigeon_
or the huge submarine which some of the boys believed they had surely
seen in the mirage reflected against the morning sky.
The detail work of a naval vessel at sea even in wartime, unless
something “breaks,” is really very monotonous. Drills, studies, watch
duties, clothes washing, deck scrubbing, brass polishing. All these
things go on with maddening regularity.
Every time the wireless chattered the watch on deck started to keen
attention. But hour after hour passed and no word either of the German
raider or the big submarine was caught by Sparks or his assistants.
Yet there was a certain expectation of possible action all of the time
that kept up the spirits of the men and boys of the destroyer. At any
moment an S O S might come, or an order from the far distant naval base
for immediate and exciting work.
The _Colodia_ and her crew were supposed to be ready for anything--and
she was and they were!
The daylight hours were so fully occupied with routine detail that the
boys made little complaint; but during the mid-watch and the first half
of the morning watch when the time drags so slowly, the crew sometimes
suffered from that nervous feeling which suggests to the acute mind that
“something is about to happen.”
On this particular night--it was mid-watch--things were going very
easily indeed on the _Colodia_. It was a beautiful tropical night, with
a sky of purple velvet in which sparkled more diamond-stars than
Whistler Morgan or George Belding seemed ever to have seen before.
They were lying on the deck, these two, and gazing lazily skyward, it
not being their trick on lookout. The _Colodia_ was running as usual
with few lights showing; but not because it was supposed that there was
any other craft, either friendly or of the enemy, within miles and miles
of her course.
They lay within full hearing of the radio room. Suddenly the wireless
began to chatter.
“Hold on!” exclaimed Whistler, seizing his friend’s sleeve. “That isn’t
a call for you, George.”
“I’ve got so I jump everytime I hear it,” admitted Belding, sinking back
to the deck.
The messenger soon darted for the commander’s cabin. It was no immediate
order or signal for help, or he would have first hailed the bridge. But
soon Mr. Lang’s orderly appeared with a message for the officer of the
watch.
There were a few whispered words at the break of the bridge. Then the
officer conning the ship gave swift directions for her course to be
changed and signaled the engine room as well. Almost immediately the
pace of the destroyer was increased.
“I wonder what’s in the wind?” murmured Whistler.
“I’m going to see if I can find out,” said Belding, rising again.
He went around to the door of the radio room. Sparks himself was on
duty. He sat on the bench with the helix strap and “eartabs” adjusted.
He had just taken another message, but it was nothing meant for the
commander of the _Colodia_.
“That’s the second time to-night, George,” he said, removing his
head-harness. “I don’t know what to make of it.”
“What’s the matter, sir?” asked the young fellow.
“Why, I guess it’s static. Nothing more, I suppose. Yet it is a regular
‘ghost talk.’ I can almost make out words.”
“Goodness! What do you mean?” asked the young fellow, mightily
interested. “I never heard of ‘ghost talk’, though I know ‘static’ means
atmospheric pressure.”
“Pah! It means electricity in the air that we can’t wholly account for,”
said Sparks. “But this----”
“What?”
“Why, I tell you, George; twice to-night I have almost caught something
that seemed to be a message in one of our codes and tuned to this length
of spark. But I can’t really make head nor tail of it.”
“That wasn’t what you just sent aft to the Old Man?”
“Shucks! No! I’ll give you a tip on that, young fellow,” and the radio
man smiled. “We’ve been zigzagging across the steamship routes, but now
you will notice that we have an objective. That message was from
Teneriffe in the Canaries. That big sub has been seen down that way.”
“Bully!” exclaimed Whistler, who had come to look into the room over his
friend’s shoulder.
“Oh, that you, Whistler? Well, there is nothing secret about it. But
this confounded ‘ghost talk’----”
“Sounds interesting,” Whistler said.
“I’m puzzled. I hope I’ll catch it again. It is just as though
somebody--a slow operator, regular ham--was trying to put something over
and couldn’t quite do it. Funny things we hear in the air, anyway, at
times.”
He went back to his machine, grumbling, and the boys came away after a
bit. The news that the super-submersible had been heard of again was
something to talk about, at least, and served to keep them awake through
the rest of the watch.
In the morning the news that the German submarine was again active in a
certain part of the ocean to the southward became generally known. It
was likely that the strange and threatening craft, which plainly could
make longer cruises than most submarines, had been sent forth to prey
upon food ships from South America.
She expected to lurk along steamship lanes, like a wolf crouched in the
underbrush beside a forest path; and like that wolf, too, she was
relentless. Yet, her treatment of captured ships thus far had been more
humane than most, as shown by her use of the _Que Vida’s_ crew and
passengers.
“Still, she’s a regular pirate,” Whistler Morgan said in speaking of
this. “See how her men robbed those poor sailors, and even the women.”
“Ah, you said something then, boy!” Al Torrance agreed.
“I wonder,” George Belding said reflectively, “if the war should end
suddenly, and some of these U-boats are out in the various seas, if
their commanders won’t become veritable pirates?”
“How’s that?” cried Frenchy Donahue. “It’s pirates they are already!”
“But to go it on their own hook,” put in Ikey. “I see what Belding
means. Just think of a new race of buccaneers! Wow!”
“Begorra!” murmured the Irish lad, his eyes shining, “they might infest
certain seas like the old pirates of the Spanish Main.”
“I hope you see what you’ve started, George,” growled Whistler with mock
anger. “Those kids are off again.”
The friends from Seacove were not alone excited by the renewed chase of
the super-submersible. That day, too, there were two messages about the
German craft. She had sunk a small freight boat and a fishing sloop. It
was evident that she had run somewhere for supplies, and had now come
back to the island waters.
How many Canary fishermen’s sloops and turtle catchers she sank during
the next few days will never be known. Mark of such vessels could not be
taken until their crews rowed ashore--if they were fortunate enough to
get to shore. The tales the _Colodia_ got by wireless, however, showed
that the Germans were robbing all crews, as they had the people from the
Argentine ship.
From these shore reports, it seemed that the huge submarine was circling
about the steamship lane again, boldly attacking everything that came in
her way; but it was not until next day that the destroyer got out of the
air a _bona fide_ call for help. This was from the radio of the British
steamship _Western Star_ bound up the Cape of Good Hope.
She had merely time to repeat her S O S signal when her spark was cut
off. Doubtless the radio plant of the freighter was destroyed by
shellfire.
She had, however, given the _Colodia_ clearly her situation, and the
United States destroyer started upon another of those remarkable dashes
for which she and her sister ships were originally built.
There was a chance that they might reach the spot where the _Western
Star_ was being held up before the submarine could get away; and the
_Colodia’s_ crew was at stations, ready for what was coming.