THE TWINS BEGIN THEIR STORY
With scarcely a look at the still trussed-up figures on the deck,
Colonel Bright rushed forward, and in a second had the two boys
in his arms.
"Please, Colonel, can't we go down to your cabin? I rather guess
we are all in." Porky swayed against the Colonel's broad
shoulder.
The Colonel beckoned to a couple of his men who were standing
near. They dashed forward, and almost carried the exhausted boys
down into the Colonel's roomy cabin.
"Not a word now, boys, until we get you comfortable. Are you
hungry?"
The boys looked at each other.
"I guess we are starved," Beany managed to pipe in a small voice.
Captain Greene went to the door and gave a quick order. A couple
of men got them out of their rags and into fresh pajamas. Then a
light meal came in.
Porky heaved a sigh. "I suppose you want to know about it," he
said.
The Colonel looked at him.
"No, I don't," he said. "It is enough to get you back. Suppose
you try to sleep for awhile."
Porky smiled. "Say, Colonel, that's good of you!" he said. "We
are done up a bit, aren't we, Beany?"
Beany did not reply. He was sound asleep, sitting bolt upright
on his locker.
"Hello there, young fellows," the Colonel said cheerily twelve
hours later. "How do you feel after your little nap? Think you
could eat a little something?"
"Just try us, sir," said Porky. "Say, Colonel, sir, we have a
lot to tell you! May we talk while we eat breakfast?"
"You certainly may," said the Colonel, "but I will have to call
Captain Greene. This is his ship, and he has a right to hear
anything you have to tell."
Captain Greene came in; the boys did not notice that a shorthand
clerk sat just outside the open door.
"Well, in the first place, Colonel, here are your papers. We
went back to get them, and we took them with us all in their
oil-silk wrapper, but those fellows over there in the submarine
tore the oil-silk up. They took the papers, of course, but I got
'em back when we put the bunch to sleep."
"Begin at the beginning, please," said Captain Greene.
"And tell me why you didn't jump when I said, 'Jump,'" demanded
the Captain of the Firefly.
"Why, we had to get those papers!" said Porky simply. "I don't
think that was insubordination. I knew the Colonel wanted them.
He was so careful of them."
"All right," said the Colonel. "What happened then?"
"Why, the Firefly rolled around for a minute and then she went
down. Say, Colonel, were you ever on a sinking ship? We got
sucked right in with her. I thought we never would come up. I
got out first, and I didn't see Beany, and Gee! I was never so
seared in my life. I was just thinking about diving for him when
he popped up all out of breath, same as I was. We had to float
awhile, we were so used up. Then we happened to look up. We
hadn't said a word yet, and there was that submarine. It had
come up on the other side of us, between us and where the ship
had been. So we couldn't get around to where you must have been
in the boats. There was a man on the little top deck place, and
he had a boat hook, and first I knew he was sticking for me with
that boat hook, just as though I was, somebody's hat lost
overboard. He didn't care whether he stuck his old hook into a
meat boy or not. I saw he wanted us anyhow; so I said, 'Come
on!' to Beany, and swum up the side of the submarine, and
clambered onto the little deck, and Beany followed. Mr.
Boy-sticker grunted something at us, and shoved us down the
little steep ladder, and there we were in the inside of that
submarine!
"The boy-sticker shoved us over to a table, and there was an
officer sitting with a bottle and glass, and a small chunk of a
sort of black bread."
"That stuff is made of sawdust and oatmeal, I'll bet," said
Beany. "It was worse than we would give the pigs!"
"Well," said Porky, "we stood where we had been shoved, and
pretty soon the officer looked up, and the boy-sticker commenced
to talk to him in German.
"The officer commenced to look real bright and interested. He
said, 'Goot! Goot!' three or four times, and then he said
something to us in German. I shook my head, and he tried French.
He said, 'Parley voos Frongsay?' and I said, 'Wee wee!' and Beany
he butted in and said, 'Better not be so fresh with your wees
unless he's got a dictionary to lend you,' and the officer jumped
and said, 'Himmel! Where have you come from?' in just as good
English as that. We both said Syracuse; and he laughed, and
said, 'What a small world! Why, I went to Syracuse University!'
"You would never think a guy that had chances in a real country like
ours would act like he did. He kept us standing there, and he asked
us all about everything back home, and just as we thought he was
getting real friendly he said cool as anything, 'We saved you because
we are short handed. Do as you are told. Obey. It's your one
chance. We will shoot you, no doubt, when we get to port.'
