LETTERS FROM HOME
They picked up a line of transports the next forenoon being convoyed by
five black Limie destroyers and exchanged signals. “Canadians,” was the
report below deck. They didn’t get close enough to have a look at them,
but turned southward before the last of the troop-ships had emerged
from the mist. It alternately rained and shone that day, and a stiff
wind sang in the aerial. Steve worked at cleaning Number Four gun in
the morning, and in the afternoon began his turn in the foretop. There
was only an empty sea until shortly before supper when a tiny British
chaser that looked no larger than the _Adventurer_, in which he and
Joe and others had made a memorable voyage last Summer, bore down for
a chat. A chipper-looking Reserve Lieutenant wearing much gold braid,
had a good deal to say, all of which was Greek to Steve, and then the
chaser turned in her length and went jauntily off again, tossing about
like a dish-pan.
“I’m glad I’m not on her,” said Joe thankfully. “Think what she must do
in a gale!”
“I’d rather not,” replied Steve. A machinist’s mate beside them laughed
reminiscently.
“When we were in Brest, a month ago maybe, there was a sort of a
ferryboat-lookin’ contraption lyin’ near us. She was a single-stacker
and burned coal. They’d tore off a cabin above-deck――you could see the
saw marks through the black paint――and they called her a chaser or
a patrol or something she wasn’t at all by rights. They’d mounted a
five-pounder forward and a rapid-fire aft. You had to sort of look at
her twice to see was she bow-on or stern-on, and then it didn’t seem to
make much difference.”
“French?” asked Joe.
“Naw, British. Well, there was a luff in charge of her that must have
been sixty if he was a day: nice, cheerful, pink-cheeked old geezer
with white whiskers that danced when he talked. Him and me got into a
bit of talk――we was lyin’ close to――and he tells me he’s been runnin’
the Channel for five or six months in that ferryboat thing. ‘You
must have seen some weather,’ I says. ‘Why, yes, that’s so, my man,’
says he. ‘An’ we been wrecked two or three times――I forget just how
many.’ ‘Wrecked!’ I says. ‘Not in that, sure-ly!’ He nods. ‘Yes, but
you’d never know it, would you? That’s what comes of havin’ a fine,
staunch boat under you,’ he says, as proud as you please. ‘There’s few
destroyers as would have gone through what this boat’s been through!’
An’ he looks around that wooden fresh-water jitney like she was the
_Royal Sovereign_. Say, fellers, that’s what I call a dead game sport,
eh?”
The boys agreed heartily, and the machinist’s mate, tearing the wrapper
from a package of chewing gum and offering the delicacy, added: “An’
say, let me tell you somethin’ else funny. This old geezer tells me
that before the war he never crossed the English Channel that he wasn’t
as sick as a pup, but since he’d got his commission and had been
floppin’ around in that pocket dreadnought of his he hadn’t missed a
meal! How’s that for mind over matter, or whatever you call it?”
The _Warren_ found no further adventures, although she remained on
patrol five days longer. Of course there were the usual alarms that
came to nought, and there was a three hundred mile scamper one night
to assist a French scout cruiser who had bumped her nose into a mine.
But other ships were nearer, and the _Warren_ arrived too late to aid.
The cruiser had sunk in forty minutes without loss of life. Every day
they spoke ships, but anything German was beyond their good fortune.
They might easily have considered that in sinking one submarine they
had done their duty for that time, especially as the officers were
unanimous in the verdict that the destroyed craft had been one of the
latest and biggest of the German underseas fleet. But that adventure
had only whetted their appetite and as the last twenty-four hours of
sea duty began they bemoaned their luck and said scathing things of the
lookouts, accusing them, for instance, of going to sleep in the foretop
cage. There was one brief gleam of hope about midnight when they sent
a shell across the bows of a suspicious-looking steamer who failed to
answer signals. But she proved to be only a Norwegian cargo boat making
for Huelva. The next day they were creeping through the mine fields
again, with the misty green Irish coast beckoning, and in the afternoon
the destroyer sent her anchors rattling down into the mud of Queenstown
Harbour. More mail and newspapers awaited them, and it was in a New
York paper that Joe found the first mention of any of their friends at
the Training Station. There had been a fire at “a United States naval
base” and among those mentioned for heroic conduct in fighting flames
adjacent to munition stores was Abraham Libinsk. Joe looked up and
called across to Steve:
“What was the name of that Polish chap at Newport? Abie, they called
him.”
“Abie? Abraham, I guess. Oh, his last name? Search me, Joe. I heard it
often enough, but――――”
“Libinsk?”
“Yes, that was it. It had about twenty-seven letters in the original,
but he shortened it because the recruiting officer couldn’t get it
right; or didn’t have time; I forget which. What about him?”
Joe read the dozen lines aloud and Steve nodded. “Just what I expected.
That chap’ll come out of this fuss with gold stripes, I’ll bet!”
There was news of other friends, as well. Steve had a much-travelled
letter from Neil Fairleigh written at “an Atlantic port.” Neil, a
member of the Adventure Club, had just got his corporal’s chevrons and
was evidently extremely proud of the fact. They were, he wrote, off to
France in a few days. “I’m in the Field Artillery, and it’s great work.
We’ve got a splendid lot of fellows. By the way, I had a letter from
old Wink just before I left the West. He’s down in Texas learning to
fly and he’s as sore as a boil because they aren’t going to let them
go across until late in the Fall. I suppose you heard that Cas Temple
‘got his’ last month. He’s in a hospital in Paris and is doing finely,
I hear. Write me sometime, care American Expeditionary Forces, and tell
me what you know. How’s Joe? And Han? Remember me to them, please. I
suppose you’ll be thinking about coming in after college closes. Maybe
I’ll run across you over there sometime. Looks like the old Adventure
Club is due to see some real stunts, what? Don’t forget to write.
