Chapter VII: Sea Duty

The _Warren_ was one of the Paulding class, just short of three hundred feet in length, with a twenty-seven foot beam and a draught of eight feet. (“Eight above and eight below,” explained Hearn, “and a lot of her weight topside, shipmates, so she’ll roll pretty.”) She was not a new ship, for she had been launched in 1912, nor was she as speedy as the larger ships. (“She’s done her twenty-eight and a half, though,” defended their guide, “and can show her heels to a lot of ’em.”) She had two masts and four funnels and everything about her, from stem to stern, foretop to keel, was grey. (“They’re painting some of ’em these camouflage colours,” said Hearn, “and a fine sight they are, too. There was a Frenchie in here the other day that looked like a blooming butterfly, believe me. They had her striped zig-zag with all the colours of the rainbow and then they’d painted wavy lines across that. Maybe you can’t see her any distance, but when she’s close up, believe me, you can’t see anything else! She’s a three-ring circus: and she’s got a name like a clown!”) Forward was the forecastle and here were mounted, one on each beam, two of the five three-inch rapid-fire rifles with which the _Warren_ was armed. Above, on the forecastle deck, was a third gun. The bridge, gained from the forecastle deck, was in turn topped by a searchlight platform, while aft of it was a diminutive chart-room. Beneath the forecastle was the officers’ quarters, the captain’s cabin extending across the width of the ship. Aft of that were four staterooms, the wardroom mess and the officers’ galley.

Amidships on the main deck stood a fourth three-inch rifle and, to starboard and port, two twin eighteen-inch torpedo tubes. (“They’re making ’em in triplets now,” observed Hearn. “Three tubes together instead of two. That’s going some, ain’t it?”) Astern there was another twin torpedo tube and the last of the rapid-fire rifles.

Below the main deck were the men’s quarters, the two boiler-rooms, each holding its pair of big oil-fired boilers, the turbine room, the petty officers’ quarters and storerooms.

“She’s awfully like a toothpick, isn’t she?” asked Joe dubiously as he surveyed the long and narrow deck from the stern taffrail to the distant break of the forecastle.

“She sure is,” Hearn agreed. “She’s just eleven times longer than she is wide, friend. And that’s some fine, believe me!”

“I think it would be finer,” said Joe, attempting a weak joke, “if she was a little bit wider. What do you do when two fellows have to pass on deck?”

“One of us hangs over the side,” chuckled the gunner’s mate. “It’s those fine lines, kid, that make her nifty. You wait till she hits her gait in a smooth sea and just watch her slip along! Fifteen thousand horse power, she has, and when those turbines get to nagging her three propellers, why, say, she walks a bit, believe me!”

“But――but in rough weather,” hazarded Joe anxiously, “isn’t she――er――――”

“You said something,” laughed Hearn. “She sure is. I’ve been aboard this porpoise when she was doing thirty-five.”

“Thirty-five?” questioned Steve.

“Yep, thirty-five degrees off vertical. That’s swinging, son, believe me! They say they sometimes go forty-five in extra rough weather, and that’s going through an arc of ninety degrees, but I’ve never seen that performance yet, and I don’t want to. Thirty’s bad enough. Take it on the foretop lookout when she’s switching over from one side to the other and doing it in around six seconds and you’ve got about all you want! And the worst of it is that you don’t ever know what sort of a kick she’s going to do next. She’s got more different motions than a cat and can do any seven of ’em at once. When you get back to the base you’re so stiff in your muscles that you can hear them creak!”

“It must be fierce,” marvelled Joe. “And don’t you ever get seasick?”

“Seasick! You’d better believe it. Last trip we had half the bunch flat, men and officers, and the junior luff wasn’t any use for two days.”

Joe groaned dismally. “I’ll last about ten minutes,” he said. “I――I guess I’ll get out of here while there’s time.” He looked anxiously about as though contemplating a sudden plunge into the water and a swim ashore.

“You’ll have it, all right,” said the gunner’s mate consolingly, “but you’ll get over it, I guess. Most of ’em do. Fact is, you don’t have much time for being sick. There’s too much to do. And, anyway, a fellow might as well be up and around as trying to hold himself into one of those bunks by his teeth and toes and eyelashes. It’s all right to be seasick when you’ve got a nice wide berth and a steward to wait on you and the old hooker’s only playing a bit, but on one of these tin cigarettes the best thing to do is to forget it.”

“Have you ever been seasick?” asked Joe dolefully.

“Me? I’ve been so sick I hoped the ship would sink! But you get sort of out of the habit after a while. The first week or so is bad, but then you kind of swallow hard and do your work and it don’t bother you much. Of course, there are some that never do get over it. About one fellow out of every dozen has to quit the destroyers and go back to the big ones.”

“I’m that one, I guess,” said Joe. “Why, I can get seasick just watching a goldfish swim around in a glass bowl!”

“You’ve got a swell chance of sticking around here, then,” laughed Hearn. “Say, how’d you fellows manage to get aboard here, anyhow? You’re apprentices, aren’t you?”

