The _Colodia_ was put about, and at reduced speed approached the spot
where the submarine had gone down. There was very little wreckage on the
surface of the ocean; but several black spots seen through the officers’
glasses caused two boats to be hastily launched and both were driven
swiftly to the rescue of the survivors of the German craft.
Morgan was in one of these boats. All through the fight he had thought
of the Argentine skipper, Captain di Cos of the _Que Vida_. The
possibility of his still being aboard the submarine worried the American
lad. If there were prisoners, they had gone down with the enemy craft.
These were the fortunes of war; nevertheless, that the unfortunates
should be lost with the members of the German crew, was a hard matter.
Only three survivors were picked up, and one of them, with his arm torn
off at the socket, died before the boats could get back to the
destroyer.
The two were Germans. Questioned about possible prisoners aboard the
submarine, they denied knowledge of them. Yet it was positive that
Captain di Cos, at least, had been carried away by the German craft when
the _Que Vida_ was sunk.
Later some information was gleaned from the two prisoners brought back
to the _Colodia_. The super-submarine had been known as the One Thousand
and One. She was the first of a new type of subsea craft that the
Germans hoped to use as common carriers if they won the war.
According to the story told by the prisoners--especially by one who was
more talkative than his fellow--the huge submarine had a crew of sixty
men, with a captain for commander, a full lieutenant and a
sub-lieutenant. She was fully provisioned and carried plenty of shells.
Her commander’s desire to save torpedoes, their supply of which could
not be renewed nearer than Zeebrugge or Kiel, was the cause of the
submarine being caught unaware by the destroyer.
Had the _Western Star_ been sunk at once by the use of a torpedo, the
underseas boat would have been far away from the scene when the American
ship arrived. It was an oversight!
“And it is an oversight her commander can worry about all through
eternity,” Mr. MacMasters growled, in talking about it with the boys he
took into his confidence now and then. “It is my idea that that big sub
could get stores and oil without running home to her base; but she could
not get torpedoes.”
He did not explain further what Commander Lang and his officers
suspected. But the German prisoners had been interrogated very carefully
along certain lines, especially regarding that German raider called the
Sea Pigeon for which the _Colodia_ had really been sent in search.
The big submarine had taken considerable treasure and valuable goods
from the vessels she had sunk. Then, for a time, she had disappeared
from the steamship lanes. Where had she gone with the stolen goods?
The prisoners hesitated to explain this. Indeed, one of them became
immediately dumb when he saw what the questioning was leading to. From
his companion, however, was obtained some further information.
It was a fact that the submarine had left her base with the raider known
as the _Sea Pigeon_. The underseas boat convoyed the bigger craft
through the danger zone. It was not a difficult guess that when the two
German boats had separated arrangements had been made for certain
rendezvous at future dates--when and where? Besides, both boats were
furnished with wireless.
“I would make that Heinie tell the whole story,” Ensign MacMasters said.
“He might not tell the truth, sir,” suggested Whistler Morgan.
“Then I’d hang him,” declared the officer. “A threat of that kind will
make these brave Heinies come to time. I know ’em!”
Commander Lang had his own way of going about this matter. He used his
own good judgment. Whether he believed he had obtained the full truth
from the prisoners or not about the _Sea Pigeon_, he turned the
destroyer’s prow toward the reaches of the western Atlantic, leaving the
eastern steamship lanes behind.
The crew only knew that the _Colodia_ must be following at least some
faint trail of the raider. For the destroyer had been sent to get the
German ship, and Commander Lang was not the man to neglect his work.
The radio men picked plenty of chatter out of the air; but, as far as
the Navy Boys knew, though they tried to find out, little of it referred
to the German raider.
One thing George Belding did learn from his friend, Sparks: The “ghost
talk” was rife in the static once more. This wireless spectre had all
the operators in a disturbed state of mind, to say the least.
“Sparks seems to have lost his common sense for fair, over it,” Al
Torrance observed. “You know more about this aero stuff than any of us,
George. What do you really think it is? Somebody trying to call the
_Colodia_?”
