THE WAR GAME
To Billy it seemed as though he fell asleep very quietly and
comfortably, as he clung to the catboat with the water breaking over
him, and that he awoke, aching and miserable, to the wish that he had
been left where he was. As more of his wits returned to him, however, he
realized that it was a little pleasanter to be warm and dry and lying in
a berth in a brightly-lighted room than left to drown in the
disagreeably cold Atlantic.
Some one was lifting him up to pour a hot stinging drink down his
throat; he gulped and choked and did not enjoy it. He tried to look
around to see who was treating him with such unkindness but found it too
great an effort. Some one else was leaning over him. He realized after
listening to the talk for a moment that this was the ship’s captain. He
remembered quickly Captain Saulsby’s last injunction and, with a great
exertion managed to speak.
“That land on Appledore Island,” he began unsteadily. “Captain Saulsby’s
land—some one wants to buy it—some one who isn’t square—you must see
about it.”
He did not seem to be making himself very clear, and stopped to rest.
“What’s the boy talking about?” the Captain said, clearly puzzled. “Is
he out of his head?”
“He sounds so but perhaps he isn’t,” the other answered; “he seems to be
trying very hard to tell you something. Here, take this.”
Billy swallowed a second dose of the detestable drink and under its
reviving influence made another attempt. This time he succeeded better
and seemed almost to make the Captain understand what he was trying to
explain. The endeavour wearied him greatly, however, and he lay back in
his berth feeling quite worn out and very drowsy.
“We’ll let him sleep a while now,” the officer said; “that, I think, is
really all he needs. He’s a husky youngster and won’t suffer much from
his ducking. I’m not so certain about the old fellow who was with him.”
Billy was asleep almost before they had reached the door. When he awoke
again he certainly felt much better, though stiff and sore and
uncomfortable still. A smiling colored boy in a white jacket was sitting
by his berth, put there for the special purpose, it seemed, of catching
him when he rolled over the edge, which he did immediately.
The wind had risen and the torpedo-boat that had picked them up was
pitching and tossing as only a torpedo-boat knows the art. Everything in
the room danced and rattled and Billy was obliged to brace himself with
both arms to keep from being thrown out of his berth again and again. He
asked between pitches for Captain Saulsby and was assured that all was
well with the old sailor and that he was “coming around fine.”
Vigorous health is a strong resister even of the after effects of trying
to drown, so it was not long before Billy was able to sit up, then to
step gingerly down from his rocking berth and try a few unsteady steps
across the floor. After that the room became rapidly too small to hold
him and he was seized with a devouring curiosity to inspect the ship. He
was taken first to see Captain Saulsby, who had been conscious and quite
cheery, they told him, and had now dropped off into a comfortable sleep.
A friendly bluejacket who had also come to ask after the captain’s
welfare, took Billy under his care, and offered to conduct him up on
deck. Once there, however, the sailor was called away by a sudden order,
leaving his charge clinging to the rail and wondering just where they
were going and what they were doing. Clouds of salt spray swept the
length of the ship, making him duck and gasp and grin, but he would not
have gone below again for anything on earth.
The night was pitch black now and stormy, with gusts of wind and rain,
the ship seemed to be taking an aimless course, running generally
southward from Appledore Island but moving now here, now there,
sometimes at half speed, sometimes as swiftly as her big engines could
drive her. Presently his new friend was able to return to his side and
to explain a little more of what they were about.
“We’re playing the war game,” he said, “and our orders just now are to
look for submarines. The only sign of one we have found so far was your
little craft, and a pretty model of a submarine she was trying to make
of herself. There’s one of the big battleships has got away from the
rest of the fleet, and we have orders to look for her, too; but there’s
not much likelihood of her being in these parts. We’ll sink her if we
can get the chance though; I wish we could.”
“But—but—you don’t really sink her?” Billy asked, not willing to show
his ignorance, but far too curious to keep quiet.
“Oh, no; we get up as close as we dare and send up a signal to show that
we could sink her and that it is to be counted on the record for us. But
if she finds us with her searchlights before we can fire, and if we’re
close enough to be smashed by her guns, then we are destroyed and a mad
lot we are, I can tell you.”
It might have sounded like a foolish pastime to Billy when he was
ashore, but here in the wind and the dark, with the ship rushing forward
at full speed and with every one aboard her straining to do his part to
the uttermost, the war game seemed most thrillingly in earnest. He too
hung over the rail and watched the long beam of light swing in searching
circles, he peered through the dark for the periscope of a submarine
until his eyes ached and was as disappointed as anybody when no such
discovery was made. Time passed and nothing was to be seen but a waste
of angry, tossing water; so the lights were finally covered and the
destroyer turned to pursue a steady course northward.
