Chapter VII: On the Mine Sweeper

An hour later the occupants of the port life-boat were safe aboard the British steam trawler _Good Venture_. Scalding hot tea had driven the cold from their bodies, and each had been provided with clothing of some sort from the slop-chest of the little ship. None of them had saved anything from the _944_ save the apparel they had had on at the time, except that the lieutenant had managed to squirm into a pair of dress trousers and bring off the ship’s papers and the lead-bound book that held the secret code. Briggs remarked philosophically that it was a lucky thing pay day was so far past that few of them had possessed much money to lose! The _Good Venture_ was a Grimsby boat, a stout-hulled, high-bowed little steamer, once painted gray but now showing as much red-brown rust as paint. She had two masts and a tall, slim funnel, forward of which was a high wheelhouse. She carried a mere handful of men――Grimsby fishermen all before the war, and for some months after it, too, and now members of the Trawlers’ Naval Reserve. The master, a square giant of a man with a leather-hued face encircled by black whiskers, held the official title of skipper.

“I can’t land you, sir,” he informed the lieutenant, “afore the day after to-morrow, for I’m on duty; but if there’s the chance I’ll put you aboard a boat bound for port. There’s room for all and plenty to eat, and if there’s aught we can do for you ’twill be done with a will.”

The _Good Venture_ had a rendezvous with a sister trawler further west, and search for the _944’s_ starboard life-boat was impossible. It seemed that she must be in sight, and yet, as the day broadened, there was no sign of her, and the _Good Venture_, which had steamed several miles from her course to pick up the lieutenant’s boat, swung back to her path of duty. It was generally agreed that the other boat had probably held closer to the wind and so got farther south, and that, in any case, she was in no danger and would, if not picked up beforehand, make one of the Scilly Islands without difficulty. It was, however, many months before Dave saw any of the starboard boat’s crew again, although he learned a few days later of their safe arrival at Trescos.

The _Good Venture_, it appeared, was a mine sweeper, one of the Plymouth fleet, and had been across to Brest and was now rejoining her sister ship, the _Arabella_. The lieutenant was taken in charge by the skipper and the men were bunked forward in the commodious quarters. The _Good Venture_ seemed to be something of a family affair, for the first mate was the skipper’s brother and two of the crew were cousins, while a third, a yellow-haired boy of surely no more than seventeen, was the skipper’s nephew. It was he, a shy, slow-spoken lad, who became Dave’s guide over the ship after all hands had partaken of a generous breakfast.

Pete and The Pickle went to sleep, as did most of the others, but Dave never felt more wide awake in his life as he climbed out on deck at the heels of the Grimsby lad. At first Dave had some difficulty in understanding the boy’s speech, as much because of the unfamiliar words used, as because of his Lincolnshire pronunciation. But by the time they had visited engine room and wheel house and seen what was to be seen and had come to rest beside the big winch, which wound and unwound the steel cable used for sweeping, that slight difficulty had passed. Tom Garrity had the bluest of blue eyes and the yellowest of yellow hair, and, with his faded red jersey, made a colorful picture as he leaned against the winch and answered Dave’s questions.

“’Tain’t our place to do fighting,” he replied, “but there’s that gun handy-like and we’ve used it two, three times, an’ once we got a ’Un with it, too. That was in March o’ this year. We was sweeping with the _Belle o’ Headon_ off Wight at the time. Admiralty telled of a new nest o’ eggs just laid thereabouts and us and the _Belle_ set out one fine blowy day to pull them up. There was a bit o’ sea running an’ it was fair wet work, but we gets the gear out an’ starts along, the pair o’ us, an’ works for it might be three, four hours without getting a tug on the cable. It was a gray, misty day, an’ now and then it drizzles a bit an’ you can’t see far into it. But of a sudden we gets the _Belle’s_ ’ooter, three times, which is the signal meaning ‘Submarine!’ The skipper couldn’t see nothing, though, and no more could us, but the _Belle_ signals haul in and we hauls, an’ right in the middle off it pops a sub, not a cable-length off to port. All black and shiny-wet she was, a drippin’ water, and ’er ’atch opens and out pops a officer, just like one o’ this ’ere ugly Jack-in-the-Boxes.

