Chapter XIV: Letters From Home

They picked up a line of transports the next forenoon being convoyed by five black Limie destroyers and exchanged signals. “Canadians,” was the report below deck. They didn’t get close enough to have a look at them, but turned southward before the last of the troop-ships had emerged from the mist. It alternately rained and shone that day, and a stiff wind sang in the aerial. Steve worked at cleaning Number Four gun in the morning, and in the afternoon began his turn in the foretop. There was only an empty sea until shortly before supper when a tiny British chaser that looked no larger than the _Adventurer_, in which he and Joe and others had made a memorable voyage last Summer, bore down for a chat. A chipper-looking Reserve Lieutenant wearing much gold braid, had a good deal to say, all of which was Greek to Steve, and then the chaser turned in her length and went jauntily off again, tossing about like a dish-pan.

“I’m glad I’m not on her,” said Joe thankfully. “Think what she must do in a gale!”

“I’d rather not,” replied Steve. A machinist’s mate beside them laughed reminiscently.

“When we were in Brest, a month ago maybe, there was a sort of a ferryboat-lookin’ contraption lyin’ near us. She was a single-stacker and burned coal. They’d tore off a cabin above-deck――you could see the saw marks through the black paint――and they called her a chaser or a patrol or something she wasn’t at all by rights. They’d mounted a five-pounder forward and a rapid-fire aft. You had to sort of look at her twice to see was she bow-on or stern-on, and then it didn’t seem to make much difference.”

“French?” asked Joe.

“Naw, British. Well, there was a luff in charge of her that must have been sixty if he was a day: nice, cheerful, pink-cheeked old geezer with white whiskers that danced when he talked. Him and me got into a bit of talk――we was lyin’ close to――and he tells me he’s been runnin’ the Channel for five or six months in that ferryboat thing. ‘You must have seen some weather,’ I says. ‘Why, yes, that’s so, my man,’ says he. ‘An’ we been wrecked two or three times――I forget just how many.’ ‘Wrecked!’ I says. ‘Not in that, sure-ly!’ He nods. ‘Yes, but you’d never know it, would you? That’s what comes of havin’ a fine, staunch boat under you,’ he says, as proud as you please. ‘There’s few destroyers as would have gone through what this boat’s been through!’ An’ he looks around that wooden fresh-water jitney like she was the _Royal Sovereign_. Say, fellers, that’s what I call a dead game sport, eh?”

The boys agreed heartily, and the machinist’s mate, tearing the wrapper from a package of chewing gum and offering the delicacy, added: “An’ say, let me tell you somethin’ else funny. This old geezer tells me that before the war he never crossed the English Channel that he wasn’t as sick as a pup, but since he’d got his commission and had been floppin’ around in that pocket dreadnought of his he hadn’t missed a meal! How’s that for mind over matter, or whatever you call it?”

The _Warren_ found no further adventures, although she remained on patrol five days longer. Of course there were the usual alarms that came to nought, and there was a three hundred mile scamper one night to assist a French scout cruiser who had bumped her nose into a mine. But other ships were nearer, and the _Warren_ arrived too late to aid. The cruiser had sunk in forty minutes without loss of life. Every day they spoke ships, but anything German was beyond their good fortune. They might easily have considered that in sinking one submarine they had done their duty for that time, especially as the officers were unanimous in the verdict that the destroyed craft had been one of the latest and biggest of the German underseas fleet. But that adventure had only whetted their appetite and as the last twenty-four hours of sea duty began they bemoaned their luck and said scathing things of the lookouts, accusing them, for instance, of going to sleep in the foretop cage. There was one brief gleam of hope about midnight when they sent a shell across the bows of a suspicious-looking steamer who failed to answer signals. But she proved to be only a Norwegian cargo boat making for Huelva. The next day they were creeping through the mine fields again, with the misty green Irish coast beckoning, and in the afternoon the destroyer sent her anchors rattling down into the mud of Queenstown Harbour. More mail and newspapers awaited them, and it was in a New York paper that Joe found the first mention of any of their friends at the Training Station. There had been a fire at “a United States naval base” and among those mentioned for heroic conduct in fighting flames adjacent to munition stores was Abraham Libinsk. Joe looked up and called across to Steve:

“What was the name of that Polish chap at Newport? Abie, they called him.”

“Abie? Abraham, I guess. Oh, his last name? Search me, Joe. I heard it often enough, but――――”

“Libinsk?”

“Yes, that was it. It had about twenty-seven letters in the original, but he shortened it because the recruiting officer couldn’t get it right; or didn’t have time; I forget which. What about him?”

Joe read the dozen lines aloud and Steve nodded. “Just what I expected. That chap’ll come out of this fuss with gold stripes, I’ll bet!”

There was news of other friends, as well. Steve had a much-travelled letter from Neil Fairleigh written at “an Atlantic port.” Neil, a member of the Adventure Club, had just got his corporal’s chevrons and was evidently extremely proud of the fact. They were, he wrote, off to France in a few days. “I’m in the Field Artillery, and it’s great work. We’ve got a splendid lot of fellows. By the way, I had a letter from old Wink just before I left the West. He’s down in Texas learning to fly and he’s as sore as a boil because they aren’t going to let them go across until late in the Fall. I suppose you heard that Cas Temple ‘got his’ last month. He’s in a hospital in Paris and is doing finely, I hear. Write me sometime, care American Expeditionary Forces, and tell me what you know. How’s Joe? And Han? Remember me to them, please. I suppose you’ll be thinking about coming in after college closes. Maybe I’ll run across you over there sometime. Looks like the old Adventure Club is due to see some real stunts, what? Don’t forget to write. Letters are great things these days. Yours till Berlin falls, Neil.”