"Wasn't that nice and encouraging," asked Beany of the attentive
audience. "They made us take off all our clothes and put on
those old things that had belonged to the two fellows who had
died. And then we went to work. Well, he set me to fixing up
the little bunk place he slept in, when he did sleep. The rest
of us just laid down anywhere. There's not a lot of room in a
submarine."
"Yes, and first thing," said Beany, "Porky was wigwagging me to
be careful what I did, and to try to keep the Captain from
looking."
"Yes, because what do you think I had found? A wad of papers
that looked like plans just lying around on his locker, and a
whole row of bottles. Medicines I suppose, and one of them said
Anesthetique, and I made up my mind that was dope."
"The next thing happened, he set me to oiling up the torpedoes.
Gee, it made me so mad to see those great smooth things lying
there on their shelves ready to roll into the tubes and be shot
at some good American ship! All at once it came to me what to do
if I could work it. So I took that knife Mr. Leffingwell gave
me, the one with a whole tool-chest in it, and I opened it behind
my hand, and found a dandy screw-driver. Then I took a look over
the torpedo I was fussing with, and I saw it steered by its tail.
I knew it must be carefully adjust, and I sort of memorized where
all the screws were."
"They can remember anything," said Colonel Bright to Captain
Greene. "Go on!"
"Well, sir, that night I went to sleep, or pretended to, right
under the torpedo shelves, and when I heard everybody snore, I
went to work, and twisted all those screws a little."
The Captain burst out into a roar of laughter.
"Well, son," cried Captain Greene, "it certainly worked! Could
you see the result of your scheme?"
"No, sir, we couldn't see a thing. But I thought it must have
worked because--well, I felt it must!
"Then everybody in the boat seemed to be mad at everybody else;
and everything they said sounded as though they were threatening
each other. Once the Captain laughed when the boy-sticker man
said something to me, and he said,
"'Do you know what he said?' And I said no; and the Captain said,
'Well, it's too bad you never learned German! He was telling you
just what he intends to do to you as soon as I give him leave.
He's a faithful soul, is Heinrich, and he wants you for his very
own.'
"I said, 'Well, what you going to do about it? I guess it made
me sort of mad to have him sit there and poke fun at me. He
looked at me a minute, and then he up and shied his glass at me.
It was a big heavy glass, but he was a little full as usual, and
didn't aim very well."
"It took him on the side of the head, just the same," said Beany.
"Well, anyhow," continued Porky, "he looked at me and he said,
'When you speak to me say Sir or next time I'll kill you.'"
Porky grinned. "He looked as though he meant it, too."
"You bet he meant it!" said Beany. "He was just aching to shoot
us through the torpedo tube, the way they always get rid of dead
ones. Gee, I was scared to death for Porky. That Captain seemed
to pick on Porky, and he mixed us so, us looking just alike, that
he put a white band around my arm, so he could tell which wasn't
Porky."
"Well, I guess you don't want to hear all this junk," said Porky.
"We want every bit of it," said Captain Greene.
"Tell them about the fight they had," said Beany, shifting his
bandaged hand.
"We saw one thing right off," said Porky. "The Captain was the
whole push, just as if he was king. He sat there with a big
revolver beside him on the table, and I can tell you he didn't
trust his own shadow. The way Beany, and I doped it out, he was
running in hard luck. He had been sent out to sink a certain
number of ships before he could report, and all he had torpedoed
was just the Firefly. Grub was getting low, two of his men were
dead, and another one was curled up on the locker sicker than a
pup. Once in awhile the Captain would look at him, and say to us
in English, 'About twenty-four hours more, eh? Then he goes
through the tube.'"
"He just didn't have any heart at all," shuddered Beany. "Of
course that was why they didn't kill us; they couldn't run the
boat and tend to the torpedoes and the periscope and the engines
all at once in a case of a fight, with three men short. And then
they had to fight."
"Tell us about that," said Colonel Bright.
"I don't know when it was," said Porky. "Night and day was all
alike down there, but there was one big yellow-haired fellow that
ran the engine. He had been ordered to show me about it; and,
say, I will say I can run a submarine now. It was what you call
intensive training. When I was slow, he gave me a clip on the
head. He could just do anything with machinery. But they certainly
have got that submarine engine perfected so it will do everything
but talk. Any child could run it as soon as he learned the
different levers. I don't believe we have anything like
it; but we can have now because there's the pattern outside
there. You didn't shell it, did you?"