Billy never quite knew by just what process he came finally to be on the
bridge. He was aware that it was absolutely against all rules for him to
go there, but such a force of curiosity drew him thither that it did not
seem possible to resist. By slipping silently from one inconspicuous
place to another, by lounging carelessly against the rail whenever an
officer chanced to pass and by speeding across the deck the moment his
back was turned, he finally came closer and closer to the desired spot,
ventured a cautious foot upon one of the steps and then another, and all
at once was safely curled up in a corner of dense shadow within the
sacred limits of the forbidden place.
The Captain was walking slowly up and down, talking to one of the
officers, passing every now and then so close that he almost brushed
Billy’s elbow. In the gleam of one of the hooded lights, he could
sometimes catch the glistening of the water on their wet coats, or the
shine of the younger officer’s bright red hair.
“That’s a queer pair we picked up,” the Captain was saying as they
passed. “I went down to see how they were getting on and found the boy
all worked up about some scheme that he claims is being hatched on
Appledore Island. He says that the old sailor wants it reported, and may
be too far gone to do it himself, but he isn’t very clear as to just
what the trouble is. The best I can make out seems to be that there is
an effort being made to buy this man Saulsby’s land, and that he is sure
there is German influence backing it, with a view to getting ready a
possible base of supplies in case of war.”
“One hears of such things having gone on for years abroad, before the
German trouble cut loose,” said the other, “but the boy may not have
known what he was talking about. He had been hanging to that boat four
or five hours and that doesn’t tend to clear the brain.”
“Well,” said the Captain, “I’m not very sure myself, but I may plan to
look into the matter without telling him so. The harbour he speaks of is
at the northwest end—”
They moved out of hearing, and Billy took the opportunity to stretch his
cramped knees and shift his uneasy position before they should come back
again. He was heartily ashamed of being there, eavesdropping but—well,
one does not get into the war game often. When he was passed again, he
realized from the voices that the Captain had gone below and that two of
the younger officers were talking.
“I wish we could have found some of those submarines,” one was saying,
“especially with the manœuvres so nearly over. Our orders to end by
fetching a compass round the whole fleet make it almost certain that we
will be caught ourselves, so it does seem as though we might have got
something.”
“Yes,” said the other. “I believe if I could only fire off that torpedo
rocket to tell one of those uppety submarine commanders he is sunk, I
would be the happiest man in Uncle Sam’s Navy. There’s no hope now of
our finding that battleship either.”
The destroyer sped on through the rain and the dark, the two officers
stood silently at their posts and Billy curled up closer in his corner,
soaked and cramped and aching and happy. He thought a moment of that boy
who had walked up the path between Captain Saulsby’s bent, old willow
trees, a sullen boy who had sniffed the salt breeze disdainfully and
vowed that he did not like it. That was some entirely different person
whose name might have happened to be Billy Wentworth, but who had
nothing whatever in common with the boy he was now. He closed his eyes
as he was thinking it over, and even might have dozed a little until a
sudden exclamation from the nearest officer startled him into alert
attention. The rapid volley of excited orders that followed told him at
once that something unusual must have occurred, and, forgetting all
caution in his eager interest, he stood upright that he might watch the
better. It seemed as though he saw a looming bulk in the blackness ahead
of them, as though he actually heard a voice speaking somewhere beyond
there in the dark. Then, all in a breath, a myriad of electric lights
went on and there sprang into form the outline of a huge battleship,
right across their bows. She seemed to tower above them like a mountain,
enormous, massive, moving at no very great speed, but inexorably as
though there were no hope of her swerving or checking her course.
The little destroyer ducked and plunged as she came hard over, she
caught the big bow wave and floundered for a second but nevertheless
pressed manfully on. They were cutting under the big dreadnaught’s bows,
they were bound to be rammed amidships at least; no, it would be nearer
the stern. Oh, wonder of wonders, they were going to win clear. It
seemed to Billy, as he clung to the rail, that he could almost have
stretched out his hand and touched the vessel’s vast steel side as they
went by. He heard some one near him laugh out loud in pure, joyful
excitement and he saw that it was the commander of the destroyer,
himself, who seized the pistol and fired the signal rocket. Up it went
in a flaming stream, directly over the dreadnaught’s bridge, described a
crimson arch above the heads of the startled officers and dropped on the
other side. On both vessels there could be no shadow of a doubt that a
desperate night attack had been successfully made and that according to
all the rules of the war game the battleship _New Mexico_ had gone to
the bottom with all on board.
