[Illustration: A folded piece of paper.]
DAVE DARRIN AND THE GERMAN SUBMARINES
OR
MAKING A CLEAN-UP OF THE HUN SEA MONSTERS
By
H. IRVING HANCOCK
Author of “Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz,” “Dave Darrin on Mediterranean
Service,” “Dave Darrin’s South American Cruise,” “Dave Darrin After
the Mine Layers,” etc., etc.
Illustrated
THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY Akron, Ohio New York
Made in U. S. A.
Copyright MCMXIX
By THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I—ON THE SEA PATROL
On the prowl at sea. Dan takes the rest cure. Dave springs a new trap
for submarines. The enemy’s alarm clock. “Searchlight men, stand
ready!” A shell-made geyser. The sea duel. A submarine finish. “Wasted
humanity.” Orders by wireless. Shore leave. Mr. Matthews of Chicago.
With the British sea-dog.
CHAPTER II—THE MEETING WITH A PIRATE
Dan has forebodings. “’Ware torpedo!” Dan’s “forty winks” end. “All
hands to abandon ship!” How the trick worked. A wonderful job. The
loiterer at the radio room door. “I’ll keep my eye on you.”
CHAPTER III—QUICK “DOINGS” OVER THE SHOAL
Fisherman’s Shoal. The bubble trail. “Over with the ‘buoy’!” The
driver’s job. “Come up, or take a bomb!” Talking with the Pirate. A
face seen before. Bechtold does some German lying. Poison vapors.
Mystery in a berth. Bechtold’s grab.
CHAPTER IV—THE TRAIL TO STRANGE NEWS
Fortune is partial to the bold. A hot burn with acid. Saving words
from a wreck. Use for a prize crew. Bechtold bluffs. Dave unfolds the
coming fate of the prisoner. That ugly word, “spy.” “War breeds savage
ideas.”
CHAPTER V—DAVE TALKS OUT IN COUNCIL
The sheet that Dave saved. The drive against the troopships. “Sixty
submarines!” Dave has the floor at naval headquarters. “I will stake
my soul!” “Darrin, I wish we had you in our navy!” Three big cheers.
Danny Grin feels proud.
CHAPTER VI—THE GLOWWORM OF THE SEA
Looking for the 117th Division afloat. Dave’s extra nap. The row at
the stern. The glow on the sea. The lie passed. Ensign Phelps picks up
the mystery. The chart-room conference. The work of a spy. “A traitor
on board!”
CHAPTER VII—DARRIN HAS A SPY SCARE
Dave quizzes the accused. Ferguson’s turn on the rack. The search for
evidence. “Have we spies on the ‘Logan’?”
CHAPTER VIII—THE BATTLE FOR THE TROOPSHIP FLEET
On board the troopship fleet. Torpedo talk. “Keep your hair from
turning gray before you reach the trenches.” No clues or traces yet.
The minute of signals. Vanguard of troopship fleet. Dave swerves for
battle. “Let go the depth bomb!”
CHAPTER IX—WHEN THE ENEMY SCORED
The soldiers feel better. “They can’t hit us.” “They’ve got us!” The
start of a panic. Destroyers scurry to save. The biggest submarine
fight of all. Big guns roar.
CHAPTER X—THE HOTTEST WORK OF ALL
In Periscope Lane. Shooting of the good old kind. Clean work. Dave
Darrin’s lucky time. “Hit is the right word.” Machine guns turn loose.
Playing upon the Hun gun-crew. Beatty’s luck changes.
CHAPTER XI—A TRAP AND ITS PREY
Turning turtle. “They’re only Huns.” The fighting storm clears.
Listing the survivors. Extent of the American losses. Dan has some
questions. Dave plans a ruse. Reardon and the marine. Jordan steps
into the trap.
CHAPTER XII—DAVE HUNTS A BIGGER FIGHT
Blind man’s buff on the waves. Judged by the goods delivered. Making
the best of the unknown. The opening gun. The real fight looms ahead.
CHAPTER XIII—A BATTLE TRY-OUT FOR SOULS
The snap-shooting period. Zigzagging for life. A crazy marine waltz.
The “Logan” turns special hunter. Dave can’t get ’em all. “Specks” in
the sky.
CHAPTER XIV—TEAM WORK BETWEEN SKY AND WATER
The “blimps” arrive. One of them makes a hit and helps Dave to one.
