S. P. 888
The result of the boys' campaign for recruits to the Navy was very
encouraging. They had been to places besides Elmvale; and several of
their old friends in Seacove were getting into one branch or another of
the service.
Many of the young men in the neighborhood, of course, were of draft age;
but, being longshore bred, they naturally preferred salt water service.
So they enlisted before the time came for them to answer the call of
their several draft boards.
The interest of our four friends, and of Seven Knott even, was not
entirely centered in this patriotic duty of urging others into the
service. Their release from duty might end any day. Under ordinary
circumstances the chum would have been assigned before this to some
patrol vessel, or the like, until their own ship, the _Colodia_, made
port.
Mr. Minnette, however, was trying to place them on the _Kennebunk_, the
new superdreadnaught, for a short cruise. If he succeeded the friends
might be obliged to pack their kits and leave home again at almost any
hour. The _Kennebunk_ was fitting out in a port not fifty miles from
Seacove.
Meanwhile the chums were "having the time of their young sweet lives,"
Al Torrance observed more than once. The home folks had never before
considered these rather harum-scarum boys of so much importance as now
that they were in the Navy and becoming real "Old Salts." From Doctor
Morgan down to Ikey's youngest brother the relatives and friends of the
quartette treated them with much consideration.
To tell the truth it had not been patriotism that had carried Ikey
Rosenmeyer and his friends into the Navy. At that time the United States
was not in the war, and the four friends had thought little of the pros
and cons of the world struggle.
They thought they had had enough school, and there was no steady and
congenial work for them about Seacove. Entering the Navy had been a lark
in the offing.
As soon as they had joined, they found that they had entered another
school, and one much more severe and thorough than the Seacove High
School. They were learning something pretty nearly all the time, both in
the training school and aboard the _Colodia_. And there was much to
learn.
However, Whistler and Al took the work more seriously than their
younger mates. They were studying gunnery, and hoped to get into the gun
crew of the _Kennebunk_ for practice if they were fortunate enough to
cruise on that ship. Just at present Frenchy and Ikey Rosenmeyer were
more engaged in getting all the fun possible out of existence.
The thing that delighted the latter most was the way in which his father
treated him. Mr. Rosenmeyer had been a stern parent, and had opposed
Ikey's desire to enlist in the Navy. He always declared he needed the
boy to help in the store and to take out orders. Ikey had got so that he
fairly hated the store and its stock in trade. Pigs feet and sauerkraut
and dill pickles were the bane of his life.
Now that he was at home on leave, Mr. Rosenmeyer would not let Ikey help
at all in the store. If a customer came in, the fat little storekeeper
heaved himself up from his armchair and bade Ikey sit still.
"Nein! It iss not for you, Ikey. Don't bodder 'bout the store yet. We
haf changed de stock around, anyvay, undt you could not find it,
p'r'aps, vot de lady vants. Tell us again, Ikey, apout shootin' de
camouflage off de German raider-poat, de _Graf von Posen_. Mebby-so de
lady ain't heardt apout it yet. I didn't see it in de paper
meinselluf."
So Ikey, thus urged, spun the most wonderful yarns regarding his
adventures; and he was not obliged to "draw the long bow"; for the
experiences of him and his three friends had been exciting indeed.
Mr. Rosenmeyer had become as thoroughly patriotic as he once had been
pro-German. It was a great cross to him now that he could not learn to
speak English properly. But German names he abhorred and German signs he
would no longer allow in the store. He even put a newly-printed sign
over the sauerkraut barrel which read: "Liberty Cabbage."
Into the store on a misty morning rolled Frenchy Donahue in his most
pronounced Old Salt fashion. Frenchy had acquired such a sailorish roll
to his walk, that Al Torrance hinted more than once that the Irish lad
could not get to sleep at night now that he was ashore until his mother
went out and threw several buckets of water against his bedroom window.