Letters are great things these days. Yours till Berlin falls, Neil.”
And there was a funny scrawl from another member of the club, Perry
Bush. Perry was still at preparatory school where they had left him the
year before but was ardently patriotic and militant. They were drilling
at Dexter, he wrote: had six companies: and he was a lieutenant. And
as soon as school was over he was going to enlist somehow. “I’m only
seventeen, you know, but I look a good deal older, don’t you think I
do, Steve? They say you can pass if you fib a little and put false
heels in your shoes. I know a fellow who’s a month younger than I and
he joined the National Guard last Fall and now he’s in France I guess.
I saw by the Yale News that you and Joe had joined the Navy. I’d like
that, too, but they say they keep you in training six months and the
war might be over by that time. I wish you’d write and tell me what
it’s like and whether you think I’d have to stay in training camp or
wherever they send you very long. It’s drill time now so I’ll close
with best wishes to you and old Joe from yours truly, Perry.”
“Perry’s punctuation,” laughed Joe, returning the letter, “is no great
compliment to Dexter Academy, is it?”
“He’s too good-natured,” said Steve. “He doesn’t like to overwork the
poor little comma. How are your folks, Joe?”
“Fine. Dad writes that he’s been up at Albany for three days. They’ve
made him something-or-other on some commission that has to do with
food.”
“Hope he knows more about it than you do, then! Mother writes that she
has knitted so many sweaters this Summer that she can’t bear the sight
of a needle. Wants to know if I need a new one. Well, I don’t, but
I’m going to say that I do, for there are a dozen chaps aboard this
ship that would like one, I guess. Mother seems to have an idea that
we dress like the soldiers and wear sweaters and wristers and woollen
helmets. I dare say she’d be horribly disappointed if I wrote her that
the only time I can wear a sweater is when I’m on liberty: and then
it’s generally much too warm.”
“You let the Old Man see you hiking around with that sweater on and
you’ll get what for, Steve!”
“Then you tell him to make over this Irish weather. For a warm place
you can get colder here than any spot I ever found. If they’d have a
little more sunlight it would be all right, but these ‘moistures’ and
fogs simply seep right into a chap’s inmost being!”
“Well, put up that raft of newspapers and let’s get ashore and stretch
our legs. Tell you what I’ll do with you, Steve: I’ll walk over to
Ballycottin with you.”
“Bally which?” asked Steve suspiciously.
“Ballycottin.”
“How far is it as the horse flies?”
“Oh, about twelve or fourteen miles.”
“Irish or American?”
“What’s the difference?”
“About twenty-six hundred and forty feet, as near as I can determine.
Haven’t you noticed in this country that when a native says a place is
a mile away it’s always a good mile and a half? You show me this bally
place on the map first, old top.”
“Haven’t got a map, but it really isn’t awfully far. We can get a ride
back maybe.”
“Yes, maybe. And maybe not so. Pick out a place on a tram line, Joe,
and I’ll talk business with you.”
“Well, come ashore, anyhow. I’m fed up with this old oil tank. I want
to smell real smells.”
“Get Hearn’s ball and we’ll go over to that thing they call a diamond.
Say, maybe there’s a game on this afternoon. Let’s go and see, eh?”
They found a contest about to begin when they arrived, and, not caring
particularly whether the destroyer crew or the supply ship crew won,
they joined a perfectly neutral group of British tars and Tommies and
had more enjoyment listening to the comments than in watching the game.
A tall Australian chap in khaki who walked with a perceptible limp and
whose pallour suggested a recent return from “Blighty,” was, perhaps,
even more amusing than his English friends, for he undertook to explain
the points of baseball in a drawl that would have done for a Texan
cowboy and from a knowledge far from ample. But the audience took it
all in and for the rest of the contest tried their best to reconcile
what they had learned with what they saw, with scant success. Later,
when the supply ship’s team ran wild on the bases and piled up a six
run lead Steve and Joe took the part of the under dog and joined the
destroyer’s forces and cheered vociferously until, in the last half
of a startling ninth inning, the destroyer came from behind and nosed
out the game by a run. Even the Britons forgot their stoicism and
yelled during that finish, and Joe overheard a small English midshipman
observe that for a game that wasn’t cricket it wasn’t half bad!
Life at the base wasn’t exciting. At sea they all looked forward to
getting back into port, but once in port they longed to be outside
again. There was the constant fear that “something big might be pulled
off” while they were kicking their heels along the water-front. There
were always startling rumours to be picked up in Queenstown. They
almost never proved true, but they made something to talk about, and
one could always hope that this time it was really so that the British
Admiralty had finally consented to try smoking the German Fleet out and
that there’d “be fur flying around Helgoland this time next week!”
Tales of tragedies came into port every day: British dreadnoughts sunk,
American transports torpedoed, thousands drowned. Fortunately these
rumours were as idle as those others, usually traceable to Dublin,
that credited the German Emperor with having evolved another perfectly
good peace proposal. Life wasn’t dull, but there was an exasperating
sameness about it, and by the end of the second day in port the
_Warren’s_ crew――and her officers, as well,――began to look forward
impatiently to the time for up-anchoring. There was a certain amount
of satisfaction to be had from swapping yarns with the “gobs” from the
British chasers or from ships of their own fleet, and some tall tales
were told around Queenstown that Summer, but telling wasn’t doing, and
after twenty-four hours on shore or lying in harbour there came an ache
for the whistling winds and the feel of the trembling decks. After all,
their business was to “raus” the Huns, and lying in port was only a
waste of time!
The _Warren_ filled her oil tanks again, loaded a few boxes of
cartridges and many, many boxes of food supplies and presently stole
forth again.