For Billy, who was as full of thrills as any of the rest, who hung
forward to watch with all his eyes lest he should miss something, there
was a separate passage of the adventure that was all his own. For as the
ship’s searchlights slanted down upon them a moment too late, cutting a
wide, white circle upon the water, they showed him a most unexpected
sight. There, bobbing serenely on the waves, her sails drooping and a
little bedraggled as though she were very tired, but her gay red pennant
fluttering bravely still, rode the little craft that had been the cause
of all his adventures. There could surely be no doubt that it was the
_Josephine_. A moment she sailed serenely alongside, then the roar of
foaming water from under the destroyer’s bow reached out and caught her.
She staggered, careened, rose boldly on the summit of a wave, then sank.
She had sailed far and carried calamity in her wake, but she made a
brave end and went down with colours flying.
His excitement in watching the _Josephine_ was most rudely interrupted
by the discovery by the young officer that there was some one on the
bridge who had no business to be there. Just what was said to him, Billy
preferred afterwards not to remember. He was bundled down the steps with
far more haste than ceremony, and presently found himself, much
chastened and subdued, back in charge of his friend, the bluejacket.
Even then he refused to be taken below, for the destroyer was now coming
into the zone where she must make the perilous passage through the whole
fleet, and he was bound that he would not lose one breathless instant.
The wind had dropped a little and the sea was growing quieter. The
torpedo-boat checked her speed and moved forward more slowly and almost
without a sound. There was nothing, Billy thought, but a waste of empty
water and starless sky, but wait, what was that darker shape showing
vaguely through the gloom? Presently he was aware that it was a ship,
and another one beyond, and another and another, vessels on every hand
lying in wait, hostile and threatening. The destroyer crept onward,
feeling her way, altering her course every now and again to avoid some
man-of-war swinging at anchor ahead of her. Far off on the horizon there
shone out a twinkle of lights and the beam of a searchlight was lifted
to the sky.
“The rest of the torpedo-boat flotilla is coming in, too,” said the
sailor at his side, chuckling gleefully. “That fellow over there has
been caught slipping by, but it wasn’t us.” Suddenly their vessel
gathered speed and shot away with her engines crowded to every pound of
steam. She had passed the danger lines and had only to put a safe
distance between herself and the battleship fleet. The watchers on the
nearest vessel must have heard the hum of her machinery or the rush of
water from her bow, for immediately lights flared up, seeming to spread
from ship to ship, straight gleaming, groping fingers flashed back and
forth, signalling, hunting and questioning. Billy, looking back, seemed
to see the whole sky an interwoven maze of shafts of light as every
warship searched for her enemy. One long beam swung toward them in a
wide, sweeping curve, approached, almost touched them, but just missed,
leaving them safe to speed away into the safety of the darkness.
“It’s twelve o’clock, and the war game’s over,” said the sailor at his
side, “and I believe our old boat has made a pretty good record after
all. Now you’re to come below and turn in, young man, or you’ll surely
be a dead boy in the morning.”
The novelty of sleeping in a sailor’s hammock was quite lost on Billy,
for he was deep in slumber almost before he could clamber in. He was
nevertheless uneasily conscious, even through the heaviest of his
repose, of the swinging and bumping that attended his slumbers. He
thought he must be still dreaming when some one shook him by the arm.
“It’s a shame to waken such a sleepy boy,” said his friend, the
bluejacket, “but there’s something here you don’t want to miss seeing.”
Billy would have been willing to miss anything, he thought, until he had
stumbled out of his hammock, rubbed the sleep from his eyes and looked
where his companion pointed.
It was morning, cold, cloudy, windless morning, but still with light
enough to see. One by one the ships were leaving their anchorage and
moving away in long procession, huge dreadnaughts, swift cruisers,
torpedo boats and submarines. In endless line they seemed to pass,
stately and grey and silent in the dawn. Billy, his teeth chattering
with chill and excitement, his bones still aching from the misadventures
of the past hours, clung to his friend’s arm and looked and looked as
though he could not see enough.
Never before had he had an idea of what the Navy really was. He had seen
photographs upon a printed page, or pictures on the movie screen, but
had never even guessed from them how a man-of-war would impress him in
reality. For the big grey battleships suddenly seemed to stand for many
things, for the greatness of the country they guarded, for the power of
the engines that drove them, the faithfulness and loyalty of the service
that guided them and lastly—here an extra quiver ran through his
shivering body—for the might of the enemy they would some day go forth
to meet.