The “Logan’s” guns din out. Through the sea of wreckage. Runkle tells
a tale. The accused spy denies. Dan has his “step,” too. How spies are
handled in Britain.
CHAPTER XV—DAN’S TURN TO GRIN
Not a word about the “Prince.” Darry is puzzled. “Unmask!” Dalzell
grins broadly. Dave thinks he’s dreaming. A warship or a floating
dry-goods box?
CHAPTER XVI—ABOARD THE MYSTERY SHIP
“Is this a masquerade?” Dan is wrong. Dave in his disguise. “Rubber!”
Where did the laugh come in? Real mystery enough. “And the ladies—?”
Dave gives it up. Then he doesn’t.
CHAPTER XVII—THE HUMOROUS ADVENTURE
“Abandon ship!” The strangest of war crews. Heinie von Sub moves
closer. “Open ports!” The trapper trapped. “Give them a chance.”
“Chermany is Chermany.” The whole German story.
CHAPTER XVIII—DANNY GRIN PROVES HIS METTLE
The new wheat ship. “Do you begin to see the joke?” Guns at work in
the night. The one-sided fight. Cowardly hounds. Dan loads his
strategy. A great game. The German brand of treachery. Beating Hun
team work with an American single. “Win or sink!”
CHAPTER XIX—A GERMAN VIEW OF SUBMARINES
Dan is glad at last. Sparnheim hears a lecture. Then faces an angry
woman. “Don’t touch such a beast!” What long life means to a pirate
captain. Sparnheim is “insulted.”
CHAPTER XX—DAN STALKS A CAUTIOUS ENEMY
Making the enemy guess. Result of Dan’s trick. “He’s going to gun us!”
Dan loses men and a gun. “An outrage!” cries the German. “Report.”
“Home, James!”
CHAPTER XXI—THE S. O. S. FROM THE “GRISWOLD”
Dave’s best good news. New ships for two. Bad news, it turns out.
Runkle is on hand. The chums part company. S. O. S.! The “Griswold”
attacked.
CHAPTER XXII—DAVE’S NIGHT OF AGONY
News of the toughest kind. Flashes from German guns. Dave plans his
own attack. “Never again any mercy to a pirate!” “Belle!” Splash!
CHAPTER XXIII—THE FIGHT TO BRING BELLE BACK
Runkle helps valiantly. The still, white face. The surgeon shakes his
head. “She did not suffer.” Darry refuses to wake up. Dan at his
chum’s side. The fight for Belle’s life. “’Ware torpedo!”
CHAPTER XXIV—CONCLUSION
DAVE DARRIN AND THE GERMAN SUBMARINES
CHAPTER I
ON THE SEA PATROL
“Anything sighted?” called Lieutenant-Commander Dave Darrin as he
stepped briskly from the little chart-room back of the wheel-house and
turned his face toward the bridge.
“Nothing, sir, all afternoon,” responded Lieutenant Dan Dalzell from the
bridge.
Dave ran lightly up the steps, returning, as he reached the bridge, the
salutes of Dalzell, executive officer, and of Ensign Phelps, officer of
the deck.
“It’s been a dull afternoon, then?” queried Darrin, his eyes viewing the
sea, whose waters rose and fell in gentle swells.
No land was in sight from the bridge of the United States torpedo boat
destroyer, “John J. Logan,” which was moving at cruising speed westerly
from the coast of Ireland. The course lay through the “Danger Zone”
created by the presence of unknown numbers of hidden German submarines.
For a winter day the weather had been warm. Forward the two men of the
bow watch and the crews of the rapid-fire guns had removed their coats
and had left them below.
Though there was neither enemy nor friendly craft in sight, Darrin noted
with swift if silent approval that there was no evidence of lax watch.
At port and starboard, amidships, there were men on watch, as also at
the stern. Members of gun-crews lounged close to their stations, to
which additional men could be summoned in a flash. Aft, also, two men
stood by the device from which it might be necessary, at any instant, to
drop a depth bomb.
Trained down to the last point of condition by constant work, these
officers and men of the torpedo boat destroyer made one think of hard,
lean hunting dogs, which, in human guise, they really were. Not only had
toil brought this about but sleep was something of a luxury aboard the
“Logan.” On a cruise these men of Admiral Speare’s fleet of destroyers
slept with their clothes on, the same rule applying to the officers.
