Chapter XV: Overboard!

“The Huns have got a new trick, they say,” remarked First-class Electrician John Hempsell Higgins, taking a two-by-two bite from a slab of bread and washing it down with a mouthful of steaming coffee from a tin cup.

“Uh-huh,” responded Grover, yeoman of the second class. “They’ve got more tricks than a prestidigitator. What’s the latest? Giving poisoned candy to kids?”

“It’s a new way to drop mines,” said Jack Higgins. “They――――”

“Is that all?” said Sam Hearn, piling his mess kit.

“Dry up, Sam. I got this from the ensign. It seems there’s been three new fields planted in the last two weeks right under our noses and no one’s been able to find out how it’s done. A few days ago a Limie gob was making Lorient, I think it was, and ran square into a mine field. She scraped three or four before she knew it and then went smash into one and lost everything forward of her stacks. They weren’t floaters, either: they were anchored mines in three depths. What do you know about that?”

“Don’t believe it,” said Grover. “It couldn’t be done.”

“It was done, though, sonny. And it was done in two other places besides. Maybe more, Connell says.”

“Connell’s been reading the Berlin _Murderzeitung_,” scoffed Hearn.

“How do they do it?” asked Joe.

“Nobody’s certain yet, but we’ve all got orders to watch for a neutral ship that might have mines instead of cargo.”

Hearn whistled expressively. Then: “Do you believe it?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t believe it of anyone except the Germans,” replied Higgins dryly.

“Heaven help that ship if she’s caught,” said someone fervently. “It’s a fine trick, though. It’s so cunning it makes me think it must be so. It’s just what the Germans would do if they thought of it.”

“Well, I guess they’re doing it,” replied Higgins. “If we don’t pay a lot of polite attention to lone cargo boats this trip I’ll be mightily mistaken.”

“I hope we find her,” said Hearn grimly. “It would be a sweet task to shove in the cartridge that’d blow her higher than Haman!”

“It wouldn’t be hard to do,” said Meyrowitz, of the torpedo watch, reflectively. “A neutral ship could lay to for engine repairs, or something, right under a shore battery and lower any number of mines she wanted to without anyone the wiser. Or she could do it at night, running slow. What was that Norwegian steamer we fired across the other night, Sam?”

“I forget: _Peruna_, or something like that, I think.”

“_Varuna_,” corrected Grover. “I saw it on the log. Do you think she might have been the one?”

“No telling,” said the torpedo man. “She was mighty slow answering signals.”

“She was too far out,” suggested Hearn.

“Maybe, but I’ll bet you anything you like that if we catch up with the _Peruna_ again she’ll have a visit,” offered Higgins. “Hi!” He made a clutch at his cup as the _Warren_ swung far to port. “She’s breezing up, fellows. The foretop spotters will need gyroscopes tonight, I’m thinking.”

Jack’s prophecy came true. By supper time the destroyer was wallowing along at ten knots in a southeasterly gale that piled the waves over the forward deck and tossed the ship about like a chip in a maelstrom. It was the boys’ first experience of a real storm, and Joe, for one, was in the depths of despair. “I’ll be sick as sure as shooting,” he told Steve. “She must be rolling fifty this minute!”

“Not quite so bad as that,” consoled his chum. “Best way is not to think about it.”

“That’s easy to say,” groaned Joe, “but how the dickens can you help thinking of it when your tummy’s trying to turn over inside you? And I’m on ‘graveyard watch’ tonight, too.”

“You’ll be better on deck than below,” said Steve. “Let’s get some grub.”

Joe agreed half-heartedly, but managed to fortify himself with a generous allowance of “submarine turkey,” which is only a poetic name for canned salmon. The only way to eat that evening was to wrap an arm around something and hold on tightly. Joe said he wished, for once in his life, that he was a monkey so he could hold on by a tail! By the middle of the evening the gale was much worse and the _Warren_ seemed to be trying her best to shake loose her plates. The motion was about as bad as it could be, for the destroyer tossed her nose high in air as she climbed up a long sea, flirted her tail as she slid down into the trough, her propellers racing, and all the time rolled fearsomely and shook and shivered. Progress along even the lower deck was a series of quick, staggering runs, while life above was a series of hair-breadth escapes from drowning either in the great seas that came aboard or by being washed over the side. The ship’s veteran, a boatswain who went by the name of “Baldy” and who was well into the latter forties, regaled the forecastle with tales of destroyers that had broken clean in two from “sagging” between wave-crests and offered the gloomy reminder that the _Warren_ was an old ship and built on the old lines. Joe, listening, jumped apprehensively whenever a heavy sea thundered across the deck overhead and was, on the whole, rather an unhappy youth that night. Since his watch began at midnight he should have been in bed long since, but he was afraid to lie down for fear that seasickness would conquer him. The destroyer branch has no use for men who are subject to that malady and such are quickly transferred to the larger ships, and Joe by this time would have been absolutely heart-broken had he been forced to leave the _Warren_. So, his countenance strained with the effort of striving to keep his thoughts from his middle latitudes, he sat on and listened to “Baldy’s” gruesome yarns under the dim light of the forecastle lantern.

