DANNY GRIN PROVES HIS METTLE
With her boats secure, and all hands, including the recent “lady
passengers,” on board once more without loss, the battered-looking
“Prince” turned on her way.
All that day she sailed, yet found no submarine confiding enough to rise
and take a chance at her shabby-looking hull.
“Of course there is one big chance you have to take,” said Darry, at
dinner in the ward-room that night, “and that is the danger that a
submarine will think this old hulk worthy of sinking by means of a
torpedo.”
“No sub will shoot a torpedo at us,” rejoined Dalzell, “if she once gets
a look at us. A torpedo costs a small fortune, while a shell or two cost
nothing by comparison. The idea in sending out a trap-craft like the
‘Prince’ is that no German naval officer would think of throwing away a
torpedo on her.”
“Of course,” Dave admitted, “the greatest danger is that a German shell,
fired above water, will cripple you and put you out of business.”
“It’s a sporting chance, to be sure,” Dan admitted.
“If your engines were stopped by a shell, and you couldn’t maneuver for
position, and therefore couldn’t use your guns, and a German submarine
crew took you prisoners, the sight of your guns would insure that all
hands on board would die painful but sure deaths.”
“It’s that sporting element of risk that makes the game so pleasant,”
Dan retorted.
His junior officers chuckled.
“I’m glad you all take it the way you do,” was Dave’s cordial rejoinder.
“It adds a lot to your chances of success.”
“And just what do you think our chances are?” Dan pressed home. At this
the junior officers listened eagerly, for Darrin’s sound judgment was
fast becoming a tradition in the Navy.
“Your chances,” Dave declared, “are that you probably will sink several
submarines. Then, one of these days, you’ll either get the unlooked-for
torpedo, or else you’ll meet a master in strategy or gunfire, and you’ll
go to the bottom—and another bright plan will be given up by the Allies.
But I hope you’ll do a huge lot of damage before the probable end
comes.”
That night the “Prince” prowled the seas, and when Darrin awoke in the
morning she was headed toward her home port, that time might not be
wasted to the westward of the locality where German submarines were
likely to operate against merchantmen.
Nor had Dave taken more than one look overboard before he discovered
that the “Prince” now lay much lower in the water.
“Our water ballast tanks are filled,” Dan explained. “That gives us the
appearance of being heavily loaded, as with American wheat, for
instance.”
“Soldiers, wheat and ammunition are the things the Germans most enjoy
sending to the bottom,” Dave nodded. “Really, it is too bad that this
seeming old tub doesn’t look good enough to carry troops.”
“Oh, I think that even as a cargo tramp we’ll draw the fire of any
submarine whose commander gets a glimpse of us,” Dan replied.
Within ten minutes after he had said it a submarine rose, fifteen
hundred yards away, and, without firing, signalled to the “Prince” to
lie to.
Almost instantly “Abandon ship” shrieked from the steam whistle, and the
early performance of the day before was gone through with. After the
boats had started away, bearing sailors and men and “women” passengers,
the submarine came up closer.
All in a jiffy the ports were opened and all three shells from the
starboard battery landed in the enemy hull. There was no fight after
that, the submersible sinking before any of the crew could get clear to
save themselves.
“Do you begin to see the joke?” demanded Danny Grin, grimly. “Are you
prepared to join in the laugh at the Germans?”
“If the ‘Prince’ continues her good work for a fortnight,” smiled Dave
Darrin, “the ocean will be a lot safer place for American troopships.”
“I’m beginning to feel,” Dan remarked, “that I can highly endorse the
intelligence of those who sent me out on this errand.”
“The errand is a good one, anyway,” Darrin laughed, teasingly.
The rest of the day passed without other incident than the appearance of
two destroyers, one British and one American. Each of these war craft
signalled to ask if convoy were desired, to which Dan signalled a
courteous, “No, thank you.”
“Won’t those chaps feel sold when they learn, if they ever do, what kind
of an outfit they wanted to protect?” Dan chuckled.
Just before dawn, next morning, Dalzell was roused from a nap and called
to the bridge.
“Gun-fire dead ahead, sir,” reported Ensign Stark. “Don’t you make out
the flashes, sir?”
“Yes,” nodded Dalzell, after he had taken and used the proffered glass.
“Some one is catching it, but is the victim a steamship, or is it a
submarine that some destroyer has overhauled? Oh, for just sixty seconds
I’d like to have our wireless rigged!”
Ensign Stark had already ordered the speed increased, and so reported,
but Danny Grin, as he heard the firing, seized the engine-room telephone
and ordered all speed possible crowded on.
Thus he swept along, without lights, until within a mile of the
bright-red flashes, which he could now see without the aid of a glass.
At this point speed was reduced to eight knots and the “Prince” moved
along more moderately.
“What is it ahead?” asked Dave Darrin, who had just turned out and come
briskly up to the bridge.
“It’s a one-sided fight,” Dan answered, “but I don’t know the kind of
craft. Undoubtedly one is a submarine. She can’t have been very
seriously hit, either, or the firing would be ended.”
“You have a searchlight?”
“Yes, but with the strictest orders not to use it except to save ship
and crew,” was Dan’s answer.
Soon after, despite the darkness, the chums were able to make out a
steamship ahead, heeled well over to port. And the flashes of a gun were
so close to the water as to indicate that a submarine was firing, even
before its outlines could be made out.
“The cowardly hounds!” blazed Dave, indignantly. “They’ve got that ship
sinking, and all they’re doing is terrorizing the poor wretches aboard
by slow, systematic murder!”
“I’ll get them as soon as I have light enough for a gunner’s sight,”
muttered Dan Dalzell. Calling a boatswain’s mate under the bridge, he
directed him to hoist a Norwegian flag at the stern, and to bend and
hoist the signal:
“We wish to save crew and passengers.”