Dave Darrin had slept in the chart-room for three hours this afternoon,
following eighteen hours of duty on deck.
“Any wireless messages worth reading?” was Darrin’s next question.
“None intended for us, sir, and none others of startling nature, sir,”
replied Ensign Phelps, handing his superior a loose-leaf note-book. “I
think you saw the last one, sir, and since that came in there were none
important enough to be filed.”
Dave read the uppermost message, nodded, then handed back the book.
For the next ten minutes Darrin scanned through his glasses, the surface
of the sea in all directions.
“I’d like to bag an enemy before supper,” he sighed.
“And I’d like to see you do it,” came heartily from Dan Dalzell.
“Why don’t you turn in for a nap, Dan?” asked Dave, turning to his chum
and second in command, whose eyes looked heavy.
“I believe I could,” admitted Dalzell, almost reluctantly. “Mr. Phelps,
will you leave word with your relief to have me called just after eight
bells?”
Down the steps Dalzell went, to the chart-room, closing the door
curtains behind him. It is one of the unwritten rules that, at sea, the
commander of a vessel and his executive officer shall not both sleep at
the same time.
As for Dave Darrin, he felt that he might be on deck up to midnight, at
least. After that he might snatch “forty winks,” leaving orders to be
called just before dawn.
Short of sleep always, weighted down with responsibility, young Darrin
was happy none the less. First of all, after his wide professional
preparation in many quarters of the globe, he was at last actually in
the great world war. He was in the very place where big things were
being done at sea, and the war had brought him promotion and independent
command. What more could so young a naval officer ask, except sufficient
contact with the enemy to make life interesting?
An hour passed. Dave and Phelps talked but little, and nothing out of
the usual happened, the “Logan” keeping on her course still at cruising
speed. But now the sun was well down on the western horizon; the
northwesterly wind blew a little harder, though not enough to roughen
the surface of the sea noticeably.
“Orderly, there!” called Phelps, quietly from the bridge. “Go to my
quarters for my sheepskin coat and bring it here. Do you wish yours,
sir?” turning to Darrin.
“I’ll step below and get it,” decided Dave. “I’ll probably be back here
with you shortly.”
Going stealthily into the chart-room, Dave took a glance at his chum,
now sound asleep in a chair, with a blanket drawn over him. Dave reached
for his coat, donned it and buttoned it up, then stepped outside. First
of all he moved forward to make a brief but keen inspection of the
gun-crews and their pieces; then, to starboard, after which he strolled
amidships. For a few minutes he was below to receive the report of the
chief engineer, then went aft to inspect the gunners and the watch,
returning on the port side to the bridge.
Soon after that the sun sank into the sea, and darkness came rapidly on.
“It’s going to be a fine night, sir,” said Ensign Phelps, as Dave came
up on the bridge.
“A fine night for something besides steaming, I hope, Mr. Phelps,” Dave
replied, with a smile in which there was something more than mere
wistfulness.
“Amen to that!” agreed the young ensign.
“Wind is shifting, sir,” said Mr. Phelps, fifteen minutes later, when
darkness had settled down.
“So I observed,” answered the youthful commanding officer. “From
nor’west to nor’east. That cloud over to nor’east looks as if it carried
a lot of wind.”
Dave took a quick glance at the barometer, but it had not fallen much.
“No storm in sight yet,” said Dave, thoughtfully. “But cloudy.”
“Aye,” nodded Ensign Phelps. “And a black night may aid either us or an
enemy.”
“More likely the enemy,” replied Darrin, reflectively. “An observer on a
submarine, with the aid of the microphonic or adapted telephonic device,
that is now credited with having been perfected, can hear us coming when
we’re some distance away.”
“And the same observer can discover our direction as compared with his
own position, and can even judge the extent of the distance fairly
well,” remarked the ensign.
“True,” Darrin nodded. Then, suddenly, he spoke energetically, as one
gripped by a new idea.
“Mr. Phelps, have the word passed to all men on watch to keep a doubly
sharp lookout for approaching craft and thus avoid danger of collision.
No one carries running lights in these waters. The watch will also be
extremely vigilant for submarines.”
