Chapter FOUR: The Danger Zone

There are many other types on board. Here is one at your elbow. He is a sentry, on Number Nine post. His duties appear to be confined to scrutinizing the ocean for periscopes. This is not a very arduous task, for we are not in the danger zone at present. Indeed, a good deal of this sentry’s time appears to be spent in gazing over the taffrail towards the setting sun—towards America. Possibly he ought to be straining his eyes towards France. But we are all human, especially the American soldier boy, and this boy is unaffectedly and avowedly homesick. Jim Cleaver’s thoughts at the present moment are nowhere near Number Nine post; they are centred upon a little township called Potsdam, far away. This sounds good and blood-thirsty: unfortunately this particular Potsdam is not in Prussia, but “way up” somewhere in the State of New York; and Jim’s imagination is concerned less with the House of Hohenzollern than with the House of Cleaver—particularly the feminine portion thereof. Moreover, it happens to be Sunday evening; and we all know what that means.

At the other corner of the deck stands Antonio. That is not his real name, but no matter. He will inform you that he has already crossed the ocean—once. A brief exercise in mental arithmetic will presently cause you to realize that Antonio cannot have been born in America. This is so. He crossed over ten years ago, in the steerage of an Austrian Lloyd liner, outward bound from Trieste, on his way from the sunny but unremunerative plains of Lombardy, in search of a mysterious Eldorado called Harlem, New York. And now here he is, aged twenty-six, picked out by the groping hand of the Selective Draft, on his way back again, to help rend those same plains (among others) from the Hun and restore them to their rightful owners. He is quite cheerful at the prospect, though he would sooner be with the Italian Army than with the American. Not that he is lacking in patriotism towards the land of his adoption, but—

“I gotta two brother over there,” he explains. “Besides, here I gotta talka da Ingleese. Alla same, I feela fine!”

Antonio is not the only man who is going back with a personal interest in the European situation. On a coil of rope on the well-deck, broad-faced and Turanian, sits another young man. If Antonio’s real name is difficult to pronounce, this man’s is out of range altogether; for he is a Russian. He is addressed indifferently as Clambakovitch or Roughneckski.

“I live fifty miles from German border,” he says. “I come over here seven years ago: I go through Berlin and sail from Hamburg. Now the Germans have my home. I do not hear from my people for three years. So now I go home—through Berlin again!”

“And after that?”

After that, Clambakovitch Roughneckski’s plans are perfectly definite. He is coming back to America—for good. Already he is wedded to the soil of Pennsylvania. Antonio’s views are the same.

The affection of her children for America is a wonderful thing. Domestic or imported, it makes no matter. To the native-born American, America is still the little country—the little strip of coastline—which stood up successfully to a dunder-headed monarch in days when men did not govern themselves: to the naturalized American, America is the land which gave him his first real taste of personal liberty. Each cherishes America to-day—the one because he helped to make her free, the other because she has made him free.

We are in the danger zone now. It is difficult to realize that thrilling circumstance, because no one seems to worry at all.

The same games of shuffle-board, bull-board, chess, checkers, and bridge are in progress; each day sees the same guard-mountings, parades, and inspections; off duty, the same quantity of tobacco and chewing-gum is being consumed. Only if the ship is brought up short by a heavy sea, or an iron door clangs suddenly in some distant stokehold, are we conscious of any tension at all. For a moment heads are turned, or conversation breaks. But that is all. A year ago, old hands tell us, things were different. There really was cause for nervousness. But now, we are escorted, we are well-armed, and the worst we need fear is a few hours in the boats.

There is much speculation as to our destination. Is it the Mersey; the Clyde; Queenstown? Or France direct? Where are we now, anyway? Each noon, when the ship’s officers appear upon the bridge in a body, and perform mysterious sun-worshipping rites with sextants, the amateur experts look knowing, and refer darkly to probable latitudes and longitudes. One, diagnosing the present commotion of billows as a “ground-swell,” announces positively that we are just off the Bay of Biscay. Another, basing his conclusions upon the lengthening hours of daylight and the presence in our wake of certain sea-birds (herring-gulls, really) which he describes as “penguins,” announces confidently that we are now well within the Arctic Circle and will ultimately fetch a compass to Aberdeen, _via_ Iceland. The battle rages between these two extremes: probably a carefully worked-out average of opinion would bring us somewhere near the truth. Gunners are quite familiar with the process: they call it “bracketing.” But it does not matter. The real fun will begin when we sight land, and the authorities upon the subject start in to identify it.