Steve told all he knew of the process, which wasn’t much, and the petty officer nodded. “I guess they’re taking most anyone on nowadays,” he said. “No offence to you fellows. Generally it’s only service men who get on destroyers and torpedo boats. But there’s a heap of Reserve fellows in the fleet now, I hear, and I suppose they haven’t got enough service men for the jobs. How long were you at Newport?”

Steve told him, and he whistled long and loudly. “Gee, that’s rushing things a bit, ain’t it? First thing you know you’ll be warrant officers at that rate! It usually takes some years, but things are happening fast just now. They tell me half these dinky little chasers that are bobbing around here are manned by amateur yachtsmen and ferryboat captains and the like. I suppose it’s all right, and at that they’re a sporting bunch, but it sort of grouches a fellow who’s been in the Navy five years to see greenhorns without any experience getting fat berths and big pay. Oh, well, if we just hand it to the Huns, it don’t matter.”

“Have you seen a submarine yet?” asked Steve eagerly.

“Dozens of ’em. We got four last week and just missed a fifth.”

But there was a tell-tale twinkle in Hearn’s eye, and Steve said: “No, really, have you?”

“Well, I’ll tell you. The first two days we were on patrol the lookouts reported exactly fourteen periscopes.”

“Really!” exclaimed Joe. “And――and did you get a shot at any of them?”

“Just one. And we missed that by twenty yards on account of being so excited. Still, it was just as well, as it turned out, because it wasn’t anything but floating spar.”

“Oh! And the others? Were they spars, too?”

“No, the others were mostly imagination. Maybe one was a porpoise. Yes, sir, we sure sighted a lot of periscopes those two days! The Old Man threatened finally that he’d drop the first man overboard who so much as whispered ‘periscope!’”

“The Old Man’s the captain, isn’t he?” asked Joe.

“Yep, Lieutenant-Commander John W. Stanford, Esquire, bless his old heart! As the British gobs say, he’s a little bit of all right.”

“What’s a gob?” asked Steve.

“You are if you stay aboard. It’s a name they have for the destroyer men.”

“Oh. Who are the other officers?”

“Lyke, first luff. He’s executive officer. The junior luff’s name is Putnam. He’s boss of the engines. Then there’s Connell, who’s ensign. That’s the lot, and all pretty good.”

“How many others?” asked Steve.

“Non-coms? About ten, I guess. And eighty-six men. Or was last cruise. You fellows will make eighty-eight if the rest all show back.”

“That’s a lot,” marvelled Steve.

“Well, there’s a lot of work on one of these things, son. We have to have all sorts, just like a dreadnought, only not so many of a kind: machinists, oilers, firemen, boilermakers, shipfitters, water tenders, electricians, painters, cooks, stewards, bakers and so on. Those are all artificers. Then there’s the seaman branch. And there’s a surgeon and――and―――― Well, if there’s anything we haven’t got, just mention it to the Old Man and he’ll fix it for you.”

“We will,” laughed Steve. Joe asked: “Do you think we’ll get our chance now that we’re assigned to service?”

“You’ll either be advanced to seamen, second class, or seamen if you stay around here,” answered Hearn. “Unless,” he added with a grin, “they make you admirals!”

“I don’t care much what they do with me,” said Steve, “so long as they let me stay here. Of course I’d like to get my advance, but I should worry. What I want is to get a crack at the enemy. Have you met any Germans yet?”

“Yes,” answered Hearn dryly. “We’ve got a couple on board.”

“Germans!”

“Well, they were till they got naturalised. Now they’re rip-snorting Americans.”

“Oh, but I meant enemy Germans,” Steve explained.

“No, I haven’t seen any of that sort yet, I guess. Yes, I have, too. When I was at Liverpool a month ago there was a bunch of them――prisoners, you know――standing on the dock. They were being taken to some place, I guess. They were a sorry looking lot, mostly no older than you fellows, and what they had on wouldn’t have tempted a hobo. Still and all, they looked fairly cheerful. Guess they thought it was a lot better than fighting over there in those dirty trenches. Say, I’ve got a friend who deliberately volunteered for the Army last month. Got a letter from him the other day telling me about it. He’s in a training camp somewhere up around Boston. And, say, that chump never showed any insanity before!”

“Insanity?” repeated Joe. “Oh, you mean――――”

“Sure! What’s he go and enlist in the Army for when he could be sitting around on a nice clean ship with nothing to do but work? It gets me, honest it does! Why, those blokes have to live up to their knees in mud: sleep in it, mind you: eat it almost: and all they see is a mess of barbed wire and an airplane now and then. Gee, think of sticking around in a trench for days at a time with nothing doing! Course he isn’t up against that yet, but he will be by Fall, I guess. And, another thing, fellows, that silly chump’s as likely as not to get killed!”

“Well, he might get killed in the Navy, mightn’t he?” asked Steve, smiling.

“Shucks, no. This is the safest job there is. Of course a fellow gets his now and then, but it’s a nice, clean death, and you’re so busy when it happens that I’ll bet you never know it! I wouldn’t join the Army for a million dollars!”

