Chapter XXIV: The Warren Drops Anchor

The _Warren_ had two days more of sea duty to perform, but special orders were caught by the radio “sharks” that afternoon and the destroyer swung quickly about and stopped loafing. Just at twilight a blinker far off to the southeast said things and an hour later a second blinker twinkled further to the south. When morning came the _Warren_ was bucking along through a heavy sea in company with two Limie destroyers, black, funereal looking sleuths with their funnels set at queer intervals along the wet decks as though the builder had been undecided until the final moment and had then stuck them up haphazard. High, stiff bows they had, too, those Britishers, but they looked their parts most convincingly. All day the trio pegged eastward to some far mid-ocean rendezvous, with only one incident to disturb the settled monotony of standard speed and cards in the tiny room far up in the nose. That was when a two-stack sloop, once somebody’s pet and treasure but now a blackened, grimy, dishevelled but still lady-like U-boat chaser, came close and signalled, and then, with, somehow, the determined air of a school girl bent on caramels, streaked off westward just full of business.

Two decks down, in that tiny forward compartment, they played coon-can to the strains of “Spud” Doolan’s harmonica, while Browny gave an imitation of Pavlowa on the cocoa matting of Number Two gun. And they sang songs that were new on Broadway four months back and that were by now probably forgotten. And they sang newer ballads, too, things evolved in the forecastle to the slap of water and the wail of wind and the hum of Diesels:

“I want to go back, I want to go back,
Back where the wind don’t blow,
Where the waves don’t leap and a gob can sleep
All night till the roosters crow.
I want to go back! Oh, _sure_, go back!
I’m tired of eating foam.
Chasing Huns may be fun, but I’m done, kid, done!
And I want to go back, back home!”

Or:

“We joined the Limie gobs, we did,
To battle with the Hun,
And still we’re waiting patiently
A Fritz who will not run!”

Or, echo of the Spanish War, this:

“Oh, it’s home, boys, home, and it’s home I want to be,
Home once again in my own countree,
Where the ash and the oak and the bonny willow tree
They all grow together back in North Amerikee!”

But it wasn’t all fun and frolic in that forward cubby hole, for there was lookout work and a dozen other jobs calling at intervals, and there were letters to write, too, for if one doesn’t write one is likely not to receive, and, when all is said and done, it’s the little wrinkled envelope with the indistinct American post-mark on it that brings the biggest smile to the gob’s face.

Steve did his hour in the foretop and climbed down at four, chilled and stiff, and sought Phil and Harry who had found bunks and hospitality with the port mess. But before he had located them a hurrying Q.M. passed the word that the transports had been sighted and Steve hustled on deck again. They didn’t reach the ships until sunset and it was almost dark when the commanders had finished talking things over and the destroyers were in position. The convoy consisted this time of but two troop-ships, but they were bigger than any Steve had seen so far and their decks were massed with troops.

“Them’s the boys can fight,” said a voice at his elbow as they raced under the bow of one of the monsters. Steve looked a question, and Hearn said briefly:

“Canadians.” Then he added, with a chuckle: “They say the Kaiser looks under his bed every night since the Canucks butted in.”

The _Warren_ turned to her place to the sound of the cheering from the transports and the start was made. That evening they guessed Bordeaux and Brest and Nantes, but in the morning the bulletin told them Plymouth. The usual haze hid the ships half the time and made lookout work maddeningly uncertain, and to add to the pleasure of the occasion a warning came of a U-boat in their path a hundred miles ahead. That meant a change of course, although the destroyers, could they have had their way, would not have altered their wheels an inch.

It was mid-afternoon of the next day when Livingstone, a snub-nosed youth whose round cheeks still held the freckles of the hayfield back in Vermont, sighted “something.” That’s what he reported it, for he had never reported anything before except smoke and he couldn’t lay his tongue to any word that seemed to fit it. But what it was was the last two feet of a submerging submarine away off to the east, and the _Warren_, signalling to the others, picked up her skirts and lit out with boilers roaring.

It was only the ghost of a chance that she had, for it was a thousand to one against that U-boat showing her periscope again unless she had other U-boats with her. But for once a Fritz didn’t run, or, at least, not until too late. A mile from her convoys the _Warren_ again saw her. This time it was only an innocent looking steel tube that broke the sunlit water, but it was enough. Quarters had been sounded long ago, and, as luck would have it, that periscope had been seen the instant it popped its head out, so that the forward gun crew had a good seventeen seconds to sight and fire. And the first three-inch sped true to its mark and away went that periscope at something over six hundred yards!

