PETE TO THE RESCUE
After a seemingly interminable time Dave came sputtering back to the
surface, breathless, dazed, feeling very much as if he had been shot
from a mortar. His head rang and he was conscious of lameness in his
arms. For a moment, satisfied to keep his head out of water, he trusted
to the buoyancy of his life-vest and tried hard to realize what had
happened. Failing, he took stock of his chances of rescue. At first
they looked very slim. About him nothing was visible save the golden
mist, which, seen from the surface, was slowly writhing under the first
breath of a gentle breeze. Then the sharp bark of a rapid-fire gun
shattered the silence. It came from his left. He started to strike out
in that direction, but after a few strokes stopped. From back of him
had come a second shot, and of the two the latter somehow sounded more
like the bark of the _944’s_ three-inch guns. He swung about and swam
in the new direction, and as he did so a third shot rang out, and then
a fourth, and he thought he could hear the sing of the shells. Two
shots answered from the other gun, which now seemed in a new quarter.
He judged that he was safely out of range and that the chaser and
U-boat were engaged in a running fight. How either could be visible to
the other in the mist he could not understand, not realizing that the
mist, while heavy just above the water, was fast burning off above. The
firing continued briskly for several minutes and then stopped, and by
that time both guns sounded much farther away and he realized with a
sinking heart that the _944_ had abandoned him.
That knowledge and the fact that it hurt him horribly to use his arms
stopped his labors and he let himself float. Fortunately, the sea was
almost as calm as the proverbial millpond, as though the blanket of
mist was holding it smooth. His life-vest held his shoulders just above
the surface, and, he reflected, as long as the calm lasted, he would
be able to bob about until hunger or exhaustion did its work. Somehow,
the chance of being picked up didn’t enter far into his calculations.
He seemed so absolutely alone and so tiny in that immensity of ocean!
Perhaps, he thought, when the mist cleared off his plight wouldn’t look
so hopeless, but just now he was thoroughly despairing.
His thoughts jumped from one subject to another in a way that left his
mind tired and confused, and he ended by trying not to think at all.
That, however, was impossible, and he was soon back at it. He wondered
whether his mother would give up the home at Sparrensville and join his
sister and her husband in California, whether the _944_ had escaped
from the submarine, how Tom Stearns’s leg was, what Pete Rooney was
doing, and whether Pete would miss him, whether there were sharks in
those waters, what time it was――
Well, he could easily find that out, and he lifted his right arm to
look at the little silver watch that had been strapped about his
wrist. But it wasn’t there, and he remembered taking it off when his
arm was being bandaged because the blood had trickled down and stained
the leather. He had dropped it in a pocket, but he didn’t care enough
now to search for it. Besides, he reflected dismally, the water had
probably stopped it before this. For some reason that seemed the last
straw, and he sniffed a few times and felt tears gathering in his eyes.
Then the absurdity of crying because his watch had stopped struck him
and he laughed aloud, a trifle hysterically, and felt better. After
all he wasn’t dead yet. Lots and lots of folks had been rescued in
mid-ocean, and why not he? Hadn’t Pete declared just the other day that
he was never born to be drowned? He began to take courage again. Things
might have been worse, he told himself, with an attempt at philosophy.
The water might have been much colder and ten times rougher, and it
might have happened at night. Now the sun was making itself felt more
every minute and its warmth was good. He was talking aloud to himself
by this time, and the sound of his own voice was cheering. To prove
that he was not altogether downhearted he pursed his lips to whistle.
The whistle didn’t come, though, for at that moment he heard a faint
cry from the mist. It sounded so much like his own name that he feared
for a second that his mind was wandering. But there it was again:
“Ki-i-id!”
He must be dreaming. Or had he only heard the cry of a gull? But he
answered, putting all his breath in a long shout of “Hello!” Then he
waited, his heart beating so loudly that he feared he would not hear
the response if it came. But he did. From afar trailed the faint thread
of sound: “Shout ... again!”
He shouted, not only again but many times. They were seeking for him in
a boat. His troubles were over or soon would be. He forgot the pains
in his arms and shoulders and struck out vigorously toward the distant
voice. It was nearer now, and its message was, “Coming, Kid!” It was
Pete.
Through the golden haze, now fast thinning, the two voices drew nearer
and nearer. Dave listened for the sound of oars, and was puzzled at not
hearing them. Then Pete’s cheerful tones were almost at hand, and Dave,
pausing in his swimming, strained his eyes to find him.
“Are you all right?” called Pete.
“Yes. Where are you?”
“Coming as fast as I can, Kid! It’s slow work, but――”
And then out of the haze not many yards distant something took shape,
something just above the water that was never in the world a boat! Dave
stared bewilderedly as into his vision floated the grinning countenance
of Pete, freckles and all. He was swimming and pushing ahead of him
one of the chaser’s big life buoys!
“Get aboard,” called Pete. “Gee, that’s the craziest thing I ever tried
to shove!”
“Where――where did you come from?” gasped Dave.