Again and again the watch, startled by shadows, of which the sea is ever
full at night, called out low-spoken warnings. The officers on the
bridge were kept busy investigating these alarms with their night
glasses. In fact they frequently were deceived too. Every man’s nerves
were on edge; gunners swallowed hard, and with frequency moistened their
lips with their tongues. Every man up topside on the “Logan” felt that
peril was hovering near. It was not fear; it was perhaps that sixth
sense that gives the alarm in moments of unseen danger. So intense was
the nervous strain that the creaking of a brace or the sound of a
straining plate, as the destroyer rolled, made every man on deck jump.
It was a trying situation and such as brought gray hairs to many a
ship’s master in these days of deeds and daring. Better far the rush of
a torpedo in their direction than this nerve-racking waiting for
something that every man on the destroyer felt was coming.
Lieutenant-Commander Darrin, sensing all this, for the very air was
charged with expectancy, frequently steadied the watch with an
encouraging word or a sharp, low-spoken command. Dave sympathized with
them, for he was in very much the same nervous condition. Of course he
could not show it.
“Curtin, we’re in for some work to-night, or else I have an attack of
nerves. I feel it,” said Dave without taking his eyes from observation
of the sea.
“So do I. Queer how a fellow can sense danger when he neither can hear,
see, feel nor smell it,” said Mr. Curtin.
“Submarine hunting is hard on the nerves, but it’s worth while,”
returned Dave. “I think that must be what makes life on a destroyer so
attractive to us. It is the real sporting game. I—What’s that?”
“Yes, it’s——”
“Sh-h-h!” Dave suddenly stiffened, bringing his glasses quickly to his
eyes. “Bow watch there, did you hail?” he demanded in a low, sharp
voice.
“Aye, aye, sir,” came the prompt reply, also pitched in a low tone,
though full of repressed excitement.
Whatever wind there had been in the cloud Dave had observed to the
northeast, had passed. Only the gentlest of breezes blew, though the sky
remained overcast, giving an almost ink-black night—a night for dark
deeds.
So long did the “Logan” drift that probably every wakeful soul on board
felt irritated by the monotony. Suddenly Dave stiffened, bringing his
glass quickly to his eyes.
“Sounds and looks like a craft two points off starboard and about half a
mile away, sir,” reported the bow watch.
“Aye,” Dave responded. “I see it. Mr. Curtin, pass the word for all
hands to quarters.”
Silently officers and men were soon streaming over the decks, on their
way to their various stations. Curtin stood with one hand on the
engine-room telegraph, awaiting the order for headway.
The three-inch guns were loaded, and also the one-pounders and the
machine guns. Two men stood by the darkened searchlight.
“Searchlight men!” Dave called, in a low voice. “You know where we’re
looking?”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Stand by to put a beam squarely across its conning tower if it proves
to be a submarine.”
Again Dave took a long, careful, steady look through his night glass.
Secretly he was a-quiver with excitement; outwardly he was wholly calm.
“Throw the beam!” called Dave sharply, a few seconds later. “Gun-crews
in line with the enemy, stand by!”
A broad band of light from the searchlight played into the sky, then
descended. As the beam reached the water it revealed the tower and deck
of a large submarine rolling awash a little more than half a mile away.
A muffled cheer rose from some of the members of the watch. The men at
the guns were too much occupied to open their mouths.
“Silence in the watch!” Dave commanded, sternly. “Mr. Curtin, half-speed
ahead. Bear straight down on the enemy! Ram him if possible! Ram him at
all hazards if he is submerging when we reach him,” commanded Lieutenant
Commander Darrin.
“Aye, aye,” answered the quartermaster at the wheel.
Like a bloodhound the “Logan” sprang forward.
“Bow guns fire!”
Boom! roared one sharp-tongued three-inch gun. Bang! sounded a
one-pounder. The larger shell threw up a column of spray beyond the
submarine; the small shell struck the water on the nearer side.
“Full speed ahead, Mr. Curtin. Hold her steady there, quartermaster!”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
The “Logan” was soon racing at more than thirty knots an hour, her nose
burrowing into the sea, throwing up great volumes of water.
The enemy submarine had plainly been taken utterly by surprise by the
first flash of the “Logan’s” searchlight, for the warning sound that had
come across the water had been caused by an oil-burning engine that was
supplying power for the recharging of the submarine’s storage batteries.
Such a craft, however, hated and at all times hunted, carries crews
trained to swift work. Soon after the “Logan’s” second three-inch gun
had fired without registering a hit, a five-inch gun of the submarine
was brought into action. Overhead whizzed a shell that just missed the
“Logan’s” wireless aerials. A second shot, aimed at the destroyer’s
water line, passed hardly more than four feet to starboard.
