Chapter XX: The Battle in the Fog

Two days later, Joe, walking up from the landing in Portsmouth, descried a smart appearing officer of the United States Navy standing in front of a tiny shop and looking at the motley array of objects in the small-paned window. His sleeve bore the single stripe and star of an ensign. Joe stopped stock-still and stared. There was nothing surprising in the presence of an American officer in Portsmouth, since Joe had himself seen three separate American ships between Culver Cliff and the harbour, and the pier had been liberally sprinkled with United States marines. But to walk plump into this particular officer was a bit startling.

Now there are certain rules of the Navy defining the attitude and behaviour of an enlisted man toward his superior. For instance, it is not considered strictly proper for a seaman to thump an ensign on the back and call him “Old Scout.” Such familiarities are not encouraged by the General Staff. Fortunately, Joe knew all this and so resisted his first impulse. Having approached to within a few yards of the ensign without that gentleman having turned from his rapt contemplation of dusty, faded food packages, Joe paused irresolutely. It would be a severe breach of discipline to yell “Hey, there!” or to even range himself alongside at the window, since the window was so small that the procedure would cause man and officer to fairly rub elbows. Nor did Joe care to remain there all the afternoon while the other recovered from his trance. He gave the problem careful consideration for a few seconds and then arrived at a solution. There is nothing in the rules prohibiting an enlisted man from whistling in the presence of an officer, petty, warrant or commissioned. So Joe fixed his eyes on the roof-line across the narrow thoroughfare and whistled softly. The tune he chose was known in a certain institution of learning in New England as “Mother of Our Youth.” In short, it was the school hymn of Dexter Academy. It was rather a slow and stately air, and had been known to induce drops of moisture from the tear ducts on such occasions as class days and reunions, or when, in the gathering darkness, hundreds of young voices sang it and soothed the bitterness of a football defeat. Joe had reached the third line:

“Other memories may fade,
Hopes grow dim in evening’s shade,
Golden friendships that we made――――”

The straight-backed, wide-shouldered, slim-waisted officer turned quickly from the window, surprise on his countenance, gave one glance at the somewhat dilapidated looking seaman on the curb and then, with a roar of delight, hurled himself across space.

“Joe!” he cried. “Where’d you come from? Gee, but I’m glad to see you!”

“Hello, Han, you old duffer!” laughed Joe. “How’s the boy?”

They fairly fell into each other’s arms and then performed a brief and ecstatic dance over the uneven pavement to the evident but unnoted interest of the neighbouring populace. Then, releasing each other, they simultaneously and a bit sheepishly saluted!

They didn’t have much time together, since Joe was under orders to rejoin his ship at Queenstown, and railway and steamship travel in those days was slow and uncertain. But they managed, by talking very fast, to acquaint each other with their histories to date. George Hanford was on liberty from the _Carthage_, undergoing engine repairs. The cruiser had been in British water nearly a month and had been on duty almost continuously until two days before, Han explained.

“We had a peachy scrap with a bunch of subs a week ago last Sunday. There was the _Carthage_ and three American chasers and a Limie torpedo boat. They got home on one of the chasers early in the game and missed us with the next ‘fish.’ There were three of them, we think, but I only saw two. We got one, anyway, after about half an hour of it, and the Limie dropped three depth-bombs around another and signalled that they ‘fancied they’d got the blighter.’ Our gun crews had the times of their young lives and hit everything in sight except the U-boat we were after. Bet you anything that the bottom of part of the North Sea is a foot deep in shell fragments! It was great while it lasted, Joe. Wish you’d been there. What have you been up to? They say the Huns are keeping themselves pretty scarce down the coast these days.”

“Well, there’s one that’s awfully scarce just now,” answered Joe dryly, and told of the submarine they had sunk. After that he recounted his voyage on a mine and Han’s eyes stood out of his head. When the story was ended he insisted on gravely shaking Joe’s hand. “Joe,” he said earnestly, “you’re a credit to my training and a credit to Dexter, to say nothing of the United States Navy! I’m proud of you, son! Shake again!”

Han saw Joe off on the train for Bristol and trotted alongside the carriage window until he couldn’t go any further. “Remember me to Steve,” he shouted. “And tell him if he isn’t careful you’ll beat him to it! We’re basing here now, so drop me a line now and then, like a good chap. So long, Joe, and good luck to you!”