"Hey, Ikey! what you think?" called Frenchy. "Channel bass are running.
Whistler and Torry are going out in the _Sue Bridger_. What d'you know
about that? Bridger's let 'em have his cat for the day. Never was known
to do such a thing before," and Frenchy chuckled. "Oh, boy! aren't we
having things soft just now? Want to go fishing, Ikey?" Ikey favored his
friend with a sly wink, but only said crisply:
"I don't know about it. I was going to wash the store windows. Where are
Whistler and Torry going?"
"As far as Blue Reef. They say the bass are schoolin' out there."
"They'd better be on the lookout for subs, as far out as the Reef," Ikey
said solemnly. "I don't believe they've got this coast half patrolled.
We don't often see one of those chasers in the cove here."
"Mebbe we'll catch a submarine instead of bass," remarked Frenchy.
"You petter go along mit your friends in dot catboat, Ikey," said Mr.
Rosenmeyer, who was listening with both ears and his eyes wide open. "If
there iss one of them German submarines in dese waters idt shouldt be
known yet. Ain't that right?"
"Yes. We'd have to report it, Papa, to the naval authorities," admitted
Ikey seriously.
"Vell, you go right along den," urged his father. "Nefer mindt yet de
winders. I can get a winder washer easy."
"Well, if you don't mind, Papa," said Ikey, with commendable hesitancy.
"Come along, Ikey," urged Frenchy under his breath. "And be sure you
bring along your submarine tackle--I mean your bass rod," and he rolled
out of the store, chuckling to himself.
"Undt take a lunch, Ikey!" cried Mr. Rosenmeyer after his son. "Ham,
undt bologna, undt cheese, undt there's some fine dill pickles----"
"Oh, my!" groaned his son. "No dill pickles."
He joined Frenchy in a few minutes with a basket crammed with things to
eat, as well as his fishing tackle. It was not far to Bridger's float,
off which the twenty-four-foot catboat, _Sue Bridger_, was moored.
Ikey remarked: "Sometimes I almost faint when I see the change in papa.
He never wanted me to have a bit of fun before. He didn't have no fun
when he was a boy. He always worked. That is the German way, he says.
"But he don't have any use for _any_thing German now--not even the way
they bring up children."
"Ain't it a fact?" chuckled Frenchy. "Me mother makes the kids git up
and give me the best chair when I come into the sitting room.
'Git up out o' that,
Ye impident brat!
An' let Mr. M'Ginnis sit down.'
That's the way she treats me. Me head's gettin' that swelled I couldn't
draw a watch cap down over me ears."
The exhaust of the auxiliary engine of the catboat was spitting when
Frenchy hailed their mates. Whistler was loosening the points of the big
sail while Torry worked at the engine.
"How'll we get over there?" demanded Ikey. "There's no boat here."
Whistler Morgan, barefooted and with his sleeves rolled up, came aft and
tossed Ikey the end of a coil of line.
"Draw her in to the float. I'll pay out the mooring cable. What have you
in that basket?"
"A litter of pups a neighbor wants him to drown," answered Frenchy
solemnly. "You fellows brought lunch enough for all, didn't you?"
"Couldn't get any at my house," Al confessed. "The girl's on a strike."
There was no mother at the Torrance house, and sometimes the
housekeeping there was "at sixes and sevens."
"I was going to get some crackers and sardines," confessed Whistler.
"I had no idea we could get this boat when I left the house. But I can
run up and get Alice to put us up a snack."
Frenchy was carrying Ikey's basket very carefully--indeed, lovingly. He
allowed his mate to catch the line and draw the _Sue Bridger_ in to the
float alone.
They stepped aboard, and Al made a grab for the basket handle with his
greasy hands. "Let's see the pups," he demanded suspiciously.
"Have a care! Have a care!" cried Whistler as the two struggled for
possession of the basket. "What is in it, Ikey?"
"Oi, oi! Oi, oi!" moaned Ikey. "They will the basket haf overboard yet!
