Chapter XIII: The Warren’s First Kill

It was shortly after eight bells the next afternoon that the wireless room picked up the SOS that turned the destroyer on her heel and sent her churning away toward the sunset with “all kettles lit off for twenty-eight.” Somewhere a hundred-odd miles away an American freighter was trying to run away from a U-boat, or so the lower deck got it. The _Warren_ spouted smoke and stank of oil and the seas smothered the bows as she raced on. From the dizzy foretop the lookout peered eagerly into the sunlit wastes ahead. Gun crews gravitated toward their pets and watched and waited anxiously.

“If only the Hun won’t run this time!” exclaimed Lieutenant Lyke as he alternately held his glasses to his eyes and glanced upward toward the spotter on the foretop.

“Any word from the steamer, sir?” asked one of the men at the Number Four gun.

“She was all right twenty minutes ago. They’d let go one torpedo at her and missed her. She thinks they’re outsteaming the Hun. Why doesn’t that blind-eyed gob up there see something?”

It was almost dark night when the word came down the tube that smoke lay off the port bow, and half an hour later still when the _Kenyon_, a Great Lakes grain ship, from the looks of her in the darkness, was signalled. She was ploughing on desperately and, as the _Warren_ ran up, reported that the U-boat had presumably given up the chase and submerged an hour ago in such-and-such latitude and longitude.

“Good luck!” called the Old Man. “We’ll have a look for her!”

The _Warren_ darted on again and the _Kenyon_, with a cheer from the gun crew at the stern, plugged off at her sixteen knots into the night. With all lights doused and boilers doing something like twenty, the _Warren_ began her search. Somewhere within an hour’s steaming a German submarine was hiding. She might be poking along submerged or doing her fourteen awash or, less probably, lying snugly somewhere on the bottom. And wherever she was it was the _Warren’s_ part to find her if it was possible.

By two bells in the first watch, nine o’clock, the night was as black as a pocket. On the destroyer never a gleam of light was to be seen save in the shrouded wardroom where the decoding watch worked tirelessly by the dim glow of a lowered lamp, under the swaying salt-and-vinegar caster, on the messages shoved through the tiny trapdoor that led to the radio hutch. That and the radium-lighted compass-dial alone mitigated the gloom, and neither could have been detected a dozen feet away any more than a thousand feet away the ship herself could have been separated by human vision from sea and darkness. Spotters were everywhere, and night-glasses swept the tumbled expanse of ocean. The groan of the steering cables sounded from time to time as the destroyer swung her long, lithe form to starboard or port, covering the radius as carefully and minutely as a hound searching for scent.

Three bells struck on the wardroom clock. Then four. The tired lookout in the foretop scrambled down and the relief took his place. Most of those off duty were on deck peering into the gloom. A hard wind blew when the _Warren_ headed eastward and at such times the white spume flew high and far. Joe, who should have been tucked in his bunk, for it was his watch below, leaned with Steve in the shelter of the port torpedo tube and ranged the seemingly empty sea as eagerly as any. A gunner’s mate of the torpedo watch, beside them, grumbled incessantly and said unpleasant things about an enemy who wouldn’t face the music. And suddenly what they had been so long hoping for and had about concluded could not happen came to pass. The tocsin of the General Quarters alarm sounded!

Steve raced forward to Number Four gun, strapping on the life-vest he carried. The hum of the engines sounded higher as from the bridge came the order for full speed. The Captain hurried from the wardroom passage and sprang up the ladder.

“Man Number Four, bow, gun!”

From below the few men off watch swarmed up the lower deck ladder. Plugmen and pointers raced to duty. The sight-setter pulled on his leather head-gear with fingers suddenly all thumbs. The cover was ripped from an ammunition box and a loader caught a shell in his arms and shoved it home. Then silence and expectancy.

“Can you see her?” was the anxious question. But from the forecastle only darkness met the straining gaze. “Seven thousand, five hundred yards!” came the word. The gun muzzle nosed upward. “Seven thousand yards!” The muzzle dropped again. And then, magically, a glare of white light sprang from above and shot radiantly over the ocean, encompassing in its broad path a something that lay like a glistening wet bottle far off in the sea.

“Are you on, down there?” came the cry.

And, after a moment that seemed ages long: “All ready, sir!”

“Six thousand, five hundred!”

“Stand by to fire!”

Another moment of aching impatience, and then:

“Fire!”

A three-inch shell flew toward the distant goal, and ere the bark of the gun was passed the shellman had pushed another charge into the breech. The trainer turned his wheel a fraction as the word came down: “Missed!”

“Skinned her, though!” muttered the plugman.

“Fire!”

Again Number Four barked, and, almost simultaneously a second gun echoed. A roar of triumph went up and travelled back along the deck.

“Got her!” said the gun captain calmly. “Fire!”

Once more the shriek of a shell echoed from across the deck. In the glare of the searchlight the wet bottle was almost gone from sight, for she had started to submerge the instant that fierce glare had reached her conning tower. Only the tower was above water now, and, even as they looked, that went under quickly, as though some mighty hand had seized the hapless craft from below and pulled her down.

“Cease firing!”

The already loaded gun was opened and a shellman withdrew the cartridge case, while a cheer arose from the crew.