Joe spent that night in Bristol and the next morning secured passage on a steamer for Queenstown. The boat didn’t sail until dark, however, and the day was pretty dull and monotonous since no one was allowed to return on shore after having once set foot abroad. St. George’s Channel was in an evil mood that night, the boat was far from seaworthy and Joe, to his horror, had a relapse. It wasn’t a bad one, and the worst of the trouble was over in half an hour, but he was rather discouraged since he had concluded that he was through with seasickness for all times. Afterwards, though, he found consolation in the explanation that a tiresome train trip and much unfamiliar food had been at fault.

The _Warren_ was not in port when he arrived and he found accommodations in a rather dirty little hotel on the water front and then, having exactly two shillings and a one-franc piece to his name, went shopping. Fortunately, two shillings in Queenstown go much further than a like amount of money in New York, and he was able to supply his immediate wants.

The _Warren_ slid into harbour the next afternoon, looking rather rusty of hull and bearing marks of her recent encounter with the gale. Joe expected his mates to show surprise when he stepped on board, but they didn’t. They hailed him with an exaggerated respect that annoyed and embarrassed him until he discovered that his safety had been announced from the _Linnet_ by wireless several days ago. After they had had their fun with him, however, his shipmates showed that they were both glad to see him and proud of his exploit. Steve only smiled and said: “Hello, you old fraud!” and gripped his hand very hard. And Joe grinned and said: “How’s the boy?” and gazed about the reeking, confined quarters of the ship with something very much like emotion. Getting back to the little old _Warren_ was quite like coming home, he thought!

The following morning he was summoned before the Old Man. The commander, it appeared, had received a letter from the commander of the _Linnet_, and he said some nice things to Joe and ended with: “I shall mention you in my report, Ingersoll, and I trust you will hear from it. And now――er――I’d like to hear just what happened.”

Three days after her arrival at the base the _Warren_ put to sea again. It was convoy duty this time, and she picked up two companion destroyers off the Scilly Islands and the three kept in line for two days and nights and reached the rendezvous, some eight hundred miles west, at dawn of a foggy day. Five troop-ships and a cargo boat were waiting them and before they had taken their positions a fourth destroyer, a black hulled Limie three-stacker, joined their party. It was Bordeaux this time. There was the usual cheering from the transports as the destroyers raced past, the usual tumultuous waving of khaki-hued hats from the decks, and then, signals having been exchanged for the better part of an hour, the fog closed down between the destroyers and the transports and the bows pointed toward the distant Cordouan Light.

It was good to sit aloft again in the swaying canvas cage trying to pierce the fog, good to hear the wind playing in the wireless aerial with the sound of a high-pitched tuning-fork, thought Steve the next morning. While the ocean haze perhaps scarcely deserved the name of fog, it was thick enough to hide things a quarter of a mile away and sometimes shut down even closer. From the foretop, though, he could frequently see above it, and up there the world was a golden, misty, sea-scented world, haunted by gulls and tiny dark-hued birds that drove past in swarms, tweetering like mournful sparrows. When the breeze died for a moment――it was only a breath at most this morning――he could hear the sparking of the wireless below, the murmur of voices on the bridge, a song from some gay-hearted Jackie aft. And then, in the very heart of the peaceful morning, a sharp detonation came across the water from starboard and a sharp voice came up the tube.

“Did you see the flare of that gun?” demanded the executive.

Steve hadn’t, and said so. But it was of no moment, for a second later a destroyer’s siren screeched a message in Morse, and the _Warren_, picking up speed, slipped off at a tangent through the fog, zig-zagging, her whistle yelping a warning to the transports. In the foretop Steve watched with tense gaze. Suddenly a monstrous form loomed ahead, there was a confused chorus of signals, a quick turn of the destroyer’s nose and the latter slipped past the steamship’s bows so close that Steve could, he thought, have jumped in safety to her foredeck. There was a brief glimpse of orderly haste on the transport: life-belted figures hurrying to boat stations, officers starting to starboard from the bridge, the crew of the bow gun swinging the five-inch around with an emotional deliberateness that deceived no one. From further back in the mist came the six blasts of another troop-ship’s whistle that spelled “Submarines!” to all on board. Still yelping, the _Warren_ plunged ahead, raced through the second transport column without sight of a ship and swirled off on a wide circle. Then:

“Destroyer’s topmasts three points off the starboard bow,” sang Steve down the tube. “About half a mile, sir.”

“Right!”