Stop it! Stop it!"
It was Whistler who rescued the lunch basket with a firm hand. In the
struggle Frenchy came near going overboard, but he fell into the bilge
in the bottom of the boat instead.
"Wow!" he yelled. "Me clean pants! This old tub is leaking like a sieve,
Whistler!"
Whistler and Al were peeping into the basket. Their delight was
acclaimed at once.
"Good boy, Ikey!" declared Torry, smacking his lips. "You must have
robbed the whole delicatessen shop."
"You don't know my papa," declared Ikey with pride. "He would like to
feed the whole American Navy--that's the way he feels about it."
"He's all right," agreed Torry. "Come on, now, fellows, let's stir
around. The best of the day will be gone soon. Don't worry about your
wet pants, Frenchy. Get up and pump out the bilge. She hasn't been used
for a fortnight, and of course some moisture has gathered."
"'Moisture?' Good-night!" growled the Irish lad, setting to work as he
was told with the tin pump. "I bet I have to sit and do this all day
while you fellows fish."
The engine was only for an emergency. Captain Bridger had told them
that. Gasoline was expensive. So Whistler and Ikey got up the sail, it
filled, and they cast off the moorings. The catboat began to edge her
way out into the cove. There was no rain falling; but fog wreaths rolled
in from the sea.
"Get your scare!" shouted Whistler as he ran back to take the tiller.
"Toot away once in a while. We don't want to stub our toe against some
other craft, and that before we get out of the cove."
"A submarine, for instance?" chuckled Frenchy, soon becoming pacified.
"Ikey's father thinks maybe he might bag one while we're out here."
"I'd like to get a close-up view of one of those submarine chasers,"
remarked Torry, finding the horn in the forward locker. He tooted it
raucously, and then continued: "They say some of 'em can go like the
wind."
"Go right through a tub like this, if once we got in the way," commented
Whistler. "Mind you! faster than the _Colodia_--and that's some speed."
"Wow!" cried Frenchy. "Don't believe anything on water ever does go
faster than a torpedo boat destroyer."
"Oh, yes, there are faster boats. How about a hydro?" Phil said, when
Ikey broke in with an inquiry:
"Say! lemme ask you: Why do they call the _Colodia_ and her sister ships
'torpedo boat destroyers'? We don't see many torpedo boats anyway. They
are all old stuff."
"That's right," Torry said. "What is the why-for? All naval craft are
supposed to be destroyers anyway--I mean service craft."
Morgan was the oracle on this occasion.
"Ikey is right. I've read that torpedo boats antedate the Spanish War.
Their exclusive business was to run up close to an enemy battleship and
deliver against it an automobile torpedo. These boats were great stuff
in the beginning.
"Then they invented a craft as an antidote for the torpedo boat--the
torpedo boat destroyer. Our Admiral Sims called this new vessel 'a tin
box built around a mighty big engine.'"
"Wow! And he is right," cried Frenchy Donahue. "That's just what our
_Colodia_ is."
"And these subchasers are still faster," Torry observed. "They tell me
they can make thirty-five, and better, an hour."
"Oi, oi!" cried Ikey Rosenmeyer at this juncture. "Speak of the Old
Harry and hear his wings, yet! What's that off yonder?"
The _Sue Bridger_ was now skimming out of the cove, and the fog was
lifting. They got a sight of a patch of open sea across which a low,
gray vessel was shooting like a shark after its prey.
"What a beaut!" shouted Torry.
"That's one of the new chasers all right," Whistler agreed. "Their base
is at New London where the submarine base is."
At that moment the sun broke through the murk overhead. Its rays shone
brilliantly upon the patch of blue sea on which the submarine patrol
boat steamed at such a rapid pace.
The sunbeams pricked out the letters and figures painted so big upon the
side of the craft and the Navy boys repeated in chorus:
"S. P., Eighty-eighty-eight."