“Get him!” roared Dave Darrin. “Gunners have their wits about ’em!”
Dan Dalzell took the door curtains with him as he leaped out and ran for
the bridge.
The submarine had swung around, and at the same time brought her after
gun into action. The submarine swung again bow on. There was no time to
dive. She was caught and must fight.
“Torpedo coming, sir!” reported the bow watch, but Darrin had already
caught sight, under the searchlight’s glare, of a trail of foam heading
straight for the destroyer.
Quick as was the helmsman’s obedience of orders, the “Logan” escaped the
torpedo by little more than a hair’s breadth as it rushed on past. Then
came a second torpedo. The “Logan,” still driving bow on, save for
swerves to avoid torpedoes, escaped the second one by what appeared to
breathless watchers to be an even closer margin.
Lieutenant Beatty had taken personal charge of sighting one of the
forward guns. He now let fly a shell that tore part of the top of the
enemy’s conning tower away.
“That settles him for diving!” cried Darrin, tensely. “Land a shell in
the hull and force him to take the dive he doesn’t want!”
Onward came a third rushing torpedo. As the “Logan” swerved to avoid it,
a shell from the submarine’s after gun struck and tore away a
one-pounder aft on the destroyer, fragments stretching two men on the
deck, seriously but not fatally injured. An instant later a shell aimed
at the destroyer’s water line forward pierced the hull just below the
gun-deck. A fair hit at the water line would have put the “Logan” in a
sinking condition, but, owing to the oblique position of the target, the
shell, as it struck, glanced off.
“Great work, Mr. Beatty!” shouted Dave hoarsely, as another three-inch
shell struck the enemy, this time at the waterline. “Mr. Curtin, half
speed ahead!”
As the destroyer began to lose headway and slowly circle the undersea
boat, the “Logan’s” crew cheered, this time without rebuke from the
bridge. The submarine craft was rapidly filling and sinking.
At a safe distance Darrin watched, for he was humane enough to wish to
rescue the German survivors, should there be any. So swift was the
sinking of the enemy, however, that there was no time for them to launch
and man the collapsible lifeboat that they undoubtedly carried.
Then the seas closed over the hated craft. A few moments later
Lieutenant-Commander Darrin gave the order to steam forward slowly, the
watch standing by to discover and heave lines to any swimmers there
might be afloat. Not a head was seen, however. Three men at the after
gun had been observed to jump before the submarine went down, but no
trace of them could now be found.
“We’ll never know how many hundreds of decent lives the work of the last
minute has saved,” declared Dalzell hoarsely as he reported on the
bridge.
“Find out as promptly as possible what damage we have suffered,” Dave
ordered. “We were struck several times.”
As Dan saluted and hurried away, Darrin picked up his night glass and
once more resumed his scanning of the sea. Lieutenant Curtin had already
received orders that the destroyer was to cruise slowly back and forth
over and around the spot where the submarine had gone down.
“It seems almost wasted sympathy to try to pick up enemy survivors,”
muttered Mr. Curtin rather savagely.
“But it’s humanity just the same,” Darrin returned. “And Americans must
practise it.”
“Of course, sir.”
Dalzell, who had summoned the aid of other officers and some of the
warrant officers, soon returned.
“Two breaches, one just above water line, and the other below it, sir,”
was Dan’s beginning of the report. “I wasn’t aware that a torpedo
touched us. If it did, it made a dent, but glanced off without the
explosion that a direct hit would have produced. That may account for
the dent below the water line. But a shell hit us above water line. Is
it possible that a large fragment glanced low enough to make the dent
under water? It doesn’t seem possible.”
“Not likely,” smiled Darrin.
“The hole above the water line has been repaired, but men are still
working at the one below the line,” Dalzell went on, “and the pumps are
working hard. The chief engineer was about to report it to you when I
reached him. We have been hit at other points, but no serious damage has
been done.”
“We are not in danger of sinking?”
“Doesn’t look like it to me, sir,” Dan replied, “and the chief engineer
is of the same opinion.”
“Take the bridge with Mr. Curtin.”
Not more than two minutes was Dave below decks, half of that time with
the chief engineer. Then he hurried back, disappearing into the radio
room. In a code message he notified destroyer headquarters of the
encounter, its result, and the nature of the damage to the “Logan.”