Having found the range made the rest easier, for Number Two gun elevated her muzzle and dropped a shell squarely on top of the submerged craft, and Number Four gun followed with a second and the U-boat came gently to the surface and men piled up through the hatch and opened fire with the deck guns. They managed to put a shell through the _Warren’s_ second stack before Number Two put the submarine’s bow gun out of action and cleared away more than half the crew on her deck. That ended the affair, for an officer sprang to the deck with a white flag and held it fluttering from outstretched arms, and the _Warren_ went mad with joy!

Behind, the first of the Limie destroyers was ploughing up, but she was too late for anything but the cheering. She stopped, panting like an exhausted runner, set signals, was answered, and swinging off again went back to her duty, a trifle envious it is to be supposed.

The _Warren’s_ hope of capturing the U-boat was short-lived, for by the time the last of the crew had reached the deck she was settling fast. As quickly as possible the Germans were taken off to the destroyer and then Lieutenant Lyke and four men pulled across and examined her. Their report was discouraging and the _Warren_ chugged back, dropped a depth-charge gingerly into the sea and fled for safety. There was a geyser-like upheaval of water and the U-boat lifted her stern and went down like a turtle slipping from a log. And in the moment that she stood up-ended Steve and Harry, standing side by side on the _Warren’s_ after deck, read the inscription painted there:

“_3-U-9_”!

“_Got him!_” cried Harry, and sprang away to find Phil.

Later they talked it over below, hearkened to by a circle of interested shipmates. They had seen the officers and recognised them beyond the shadow of a doubt, if the evidence of that “_3-U-9_” was not enough, and Harry had even had speech with that “American citizen” who had entertained them so affably aboard the submarine. What he had said to the German he would not relate, however.

“It was enough,” he growled, scowling fiercely.

But Phil laughed softly, and, in response to Harry’s frowning regard, said: “’Fess up, Harry. You took pity on him and offered him a ‘fag.’ Now didn’t you?”

“I did not,” replied Harry with emphasis, but the disavowal somehow didn’t sound awfully convincing.

“Well, they got theirs,” said Phil, with intense satisfaction. “And I hope they’ll hang every mother’s son of them. But they won’t,” he added dejectedly. “They’ll just put them in a nice comfortable internment camp; the officers, I mean. The rest will have to work, and I hope that ‘American citizen’ has to break stones for the duration of the war!”

They were a proud lot aboard the _Warren_ all the way in to Plymouth. It is much to sink a German U-boat, but it is infinitely more to bring off her officers and crew first. It is done so seldom, in fact, that there are no prescribed rules for behaviour, and the crew of the triumphant _Warren_ debated long and seriously how best to celebrate the feat on arrival at port.

The news had, of course, preceded them and that morning when they passed Rame Head and entered Plymouth Sound they found their path strewn with congratulations. Hooters and sirens greeted them and all the way to anchorage they were kept busy replying to messages.

“If,” sighed Joe, “we could only have brought the sub in in tow!”

“Yes,” Phil agreed, “that would have been great, but you’re a lot of unspeakable heroes already, and if you’d done that there’d have been no living with you. Say, look yonder. Isn’t that one of our cruisers?”

“Yes, I think so. What’s the name? Can you make it out?”

“N-no. It looks like Car――Car――something. There’s a T, I think――――”

“It’s the _Carthage_!” cried Joe. “And Han’s on her! That’s great, isn’t it? Phil, this is going to be some reunion of the Adventure Club! You and I and Steve and Harry and now Han. Five out of the thirteen of us! Let’s tell Steve.”

“All right. But wait a minute, Joe. I’ve been thinking. Do you suppose Harry and I could get into this? Into the destroyer service, I mean.”

“By Jove! I wish you could! And――and I believe you can! Phil, do you know what I think? Well, I think that, now that we fellows have got together, the old Kaiser hasn’t the ghost of a show!”

“He never had,” answered Phil quietly.

With a deafening rattle of chains the _Warren_, momentary hero of the “Suicide Fleet,” dropped anchor in the blue waters of Plymouth Harbour.

* * * * *

Transcriber’s Notes:

――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

――Printer’s, punctuation, and spelling inaccuracies were silently
corrected.

――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.

――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.