“Two hits to us!” sang the pointer elatedly. “Two hits to us, boys! A fair hole aft in the superstructure and another through the tower!”

“Well done, Number Four gun!” came the message through the tube. “We’ve sunk her.”

“Sure, we’ve sunk her!” muttered the plugman. “That’s what we aimed to do. There’s one less devil-fish in these waters, boys!”

“Will they all drown?” asked Steve awedly.

“With half the Atlantic Ocean pouring in on ’em? They’re dead rats already, Jack. Was any of them trying to get out, boys?”

“I didn’t see any,” someone answered. “They didn’t have time. They’d closed their lids to go down and then we put one through her shell. It was water rushing in that sank her at the last.”

Meanwhile the _Warren_ was ploughing on, searchlights glaring about her path. Presently the engines ceased their roar and suddenly the destroyer floated into a calm expanse of oil-smeared water. Once a great bubble broke under the destroyer’s bow, but after that there was no sign of the tragedy, although the searchlights played over the scene for several minutes. Oil lay in vast pools that rose and fell on the waves and spread themselves in strange patterns. The smell of it was heavy on the air. Steve, looking down from abaft the forecastle break shuddered and felt a little sick. Then the lights went out as suddenly as they appeared, for there was no knowing that another underseas craft was not around, and the _Warren_, swinging about, poked her nose again into the wind. The hum of the engines became higher and the thin steel frame of the ship took on its tremor once more. Behind them as they hurried back to the patrol area only an oily stretch of water was left to tell the story.

Down in the forecastle they talked it over from start to finish. Incidents seen and forgotten in the tenseness of the moments were recalled, usually with laughter. There had been some “dumb” work here and there, but it was excusable, for this was the _Warren’s_ first real encounter with the enemy. Now and then a soberer word was given to the crew of the submarine lying fathoms deep back there. Steve heard no expressions of pity nor any of callousness. There was very evident elation aboard the _Warren_, but it was elation for work well performed. There was a business-like tone to the talk, some of which he could scarcely follow, so filled it was with “elevation” and “trajectory,” “deflection” and “range,” that made him wonder if he would ever become so seasoned as to forget the horror of such a thing in scientific discussion. But he was not, he found, the only one aboard whose thoughts dwelt with those lives so suddenly snuffed out. Joe talked about it later as they sat swinging their feet from his bunk.

“Somehow,” he said thoughtfully, “it seemed worse because we didn’t even see them. Though,” he added, “I don’t know why it should. They didn’t have a fair chance, Steve.”

“Neither did the folks on the _Lusitania_, Joe.”

“I know.” Joe nodded, frowningly. “Of course, it’s war. And war’s no parlour entertainment, but――somehow, I’d feel better about it if those chaps had fired a shot at us or――or something.”

“Maybe you wouldn’t. Maybe you’d be feeling a lot worse,” replied Steve, dryly. “You would if they’d happened to place a torpedo against our hull. We certainly caught them napping. Hearn says they don’t often steam around on top for long at a time. That fellow had evidently given up the chase of the freighter and gone below, and then, not seeing anything around, had come up for a quick run to some place. Perhaps he had word of another ship to blow up and was trying to get to her. That was a peach of a shot we made with Number Four.”

“Wasn’t it? Right through her plates, they say.”

“Where were you when we were firing?”

“On the blinker. Nothing doing, though. Gee, she’s beginning to roll again. Guess I’ll tumble in and get a few hours of sleep.”

“Me, too, only I don’t believe I can sleep much. Guess I’ll go topside for a bit first and see what’s doing. Good night, Joe.”

Steve returned to a darkened deck to find the _Warren_ fairly racing into the wind. He still had his life-belt on, and now he unstrapped it as he made his way aft to where some of the men were gathered abaft the stern gun turret. That was a favourite lounging place in a head wind. Tonight, however, although Steve found four or five dark figures gathered there between turret and torpedo tubes, it was not very sheltered. As he seated himself on the uneasy deck a shaft of weak light fell on them and was gone. Steve turned with the rest and saw, miles away, a ship’s blinker at work.

“Too late, my hearty,” chuckled someone. “What’s she saying, Bob? Is she a Limie?”

“No, one of ours. Get your old head out of the way till I see if I can read it. I’ve lost her name. Wants to know what’s up and have we seen an enemy sub around here. There goes the luff with his come-back. Hope he tells it straight.” The winking light across the darkness went out, but presently reappeared. “Dot, dash, dot, dot――what’s he trying to say?” muttered the unseen Bob. “Oh, he’s extending his blooming congratulations. He’s a polite dub. ‘Report me to flag-ship.’ Sure thing. ‘Good night!’ Say, he’s the chatty party, ain’t he? Bet you they’re mad as hatters over there because they got around too late. It’ll teach ’em to hustle when they’ve got the little old _Warren_ to beat out! Well, I’m going to hit the hay, fellows. Tomorrow’s another day. If we find another tin fish, Jimmy, wake me early, for I’m to be Queen of the May.”

Bob stumbled off. Steve sat on a while longer, listening to the talk, and then he, too, crept down through the hatch and went lurching to his bunk where, in spite of his doubts, he fell promptly asleep and didn’t awake until the watch was tumbled out in the first grey of morning.