“And that’s the truth, too, though perhaps not all of it,” snorted
Dalzell, all of whose fighting blood had been aroused by the cowardly
proceeding going on ahead.
In hoisting the Norwegian flag he was wholly within his rights as a
naval commander. Under international law a naval commander is entitled
to hoist any neutral or belligerent flag, including even that of the
enemy, in order to maneuver into fighting position. But, before he can
fire a shot, the commander must hoist the flag that he actually sails
under.
In this instance Dan would give the “Prince” the assumed character of a
neutral merchant ship that desired to play a humane part. No real
Norwegian skipper would have been likely to take such a chance, as it
would only have invited the destruction of his craft.
Dawn came quickly now. With the first streaks Dan ran up the signal and
sailed daringly in. The submarine, which lay ahead, had ceased firing.
The doomed ship took the plunge and vanished, but in three boats and on
six rafts a frightened lot of men and women were seeking to get away
from Death.
“Lie to and abandon ship!” signalled the German commander, as soon as
the presence of the “Prince” was made out.
But Dan, with the range, took the bull boldly by the horns. Opening
ports in a jiffy, and with gun crews at quarters on both starboard and
port, he gave the firing order.
“Give ’em ‘Chermany over all,’ and put it all over them!” commanded
Danny Grin savagely.
Three shells left the starboard battery before the astounded German
commander had realized that it was a fighting craft that menaced him.
Two of the shells flew over, striking the water beyond, but the third
crashed through the plates of the conning tower, exploding inside and
blowing off part of the top of the tower.
No sooner had the guns been fired than Dalzell changed the course to
bring the port battery into play.
“Give ’em ‘Chermany over all’ all over again!” roared Danny Grin’s
voice. “Oh, it’s a great game, don’d it?”
A laugh rose from below, but that laugh was drowned by the joint crash
of all the guns of the port battery. Another shell entered the
submarine’s tower, and two struck the hull, inflicting more deadly
damage.
And now a machine gun began to play over the hull of the sea monster,
sending such a storm of bullets that one had to admire the courage—or
was it despair?—of a German officer who dared the leaden tempest and
sprang from the tower with a white flag, signalling surrender.
“Cease firing!” roared Dalzell through a megaphone. “But load and stand
by ready for some German brand of treachery.”
Undoubtedly the German officer knew that he stood under the muzzles of
loaded guns. His face white and set, he signalled his offer to
surrender.
“We’ll accept you as prisoners if you act honestly,” was signalled back
by Dan’s order. “But we’ll blow you into the air if you try to play a
single trick on us.”
Acting under further orders a collapsible boat was put over the side of
the submarine. The captain, the second-in-command and the engineer
officer came over to the “Prince” on the first trip, two men returning
with the boat to bring other prisoners. In the meantime the rafts and
boats from the sunken ship were turning back to the rescuer.
Barely more than half of the Germans had been gotten clear of the
submarine when that unlucky craft foundered. Two survivors were picked
up from the sea, but the rest went down into the great salt-water grave.
“Periscope on the port quarter!” rang a lookout’s hail.
Dalzell rushed to the port end of the bridge, glass to his eyes.
Yes, there was the tell-tale tube above water, some eight hundred yards
away, the sun shining on the water drops that clung to it.
“Periscope on the starboard quarter!”
Dan performed a sprint to the starboard end of the bridge, to find the
news only too true, though the periscope vanished within a second or two
after he had sighted it.
“’Ware torpedo, on port quarter!”
Moving like a jumping-jack, Dan’s right hand reached for the lever of
the engine-room telegraph. Half-speed ahead! Full speed!
“’Ware torpedo on starboard quarter!”
There was no time to observe the torpedo wake traveling toward the
“Prince.” Dalzell’s orders were based on what he had seen of the
locations of the two periscopes.
A sharp, oblique turn to starboard, then a further turn just as the
propellers began to kick at full speed.
Both torpedoes passed astern, their courses crossing. The maneuver
brought the tramp around so that the starboard battery could now be
trained on the submersible to the southward.
Her commander, taking desperate chances, rose to the surface to open
with his forward gun.
Fatal mistake! Only one gun barked from the “Prince’s” starboard
battery, tearing a hole in the Hun’s hull. And now Dalzell completed the
turn to give his full attention to the remaining submarine. She,
commanded by a more cautious man, had vanished.
Not for long, however, for a line on the water revealed the wake made by
the conning tower as she headed straight for the “Prince.”
Again Dan’s orders rapped out. The seeming tramp steamer, developing a
speed that could not have been looked for, maneuvered so as to run,
bow-on, at the submersible.
The craft to the southward was sinking, but the one to the northward was
coming straight. A light streak on the water shot out in advance of her
while the “Prince” was making her turn. Seeing that he was bound to
miss, the Hun commander let loose with his other tube. The “Prince”
completed her maneuver, and now showed only her bow to the enemy, her
hull standing away in a straight line between the courses of the two
torpedoes, which dashed on by her and were lost in the distance.
As the craft were rapidly nearing each other, Dan, by the aid of his
marine glass, located exactly the beginning, or nearer end, of the
conning tower’s wake.
“She may submerge and come up astern of you!” muttered Dave Darrin.
“We’ll see!” ground out Dalzell, between his teeth, still holding the
glass to his eyes.
There was no question of getting the range, for the two craft were
lessening the distance, altering it, every second that passed.
Still Dan headed on, knowing that the enemy could submerge and change
her course at greater depth.
“I’ve got only one chance in a million to get that rascal!” Dalzell
growled to his chum.
“And apparently the enemy has all the other chances in the million—but
it’s a great game!” cried Dave Darrin.
Dan held on steadily, his motto “Win or sink!”