Within five minutes the answer came back through the air:
“Return to repair. Keep alert for enemy craft understood to be more
numerous in your waters than usual.”
The order bore the signature of Admiral Speare’s flag-lieutenant.
“Home, James,” smiled Darrin, after reading the order.
So the “Logan” was put about. Dave did not steam fast, for it had been
found impossible wholly to stop the hole below water line. Water still
came in, though in diminished quantity. Fast speed would be likely to
spring the damaged plates.
It was near dawn when land was sighted, and the sun was well up when the
“Logan” steamed limpingly into port. Half an hour later American dock
authorities had taken charge of the destroyer. Dave waited until he saw
his beloved craft in dry dock and the water receding from under her as
it was pumped out of the basin in which the “Logan” now lay.
In the meantime Dalzell, who had had two hours’ sleep on the way to
port, was busy granting shore leave to such men of the crew as were
entitled to have it. More than half of the officers also received leave.
As soon as luncheon had been finished, and after Darrin had conferred
with the dock officer, he and Dan went ashore.
“Where shall we go?” asked Dan, when they had left the naval yard behind
them.
“Anywhere that fancy takes us,” Darrin answered, “and by dark, of
course, to a hotel for as good a shore dinner as war times permit.”
“We’d have a better dinner on board,” laughed Dan, sometimes known in
the service as Danny Grin. “These British hotels are all feeling the
effects of the enemy’s submarine campaign, and can’t put up a half-way
good meal.”
Once in the streets of the port town, the two young American naval
officers strolled slowly along. The crowds had a distinctly war-time
appearance. Hundreds of British and American jackies and two or three
score French naval seamen were to be seen.
“Whoever invented saluting doesn’t have my unqualified gratitude,”
grumbled Danny Grin. “My arm is aching now from returning so many
salutes.”
“It’s a trifling woe,” Darrin assured him. “Look more sharply, Dan. You
missed those two French sailors who saluted you.”
Too good a service man to do a thing like that without regret, Dalzell
turned around to discover that the two slighted French sailors were
glancing backward. He wheeled completely around, bringing his right hand
smartly up to his cap visor and inclining his head forward. Facing
forward once more he was just in time to “catch” and return the salutes
of three British jackies.
“Quite a bore, isn’t it?” asked a drawling, friendly voice, as the two
young officers paused to look in at a shop window’s display.
The young man who had hailed them was attired in a suit and coat of
quite distinctly American cut. He was good-looking, agreeable in manner,
and possessed of an air of distinction.
“The salute is a matter of discipline, not of opinion,” Dave Darrin
answered, pleasantly. “It isn’t as troublesome as it looks.”
“I have sometimes wondered if you didn’t find it tedious,” continued the
stranger.
“Sometimes,” Dave admitted, with a nod. “But it shouldn’t be.”
“You are an American, aren’t you?” asked Dalzell.
“Yes. Matthews is my name. I’m over here on what appears to be the
foolish mission of trying to buy a lot of fine Irish linen, and that is
a commodity which seems to have disappeared from the market.”
Somehow, it didn’t seem quite easy to escape introducing themselves, so
Dan performed that office for the naval pair. Darrin would rather not
have met strangers in the port that was the destroyer base. Mr. Matthews
walked along with them, and presently it developed that he was staying
at the hotel where Dave and Dan had decided to dine. So, after an hour’s
stroll, the three turned toward the hotel.
“I’ll see you later,” declared Matthews, affably, starting for the
elevator on his way to his room.
“Dan,” said Darrin, laying a kindly arm on his chum’s coat-sleeve and
speaking in a low voice, “I’d just as soon you wouldn’t introduce us to
chance acquaintances.”
“That struck me afterwards,” Dalzell admitted, soberly. “Yet, for once,
I do not believe that my bad habit of friendliness with strangers has
done any harm. Matthews appears to be all right.”
“I hope he is,” Dave answered.
Later Matthews joined them below.
“It struck me, gentlemen,” he declared, “that my introduction was rather
informal. Permit me to offer you my card.”
He tendered to each a bit of pasteboard that neither could very well
decline. It was a business card that he had offered, and its legend
stated that Matthews was connected with a well-known Chicago dry-goods
house.