The _Warren_ veered to port. As she did so guns barked again in that direction. A siren, deeper and hoarser than the _Warren’s_, shrieked close astern and a long, fog-coloured ship, trailing black smoke from her four funnels, crept slowly up. Cheers floated over and back again. Signals came and went. The bigger destroyer edged past into the fog and as her stern melted from sight a bow rifle began to talk. She went off, firing rapidly, and the _Warren_, cutting through her tumbled wake, reduced speed. They were firing from a transport now somewhere at the head of the column. It was easy enough to distinguish the five-inch guns from the destroyers’ three. Something that left a diverging wake behind swam into Steve’s vision for an instant. Then a swirl of mist hid it. Blank incredulity held him silent for the length of a heart-beat. Then he sent his voice down to the bridge:

“Torpedo, just submerged, running parallel about fifty yards to port!”

“We saw it! Watch for destroyer to starboard!”

Steve, his very finger-tips tingling with the excitement of the moment, watched, and presently she appeared, broke out of the yellow mist like a great black log. Queer violet-pink flares showed against the gloom of her hull as her guns spoke. And yet, up here in the _Warren’s_ foretop cage, nothing was to be seen as, leaving the British destroyer astern, she sped roaring on into the fog. Afar off two shots boomed, and were repeated. Minutes passed, the _Warren_ circling and circling, boilers “lit up,” stacks spouting oily smoke, gun crews muttering wrathfully over the fate that was taking them through a battle without the chance to fire a shot. And then, somewhere to west of the Limie craft, that hoped-for and yet unexpected happened. Between wavering, low-hanging puffs of sea-mist, a periscope!

And then they, too, were in it! Shots barked from bow guns, propellers churned. Like a greyhound the _Warren_ darted in pursuit. The fog settled and hid the target, lifted and showed it, sea-coloured, shortened, disappearing. Overhead a shadow flitted and Steve, glancing up for a wondering instant, saw a great seaplane skim along, the French colours painted on her wings. The sunlight melted through the varnished fabric and made her seem like a thing of carved amber. The whirring roar of her motors came down in a gust of sound and faded again. A second ghost-like form followed on its heels, and, further off to the east, a third. The _Warren_ swerved to starboard, back to port, a cloud of smoke enveloped the cage. The guns were silent now, but there was activity at the stern. The attempt to ram the submarine had failed, for she was fathoms deep when the destroyer shot across her position, but a depth bomb might do as well, and down they went, one, two, three, as the _Warren_ almost spun above the spot. Behind her, to port, to starboard, the surface spouted like a geyser. The destroyer shook with the force of the quakes as she fled.

Then she was back again in a long turn and anxious, hopeful eyes watched the surface for oil streaks. But only foam topped the water. The junior luff shook a clenched fist over the bridge in rage and disappointment. Ahead, where the double column was zig-zagging on, whistles talked and talked, but guns were silent. An airplane came winging back out of the northwest, flying low, searching, hawk-like, for the under-surface shadows that mark the position of lurking “fish.” She disappeared in a roar of explosions, her pilot waving a hand in seeming benediction.

The _Warren_ sped dejectedly back. Steve, in a slump of disappointment and resentment, stared the countenance out of the shrouding mist. Below, on the bridge, the executive gesticulated to the Old Man and the Old Man nodded and nodded sorrowfully. Despair held the _Warren_ from Number One gun to Number Five, from foretop to stoke-hold.

“Ship dead ahead!” shouted Steve. “Smoke one point off――――”

The _Warren_ shook from stem to stern as her engines answered the order to reverse and she steered hard aport. Sirens shrieked. It was a close call. Steve wondered how far under he would go when he leaped. But the _Warren_ slid by, shaking and shivering, close to the stern of a grey destroyer, and as she passed a shrill cheer went up, a cheer that Steve joined in wild elation and triumph. Beyond the destroyer that they had so narrowly avoided lay, like a green-grey whale on the surface, a German U-boat, the water still trickling from her deck, where, phlegmatic and seemingly unconcerned, a little group of uniformed officers and men stood and awaited their fate. The submarine’s stern was tilting skyward, her nose dipping, and there was havoc about her conning tower, and one periscope was missing. It was only a fleeting glimpse that those aboard the _Warren_ had, for she picked up her feet again and poked on into the mist, but what it revealed made up to a great extent for her own ill-fortune, and long after the fog hid the two destroyers the men on the _Warren_ sent their voices back in cheers.