Another night has passed, and the question is settled. We have sighted land, and are informed that we may expect to make our port to-night. It is a breathless summer morning, and our great ships, which looked forlorn and insignificant amid the ocean wastes, appear to have swelled a good deal during the night. Certainly we form a stately pageant, for our escorting forces have been augmented. Destroyers are beating the bounds, nosey little patrol-boats thread their way in and out of the flotilla; silver-grey monsters float above our heads in the blue, occasionally descending to dip a suspicious nose towards the glittering wavelets. One of them dives down gracefully to within hailing distance of our own ship. It is a sublime moment. A thousand Stetsons are waved in welcome, and an earnest query—the spontaneous greeting of Young America to Old England—is roared from one of our portholes:

“Say, you got any _beer_ up there?”

At the forward end of the boat-deck Boone Cruttenden and Miss Lane were leaning over the rail, in that confidential conjunction invariable in all young couples, whether in war or peace, on the last day of a voyage. Boone’s blue eyes surveyed the scene around him, and glowed.

“It makes you think a bit!” he exclaimed. “Here we are, thousands of us Americans, on board British ships, being convoyed into a British port by the British Navy. I wish the old Kaiser was here! And I wish some of our folks at home who are asking what the British Navy is doing in this war could be here too! They might learn then what is meant by the freedom of the seas!”

“Still,” complained the youthful seeker after sensation, Miss Lane, “I did hope that we might have seen just one little submarine.”

It is hard to refuse some people anything—especially American girls of twenty-three. Miss Lane’s wish was promptly gratified. A few hundred yards away, right in the middle of the convoy, there was suddenly protruded from the unruffled surface of the ocean a few feet of something grey, slender, and perpendicular—something which, after a hurried and perfunctory survey of the situation, retired unobtrusively whence it came. But not before it had been seen, and welcomed. For a brief minute shells burst around it, machine guns pattered imprecations over it, bombs descended upon it from the heavens above, and depth-charges detonated in the waters beneath. The convoy altered its formation, as prudence dictated. But nothing further happened. Calm reigned once more upon the face of the waters.

“Some little surprise for him, I guess,” said Cruttenden. “Lying on the bottom, and just came up for a look around! He did not expect to poke his periscope into this hornet’s nest, I should say. I wonder if anything hit him. I guess not: he was too slick. But you had your thrill right enough, Miss Lane!”

Miss Lane sighed rapturously.

“The censor has just _got_ to pass that when I write home,” she announced.

* * * * *

Late that evening we made our port. On our way in we passed a British cruiser, coaling. The band was playing, as is usual during coaling. Our tall ship slid past in the dusk, undemonstratively, almost surreptitiously. One of the tragedies of modern warfare lies in its anonymity. You may not display your true colours or advertise your presence anywhere—even to your friends. So we crept past. But a sailor can read ships as a landsman reads books. The cruiser’s band stopped suddenly, right in the middle of a tune, and in two minutes the cruiser’s sides, rigging, and tops were crowded with half-naked, coal-grimed humanity yelling themselves hoarse to the roaring multitude on the liner.

“Listen!” shouted Boone Cruttenden into his companion’s ear, as a fresh burst of sound added itself to the tumult; “their band has struck up again. Can you hear it?”

“No! Yes, I do now. I guess it’s ‘God Save the King,’ or one of those tunes.”

But Miss Lane was wrong. Suddenly the cheering died away for a moment, and the band made itself heard, joyfully and triumphantly, for the first time.

And the tune it played was “Over There.”

“Oh, _gee!_” said Miss Lane, with a sob in her voice. “Oh, gee!”