“But in these times,” smiled their new acquaintance, “an American
passport is a better introduction than a mere card.”
Whereupon he produced his passport. After a glance at it the two young
naval officers did not see how they could escape offering their own
cards, which Matthews gladly accepted and deposited in his own
card-case.
He did not intrude, however, but soon moved off, after a cheery word of
parting. Dave and Dan went out for another stroll, returning in time for
dinner.
Hardly had they seated themselves when Matthews, fresh and smiling,
stopped at their table in the dining room.
“I’m afraid you’ll vote me a bore,” he apologized, “but American company
is such a treat in this town that I’m going to inquire whether my
presence would be distasteful. If not, may I dine with you?”
“Be seated, by all means,” Darrin responded, with as much heartiness as
he could summon.
When the soup had been taken away and fish set before them, Matthews
asked:
“Don’t you find the patrol work a dreadful bore?”
“It’s often monotonous,” Dave agreed, “but there are some exciting
moments that atone for the dulness of many of the hours.”
“And frightfully dangerous work,” Matthews suggested.
“Fighting, I believe, has never been entirely separated from danger,”
retorted Dalzell, with a grin.
“Have you sunk anything lately?”
Both naval officers appeared to be too busy with their fish to hear the
question.
Matthews looked astonished for only a moment. Then he waited until they
were half through with the roast before he inquired:
“How do you like the work of the depth bombs? Are they as useful as it
was believed they would be?”
Dave Darrin glanced up quickly. There was no glint of hostility in his
eyes. He smiled, and his voice was agreeable as he rejoined:
“Now, I know you will not really expect an answer to that question, Mr.
Matthews. The officers and men of the service are under orders not to
discuss naval matters with those not in the service.”
“P-p-pardon me, won’t you?” stammered Matthews, a flush appearing under
either temple.
“Certainly,” Dave agreed. “Men not in the service do not readily
comprehend how necessary it is for Navy men not to discuss their work,
especially in war-time.”
Matthews soon changed the subject. After they had gone forth from the
dining room he shook hands with them cordially, and took his leave.
“Is he genuine?” asked Dalzell.
“Must be,” Dave replied. “His passport was in form. You know how it is
with civilians, Danny-boy. Knowing themselves to be decent and loyal,
they cannot understand why service men cannot take them at their own
valuation.”
Just as the two were going out for another stroll the double doors flew
briskly open to admit a group of more than a dozen British naval
officers.
“Hullo, there, Darrin! I say there, Dalzell!”
Surrounded by Britain’s naval officers, our two Americans had to undergo
almost an ordeal of handshaking in the lobby.
“But I thought you were far out on the water, Chetwynd,” Dave remarked
to one of the officers.
“And so I was, but a bad break in a shaft sent me in,” grumbled the
commander of an English destroyer. “Beastly luck! And I was needed out
there,” he added, in a whisper, “for the Germans are attempting a big
drive underseas. We’ve new information, Darrin, that they’ve more than
twice the usual number of submersibles loose in these waters.”
“I’ve been told the same,” Dave nodded, quietly.
“What brought you in?”
“Shell hits, I think they were, though one dent might have been made by
a torpedo,” Darrin answered.
“Then you had a fight.”
“A short one.”
“And the German pest?”
“Went to the bottom. I know, for we saw her sink, and her conning tower
was so damaged that she couldn’t have kept the water out, once she went
under. Besides, we found the surface of the water covered with oil.”
“I’ll wager you did,” agreed Chetwynd, heartily. “You Yankee sailors
have sunk dozens of the pests.”
“And hope to sink scores more,” Darrin assured him.
“Oh, you’ll do it,” came the confident answer. “But come on upstairs
with us. We’ve a private parlor and a piano, and plan a jolly hour or
two.”
From one end of the room, in a lull in the singing, an exasperated
English voice rose on the air.
“What I can’t understand,” the speaker cried, “is that the enemy appear
to have every facility for getting the latest gossip right out of this
port. And they know every time that a liner, a freighter or a warship
sails from this port. There is some spy service on shore that
communicates with the German submarine commanders.”
“I’d like to catch one of the rascally spies!” Dan uttered to a young
English officer.
“What would you do with him?” bantered the other.
“Cook him!” retorted Dan, vengefully. “I don’t know in just what form;
probably fricassee him.”
Little did Dalzell dream how soon the answer to the spy problem would
come to him.