And there was a funny scrawl from another member of the club, Perry Bush. Perry was still at preparatory school where they had left him the year before but was ardently patriotic and militant. They were drilling at Dexter, he wrote: had six companies: and he was a lieutenant. And as soon as school was over he was going to enlist somehow. “I’m only seventeen, you know, but I look a good deal older, don’t you think I do, Steve? They say you can pass if you fib a little and put false heels in your shoes. I know a fellow who’s a month younger than I and he joined the National Guard last Fall and now he’s in France I guess. I saw by the Yale News that you and Joe had joined the Navy. I’d like that, too, but they say they keep you in training six months and the war might be over by that time. I wish you’d write and tell me what it’s like and whether you think I’d have to stay in training camp or wherever they send you very long. It’s drill time now so I’ll close with best wishes to you and old Joe from yours truly, Perry.”

“Perry’s punctuation,” laughed Joe, returning the letter, “is no great compliment to Dexter Academy, is it?”

“He’s too good-natured,” said Steve. “He doesn’t like to overwork the poor little comma. How are your folks, Joe?”

“Fine. Dad writes that he’s been up at Albany for three days. They’ve made him something-or-other on some commission that has to do with food.”

“Hope he knows more about it than you do, then! Mother writes that she has knitted so many sweaters this Summer that she can’t bear the sight of a needle. Wants to know if I need a new one. Well, I don’t, but I’m going to say that I do, for there are a dozen chaps aboard this ship that would like one, I guess. Mother seems to have an idea that we dress like the soldiers and wear sweaters and wristers and woollen helmets. I dare say she’d be horribly disappointed if I wrote her that the only time I can wear a sweater is when I’m on liberty: and then it’s generally much too warm.”

“You let the Old Man see you hiking around with that sweater on and you’ll get what for, Steve!”

“Then you tell him to make over this Irish weather. For a warm place you can get colder here than any spot I ever found. If they’d have a little more sunlight it would be all right, but these ‘moistures’ and fogs simply seep right into a chap’s inmost being!”

“Well, put up that raft of newspapers and let’s get ashore and stretch our legs. Tell you what I’ll do with you, Steve: I’ll walk over to Ballycottin with you.”

“Bally which?” asked Steve suspiciously.

“Ballycottin.”

“How far is it as the horse flies?”

“Oh, about twelve or fourteen miles.”

“Irish or American?”

“What’s the difference?”

“About twenty-six hundred and forty feet, as near as I can determine. Haven’t you noticed in this country that when a native says a place is a mile away it’s always a good mile and a half? You show me this bally place on the map first, old top.”

“Haven’t got a map, but it really isn’t awfully far. We can get a ride back maybe.”

“Yes, maybe. And maybe not so. Pick out a place on a tram line, Joe, and I’ll talk business with you.”

“Well, come ashore, anyhow. I’m fed up with this old oil tank. I want to smell real smells.”

“Get Hearn’s ball and we’ll go over to that thing they call a diamond. Say, maybe there’s a game on this afternoon. Let’s go and see, eh?”

They found a contest about to begin when they arrived, and, not caring particularly whether the destroyer crew or the supply ship crew won, they joined a perfectly neutral group of British tars and Tommies and had more enjoyment listening to the comments than in watching the game. A tall Australian chap in khaki who walked with a perceptible limp and whose pallour suggested a recent return from “Blighty,” was, perhaps, even more amusing than his English friends, for he undertook to explain the points of baseball in a drawl that would have done for a Texan cowboy and from a knowledge far from ample. But the audience took it all in and for the rest of the contest tried their best to reconcile what they had learned with what they saw, with scant success. Later, when the supply ship’s team ran wild on the bases and piled up a six run lead Steve and Joe took the part of the under dog and joined the destroyer’s forces and cheered vociferously until, in the last half of a startling ninth inning, the destroyer came from behind and nosed out the game by a run. Even the Britons forgot their stoicism and yelled during that finish, and Joe overheard a small English midshipman observe that for a game that wasn’t cricket it wasn’t half bad!

Life at the base wasn’t exciting. At sea they all looked forward to getting back into port, but once in port they longed to be outside again. There was the constant fear that “something big might be pulled off” while they were kicking their heels along the water-front. There were always startling rumours to be picked up in Queenstown. They almost never proved true, but they made something to talk about, and one could always hope that this time it was really so that the British Admiralty had finally consented to try smoking the German Fleet out and that there’d “be fur flying around Helgoland this time next week!”

Tales of tragedies came into port every day: British dreadnoughts sunk, American transports torpedoed, thousands drowned. Fortunately these rumours were as idle as those others, usually traceable to Dublin, that credited the German Emperor with having evolved another perfectly good peace proposal. Life wasn’t dull, but there was an exasperating sameness about it, and by the end of the second day in port the _Warren’s_ crew――and her officers, as well,――began to look forward impatiently to the time for up-anchoring. There was a certain amount of satisfaction to be had from swapping yarns with the “gobs” from the British chasers or from ships of their own fleet, and some tall tales were told around Queenstown that Summer, but telling wasn’t doing, and after twenty-four hours on shore or lying in harbour there came an ache for the whistling winds and the feel of the trembling decks. After all, their business was to “raus” the Huns, and lying in port was only a waste of time!

The _Warren_ filled her oil tanks again, loaded a few boxes of cartridges and many, many boxes of food supplies and presently stole forth again.