“Oh, I just dropped over for a swim. Lay hold of this, Kid, and rest
yourself. Sure you’re all right? Gee, when I saw you take a backward
flip over the side I thought you was a gonner! ‘Good night!’ says I.
But you came up all right just before the fog hid you an’ I guessed you
wasn’t dead yet. You and the deckhouse sort of went off together, Kid!”
“What happened?” asked Dave. He put his elbows over the canvas rim of
the buoy and tried to get his breath back.
“Oh, nothin’ much, except that sub sneaked up on us again an’ exploded
a shell in the after-house. Why you wasn’t killed is beyond me! I was
comin’ along the deck when it happened. There was a bang and the house
sort of melted away an’ I saw you doing a Kellermann into the ocean.
That was some dive, take it from Pete!”
“But――but I didn’t see the U-boat!”
“No more did any one until she’d lammed two shots at us. Then Tracey,
in the cage, yelled down that he’d found her an’ we got busy. I didn’t
stay to help, though. I just grabbed this ‘doughnut’ and lit on my
tummy.”
“You mean you jumped over? What for?”
Pete viewed him disgustedly across the life buoy. “Ain’t I told you I
dropped in for a swim? Say, what would you have done? Just let me go
floatin’ off to Africa?”
“Oh! But――but Pete, you oughtn’t to have! Now we’ll both drown!”
“Drown! Nothin’ doin’, Kid! I ain’t got no intention of drownin’. It’s
too damp. Why, say, this thing’ll float us until the war’s over an’ the
United States Army’s eatin’ breakfast in Berlin!”
“Well, it was――mighty fine of you,” muttered Dave. “And plucky, but you
oughtn’t to have done it. I suppose they didn’t know I was overboard?”
“You didn’t say anything to the Old Man about goin’, did you?” asked
Pete, dryly. “Even if they had known, you don’t suppose they’d have
stopped to pick you up, do you? Not with that U-boat hammerin’ ’em to
bits! They’d have dropped a life buoy over an’ let it go at that. Well,
that’s what I did. Only I went over with the buoy. You see, I argued
like this. ‘The Kid’s alive all right,’ thinks I, ‘but he’s sure to
have somethin’ missin’, like a head or a leg or somethin’, an’ he won’t
be much good for swimmin’. So what he needs is a pal to sort o’ aid
his failin’ steps, so to speak.’ Say, you ain’t lyin’, are you? You’re
really all here?”
“Yes, I am really, Pete. I feel kind of bruised――”
“That’s funny, too! You was only pushed overboard by a dose of
shrapnel. Some folks is easy hurt!”
Dave smiled. Then “Are any of the others wounded or――or killed, Pete?”
he asked.
“None killed, I guess. Not when I left, anyway. Chuck Morgan got a
splinter, and I think some of the guys at the after gun was messed up a
bit, but I ain’t sure. We got away from the Fritz all right, I guess.
Sounded so, anyway. They couldn’t keep up with the old _944_. It seems
sort o’ wrong to run away from ’em, but those subs has got bigger guns
than ours, an’ a nasty way of shootin’ straight! Now the question is,
Kid, what’s the program goin’ to be?”
Dave shook his head, gazing helplessly about him. The mist was nearly
gone, and what remained was writhing and twisting in the breeze. “I
suppose all we can do, Pete, is sit tight and wait for some one to pick
us up.”
“Sure, but we might send a radio,” answered Peter. “‘S O S to all
ships, from steamer Doughnut, latitude――.’ What’s our latitude, Kid?”
“I guess you’d joke if you were dying,” grumbled Dave. Now that Pete
was there to take command, Dave felt privileged to grumble a little.
“Well, I couldn’t grouch,” replied the other cheerfully. “That’s one
sure thing, Kid. I don’t know whether we could both sit on this thing
an’ paddle it with our feet an’ get anywhere. What do you think?”
“Would it hold us?”
There was no reply from Pete. He was staring intently across the water.
“What is it?” asked Dave eagerly.
“Well, if I saw what I think I saw,” responded Pete, “we won’t have to
do no paddlin’.”
“A ship?”
“Yeah, sort of. A submarine. Maybe I was mistaken, but――no, I wasn’t
neither. There she comes straight for us. See her? No, no, over this
way more. You’re looking too far to the left. Got her?”
“Yes,” murmured Dave. “Do you――do you think she’s German, Pete?”
“You bet she’s German, ’cause I know that murderin’ boat like I’d know
my own grandmother if I had one. She’s the one we been scrappin’ with,
Kid.”
“Maybe she won’t see us.”
“No fear! She’s spied us long ago. Well, I’d rather go aboard somethin’
else, but we can’t be choosey.”
“Maybe it would be better if we just――just slipped off and went down,”
faltered Dave.
“What for? Think I’m scared of a bunch o’ fat Huns? Not so you’d ever
know, Kid! Only thing botherin’ me is, how’ll I be able to take dinner
with the captain, not speakin’ no German?”