"Certainly not," said Captain Greene. "It is in charge of a
picked crew of our men right outside."
"Well, don't let 'em take her down until I get a chance to show
them how she works. There is just one lever that controls the
diving gear, and that is hidden, so you can't find it if you
don't know about it. I came near turning the old thing over. I
got beaten up that trip."
"Get to the fight," said Beany.
"The engineer was nutty. He talked all the time and muttered to
himself, and it got on the Captain's nerves or what he had left
of them. He stared at the engineer half the time; and that made
Louie peevish, I suppose. He took it out on me more or less--kept
me sweating over that engine every minute he was awake. He
wanted a drink too. It was sort of raw the way that Captain
would sit there and guzzle and never give the others a bit of it.
Louie would watch and watch and swallow hard; and the Captain
would watch him back again and grin. They were just like a lot
of savage dogs."
"Well, they didn't have enough to eat, to begin with," said
Beany, "and then the air was so bad, and they were all cooped up
in that little space, and you couldn't hear any outside noises at
all. You don't know how funny that is.
"They took our watches, so we couldn't tell the time, and,
honest, I thought we must have been there a month. And they all
knew that something pretty fierce would happen to them it they
went back home without sinking the ships that had been required
of them. They have it all down to a system.
"Well, pretty soon Louie took to leaving me with the engine, and
he would walk back past the Captain. He saluted him every time,
and he watched that bottle just like a starved dog. And every
time the Captain would slowly take hold of the bottle and grin.
And then Louie would walk back again.
"Then once he went a little too close, and the Captain said
something in German, and stuck out his foot, and tripped Louie
up. He fell the length of the apartment; just plunged down
because he wasn't expecting it. Beany was trying to do something
for the sick man on the locker, and I was at the engine. We were
sort of out of the way; and it was a lucky thing, because Louie
went mad then and there, that's all there was to it. I never saw
anything so awful, and neither did Beany. He didn't look human.
He had the bluest eyes you ever saw when he was right, and they
turned red as blood. And his face got dead white, and he showed
all his teeth like a dog does. He had big yellow teeth with
longer ones, like a dog's fangs, at the corners. And say, he was
quicker than a cat! The Captain didn't have a chance to pull his
gun. Louie had him by the arms, and was trying to break him in
two backward. A couple of other men ran to help the Captain, and
that Louie just kicked out back, and doubled them both up, one
after the other, in a corner. Nobody else interfered. I suppose
Louie knew, if he knew anything, that he was a gone goose anyhow,
and he wanted to punish the Captain. They never said a word.
Louie had the Captain's right wrist in his left hand, so the
Captain couldn't shoot, and I saw he was trying to twist the
Captain's right arm so he could break it."
"That Captain was some quick, too," said Beany.
"They tripped and fell, and went rolling all over the place.
That was when I most tipped the boat over. I forgot my levers,
watching them and wondering if we would all get killed before the
thing was over. Once they broke loose and came up, one each side
of the table and the Captain leveled his revolver and pulled the
trigger but it didn't fire. Guess it jammed or something.
Anyhow, in the second that it refused to work, Louie was across
the table and at him again. He was sure mad now. There was
regular froth at the corners of his mouth, and he reached out as
he clinched and clawed the whole side of the Captain's face off.
Gosh!
"Then all at once the Captain got his right arm loose, and he
brought round like lightning, and pressed the muzzle of the
revolver right against Louie's side and bang! off she went.
Louie never spoke, just grunted, and crumpled down on the floor.
The Captain looked at him a minute, and then he dropped into a
chair himself; and I tell you by that time he looked as though he
did need a bracer. He was all in. Louie would have killed him
sure as sure if he hadn't shot him.
"Nobody spoke or said anything. The Captain sat there a long
time, just panting and staring down at Louie. Then he looked at
me, and said, 'He had it coming to him. Can you run that engine
and not turn turtle?"
"And I said, 'Sure!' Then he said something in German to the
men. He talked and talked, but of course we couldn't tell what
he said. Presently four of them took Louie and laid him in the
torpedo chute, and there he was; and nobody paid any more
attention to him than if he wasn't there at all. Gee, it was
awful!"