That night Steve and Joe ate their first destroyer “chow” and slept for the first time in narrow bunks between the thin steel walls. The food was good, and, since they were tremendously hungry, they enjoyed it. And the bunks were comfortable enough under the present circumstances, but Joe secretly wondered how he would ever manage to stay in his, much more sleep in it, when the destroyer performed those alarming tricks that Hearn had told of! They found their companions among the enlisted men a jolly and singularly care-free lot. They had expected to be joshed some, possibly mildly hazed, but were agreeably disappointed. The others took it for granted that the boys were full seamen, and, since they had each tucked their blue caps with the tell-tale Training School ribbon out of sight, there was nothing to undeceive them. It was only when, after supper was over and they were sitting around in quarters, a chap asked Joe what his last ship had been that the truth came out. Joe confided the facts humbly and not very loudly, and his neighbour laughed.

“That’s it, eh? Well, you’ll get your new rating in a day or two. Bound to. I want to tell you, though, that you and your friend were dead lucky to walk on board a destroyer as easy as that. There are fellows on the big ones that would eat their caps to get into the ‘Suicide Fleet,’ and especially on this fly-by-night!”

“Really? Is the _Warren_ an especially good ship?”

“Is she? You bet she is! She’s the best in the fleet, bar none. There are some that are bigger, but we’ve got the best shots and the best officers in these waters. And the best all-round lot of men, too. You just wait a month or so and they’ll be hearing back home about this little cuss!”

“I hope so,” murmured Joe. “And I hope you’re right about the new rating.”

As it proved, he was, for the next morning the fact of advancement was made known to them and they received cap ribbons bearing the legend “U.S.S. _Warren_” and were entered on the roster as second-class seamen at the munificent wage of thirty-five dollars and ninety cents a month. The wages didn’t excite them very greatly, partly because so far they had each received slightly over sixteen dollars all told since enlistment, and, as Steve sagely remarked, what was the good of earning thirty-five dollars if you never saw any of it? Both were assigned to the starboard watch and both had their first taste of deck washing, and by noon that day they had found their places to some extent and were trying their best to look their parts.

The rain stopped during the morning and a gentle breeze blew from shore, bearing with it a fragrance of damp meadows. But that fragrance had a hard time getting recognised on the destroyer, for the ship had a fine healthy odour of her own, an odour composed of burning oil, of hot iron, of paint, of cooking food from the ever-busy galley, all merged into one heavy and never-forgotten bouquet. The _Warren_ remained at anchor until afternoon, taking on oil and ammunition and supplies of all sorts. There were not many idle moments for the new members of the crew. By noon the last of those who had been off on shore leave were back and it was no secret that the destroyer would sail before night. Joe viewed the immediate future gloomily, but that didn’t keep him from following the general example of “filling up bunkers” at dinner, since once out on patrol the galley seldom bothered itself with hot meals. “You get canned salmon or beef,” volunteered a small, tow-haired youth who looked no more than seventeen while claiming twenty, “and the only hot stuff is coffee. If you’re on to the tricks you can sneak some eggs and boil ’em at the steam vent. But your best bet, friend, is to eat all you can hold in port.”

Just before sunset the _Warren’s_ engines began to sing a louder tune and presently winches clattered and the anchors came dripping up. Simultaneously two other destroyers, one a far bigger boat than the _Warren_, showed similar indications of departure, and presently the water began to ripple past the bows, the smoke above the funnels took on a darker tinge and the destroyer moved down the harbour, slowly at first and then faster, playing a hoarse tune on her siren as she signalled for the “gate.” Behind her at respectful distances came the companion ships, looking, head-on, like thin grey wedges of steel.

“See those barrels strung out ahead there?” asked a youngster in response to Joe’s question. “Well, those are the net floats. The lower edge of the net’s anchored to the bottom, all except the gate net. Those two trawlers you see are opening it for us to get through. After we are through we’ve got to steer a tight course, for there’s mines laid everywhere outside, and it isn’t healthy to slap one of ’em with your nose.”

“I should think, though,” Steve objected, “that if the mines are high enough in the water to get us that a U-boat could slip past underneath.”

“Oh, there’s three layers of ’em, and a Fritz would have to be mighty lucky to squeeze between ’em. They say that they have a sort of burglar alarm effect running from the net to the shore station, so if anything pokes its nose against it a bell starts to ringing. But I don’t know how true that is.”

“Are there mines all around here? Outside, I mean.”

“No, excepting floating ones that the Huns push off up in the North Sea or drop over from their ships. You find them now and then. You got to watch for them, kid. The _Jarvis_, I think it was, sent down three last trip. When you find ’em you blow ’em up.”

“Shoot at them?” asked Joe.

“No,” answered their informant gravely, “you run down on ’em and the Cap leans over the side and biffs one of the horns with a monkey-wrench. It’s more certain that way. You might miss ’em with the gun.”

“I suppose that was a fool question,” laughed Joe.

“Sure, number 71,698.” The other smiled. “You’ll be asking worse ones than that, though. I did.”

Once outside the nets, with the guard ships only darker blotches against the darkening sea and the sky still light beyond Kinsale Head, the _Warren_ dug her nose into the water and ploughed southward at a merry clip. For awhile the companion boats were visible, but eventually they melted into the night.