Once he drowsed for a few minutes, but real sleep was practically out of the question. The wind howled and the seas surged and every joint in the destroyer squeaked and groaned. And all the while the deck slanted violently to port, back to starboard, up, down again. One braced one’s feet against whatever was stable or wrapped an arm around a stanchion and did one’s best not to think too much. And yet at such times life went on much as usual. In stoke hold and fire room machinists, firemen, oilers toiled at their tasks amidst a roar of burning oil. In the galley the cook, grey life-preserver strapped about him, balanced himself dexterously and sliced slabs from great loaves. In the foretop a lookout swung through an arc of fifty degrees, huddled in a canvas cylinder, and prayed for his relief. In the wardroom the decoding officer worked on the messages from the wireless hutch. Behind the wind-shield of the bridge an officer swayed to and fro in darkness and flying spume. Below, mutters and groans issued from bunks where men off duty tried to catch scattered periods of forgetfulness. On such a night a destroyer is little better than a slender steel cylinder filled with clutching men in grey canvas life-preservers, a reek of oil and a roar of boilers.

At midnight the first watch tumbled below, in dripping rain clothes, and the middle watch went on duty. Joe was glad of something to do to keep his mind off his troubles and forebodings. Climbing the ladder and squirming through the hatch was in itself an adventure tonight, while, once on deck, grasping the life-lines that had been strung and making one’s way forward or aft was a process that called for nerve and strength. He had been assigned to after main deck lookout and eventually gained his station, though not before he had been drenched from head to foot and tossed, clutching to the line, against every obstruction in his path. Pitch darkness was all about him. The sea was a tumbled thing that dropped below him, arose to towering heights above, threatened each moment to engulf him. Spotting under such circumstances was a veritable jest. One could only cling in his place and endure. The wind drove past in a frenzy, howling madly, chill from its far journey across the Atlantic. Joe tried to whistle once but the wind tore the sounds from his lips so quickly that he couldn’t even hear them! Somewhere, a few yards away, another unfortunate was trying to peer over the mountainous tops of the waves, but so far as companionship was concerned he might as well have been on another hemisphere.

Joe pulled the tapes of his waterproof hat tighter and snuggled further into his jacket and prayed that the sickness wouldn’t come. So far he had miraculously escaped more than a few qualms, and out here in the fresh air――and it certainly was fresh, he thought grimly――it seemed that he might come through. He tried to follow Steve’s advice and not think about it, but sooner or later he always did. An hour passed and only another hour remained to be lived through out there. The chill was striking through his clothing now. He chafed his hands, one at a time, against the rough canvas of his life-preserver. The odd conception that the _Warren_ was motionless came to him and he had to sniff for the smell of oil smoke and listen for the thud of the propellers before he could dispel the impression. He did his best to watch the tumbled surface of the ocean, but when you are one moment poised dizzily far above that surface and the next instant are wallowing far beneath it, keeping the gaze on the horizon level is hard work! Joe told himself that a dozen U-boats could sneak up on the destroyer without his being a bit the wiser tonight. Then he wondered what would happen to him if a torpedo struck the stern. He was unpleasantly aware of those depth charges, generously loaded with “TNT,” stored a few yards forward!

Once he was almost certain that he saw a faint twinkle of light a few points to port, but at that moment the ship’s stern slid down into a trough, and when it was high again the light was not to be seen. He doubted his sight then and waited and watched. He didn’t see it again, if he ever had seen it, and that brief interest passed out of his vigil. The _Warren_ was changing her course slightly now, for the wind struck him from a new angle and a spent wave came flopping over the side and washed his boots. The smother seemed worse than ever after that, but the stern held itself down better. His feet were frightfully cold and he tried stamping them on the wet deck. He tried to reckon time but had nothing to go by. His turn might be nearly over or might have half an hour to go. At least, he had escaped being sick so far, and that was something to be thankful for. A minute or two later something a trifle darker than the darkness itself ranged alongside and a voice shouted:

“All right, matey! Seen anything?”

“No!” Joe had to hold his lips close to the other’s ear to make himself heard. “Once I thought I saw a light, but I couldn’t find it again.”

“Hold tight going back,” advised the relief. “They’re breaking right across by the third stack. This is a sweet job for a Christian, ain’t it?” The relief’s voice ended in a growl as Joe, clinging with chilled fingers, edged around to leeward.

“Good luck!” he called back, but the wind scattered his words over the torn sea. He found the life-line and pulled himself warily onward past the after gun turret, meeting there the full force of the gale and nearly losing his feet under it. He groped for the ladder and fell back against it and held tight, his body feeling as though flattened out under that mighty onslaught. The din of the tempest was deafening after the partial shelter he had enjoyed, and through it he could hear the rushing fall of water across the deck somewhere ahead. Above, dimly against the wrack of flying clouds, the nearer mast swayed and whipped. He took a breath and went on. The hatch was only a little distance now. Then there was a sudden crash that brought his heart to his mouth, and an avalanche of water flung itself upon him. The force of it drove the breath from his body and wrested his chilled hands from the line. He felt himself tossed to the sloping deck, half-drowning, and instinctively groped for hand-hold. Then, turning over and over, like a log in a whirlpool, gasping, fear-stricken, he felt the deck go from beneath him. An icy coldness enveloped him, his ears were filled with a great hollow roaring and his lungs were bursting for air. He tried to cry out, but water strangled the scream in his throat. He thrashed his arms wildly, struggled against the terror that clutched him and felt the rush of air in his nostrils. And then, and not until then, he realised.