“That is exactly what Sparks doesn’t know. He admitted to me that he
caught the destroyer’s name, but not her number. It’s got so now this
‘ghost’ breaks in at a certain time in the afternoon watch--just about
the same time each day. One of his assistants says he has spelled out
‘_Colodia_,’ too. But it may be nothing but a game.”
“How ‘game’?” asked Ikey eagerly.
“Somebody fooling with a machine. Sparks says the sounds grate just like
‘static!’”
“And that is as clear as mud,” complained Frenchy Donahue.
“Could this unexplained talk be some new German code?” Whistler Morgan
asked.
“All Sparks got is in English; but it doesn’t amount to any sense, he
says. If it is a code, he never heard the like before.”
“It might be a German code with English words,” put in Al. “One word in
code means a whole sentence.”
“I believe you! Wish Sparks would let me put on the harness and listen
in on it,” grumbled Belding. “I haven’t forgotten the wireless Morse I
learned back there before the war.”
“Go to it, George,” urged Al.
“I wish I knew Morse,” added Whistler. “Get into it, George. Get Sparks
to let you try a round with the ‘ghost talk.’ He is friendly to you.”
Thus encouraged, Belding took a chance with the chief of the radio
during that very afternoon watch. It was during these hours, it was
reported, that the strange and mysterious sounds broke in upon the
receiving and sending of the operators aboard the _Colodia_.
“It is against the rules to let you into this room, boy,” Sparks told
him, smiling. “I can’t give up my bench to a ham.”
“I’m no ham, Mr. Sparks,” declared Belding. “I’ve shown you already that
I can read and send Morse.”
“I don’t know,” the radio man murmured, shaking his head.
But he was really fond of George Belding, and the latter had to coax
only a little more. This, as a rule, was not a busy hour.
He allowed the youth to slide in on the bench and handed him the head
harness. George slipped the hard rubber discs over his ears and tapped
the slide of the tuner with a professional finger.
“Plenty of static,” he observed, for it was trickling, exploding, and
hissing in the receivers.
“No induction,” Sparks suggested.
Belding slid up the starting handle. The white-hot spark exploded in a
train of brisk dots and dashes. Belding snapped up the aerial switch and
listened. The message he was catching from the air was nothing to
interest him or the _Colodia_.
He was sensitizing the detector and soon adjusted the tuning handle for
high waves. The chief watched him with a growing appreciation of the
boy’s knowledge of the instrument and its government.
On these high planes the ether was almost soundless. Only a little
static, far-removed, trickled in. It was in the high waves that most of
the naval work is done and the sending of orders to distant ships is
keyed as fine as a violin string--and sounds as musical.
Sliding the tuning handle downward, Belding listened for commercial
wave-lengths. Something--something new and unutterably harsh--stuttered
in his ear.
He jerked back from the instrument and glanced suspiciously at Sparks.
“Do you hear it?” the latter demanded.
“I hear something,” said the young fellow grimly. “It--beats--me----”
Were these the sounds that had been disturbing the radio men, off and
on, for a week or more? Laboriously, falteringly, the rasping sounds
grated against Belding’s eardrums. It was actually torturing!
The atrocious sending began, in Belding’s ear, to be broken into clumsy
dots and dashes. The wave-lengths were not exactly commercial; nor did
the sending seem to be in the Continental code.
He listened and listened; he turned the tuner handle up and down. He got
the soundwaves short and got them long; high and low as well. But one
fact he was sure of: they were the same sounds--the same series of
clumsy dots and dashes--repeated over and over again!
George Belding swung at last from the instrument and tore off the
receiving harness. Sparks was grinning broadly upon him.
“Ugh!” ejaculated the youth. “Is it a joke? I am almost deafened by the
old thing.”
“What do you make out the ghost talk to be, George?”
“Are you sure it isn’t a joke?”
“Not on my part, I do assure you,” declared the radio man.
“Then,” said Belding slowly, “I believe somebody is trying to
communicate a message and for some reason can’t quite put it through.”
“Did you get the word ‘_Colodia_’?” Sparks asked quickly.
“No, sir. But one word I believe I did get,” said the young fellow
gravely.
“What’s that?”
“‘Help,’” Belding repeated. “‘H-e-l-p, Help.’ That’s what I got and all
I got. I do not think I am mistaken in that!”