“’E didn’t carry no gun; a lot of ’em didn’t those days: ’twas the torpedoes as done the business for ’em. ‘Out o’ it,’ says the blighter. ‘Stop your engines and get in your boats afore I puts a torpedo into you.’ We was caught, do you see, with the cable ’alf in and no chance to run for it if we’d wanted to. The _Belle_ couldn’t do nothing because we was between her and the ’Un. So the skipper ’e sings out to swing the boat over, and then ’e whispers to ’Erbert, that’s the mate, do you see, and ’Erbert ’e walks aroun t’other side o’ the ’ouse an’ beckons to the _Belle_ to ease up on the cable. Then ’e tells Will, in the engine room, to put ’er ahead full steam, an’ so ’twas done. The skipper ’e makes a jump for the wheel an’ he slings ’er over an’ we comes around like a bloomin’ tee-totum an’ makes for the ’Un. ’E sees what we was up to an’ he yells a lot an’ ’e gets out o’ the way by a matter o’ inches an’ we goes slappin’ past ’is stern. But ’e wasn’t considerin’ o’ that cable, an’ it comes taut, do you see, an’ whangs up against the sub abaft the conning tower. The officer ’e ducks just in the nick o’ time, an’ it slips over an’ takes the after periscope off short like a match stick an’ catches against the forward one. The skipper ’e laughs like ’e was ’aving a fit, an’ ’e couldn’t ’ardly slip the shell in the gun, but ’e did it, an’ ’Erbert ’e sights it an’ away she blazes.”

He pointed to the rail further aft. “There’s where she went,” he continued. “’Erbert had to point ’er so low she took six feet o’ the rail with ’er, but she done him in all right. Square into the ’ull she goes, right abaft the tower, an’ the noise was fair deafening. An’ the ’Un opens up till you could see ’er insides an’ turns over a bit an’ goes straight down like a lump o’ lead.”

“Golly!” exclaimed Dave. “And then what?”

Tom Garrity viewed him in faint surprise. “Then we went on sweeping,” he answered.

The _Good Venture_ found her consort at five bells, stood close aboard and tossed a line across. The _Arabella_ was slightly smaller than the _Good Venture_, but in other respects might have been built in the same yard and from the same model. This, however, was not the case, since the _Arabella_ hailed from Lowestoft in time of peace. The winches rattled and the long wire cable splashed into the water. The two boats veered apart, the “kites,” which are weighted timber frames to hold the cable at proper depth, were cast over, and all was ready for the day’s work. Abreast, keeping their relative positions as though they had never known another mission in life, the trawlers steamed slowly northward, between them some sixty fathoms of tough steel wire cable dragging below the choppy surface. At the bow two men watched intently, for it is poor policy to strike a mine, and at the winch were two more hands, ready to wind or unwind, as necessity required, and able to tell by reason of long months of experience when the cable made a “catch,” much as a fisherman knows when a fish tugs ever so gently at his line. Many miles northward steamed the two boats, then turned precisely and came back on a parallel course. And so it went all that day and never a mine was caught in the sweep.

The men from the _944_ watched interestedly and, it must be confessed, a trifle uneasily. A sweeper must walk straight through a mine field, trusting to luck to get the “eggs” on the cable and not to bump them with her hull. The lookouts can seldom see a mine more than a very few feet under the surface, and then only when the surface is fairly “glassy,” and so there must be a special providence to watch over the fortunes of the trawler fleet. Mine sweeping has been said to be the riskiest work of the war, on land or sea, and the long honor roll of men who have perished while engaged in it bears out the contention. Ship after ship has gone down with not one survivor to tell the story of the sacrifice.

“Why, it’s like this,” said the skipper in reply to a question from Kennedy, “if we misses ’em, we goes on. If we ’its ’em, we goes down.”

A fine, calm philosophy, but not especially reassuring to the _Good Venture’s_ uninvited guests.

When darkness came the trawlers anchored within sight of the Irish coast, doused their lights and waited for morning and another day’s duty. In the fo’c’sle, an unusually large one, the crew of the _Good Venture_ and the sailors from the _944_ fraternized and swapped yarns until six bells. Then, to the lazy rolling of the creaking steamer, they dropped to sleep and slept hard until, long before daylight, they were routed out for breakfast.

The next day’s work was more eventful. Shortly after sun-up there was a cry from the winch man and the two steamers slowed down and the big cable was slowly wound in, bringing to the surface not one but two gray-green objects. Caught by the cable against their anchor wires they bobbed about within a few feet of each other midway between the two trawlers and only the fact that one had been snagged further up on its wire kept them from bumping socially together.

On the deck of the _Arabella_ a tall, thin man stepped to the rail and leveled a rifle. He was extremely deliberate and unexcited, it seemed. On the _Good Venture_ the visitors watched from places of safety. The marksman’s first shot spat against the nearer mine but failed to strike a horn. The next shot, however, was immediately followed by a roaring explosion and a sudden churning of the water. Spray dashed high in the pale sunlight and when it fell neither mine was visible. The _Good Venture’s_ skipper waved commendation, the cable was run out once more and side by side the two steamers went on. Twice again that forenoon the rifle barked from the _Arabella_, but each time only a solitary mine was on view. By noon the sailors from the _944_ had lost much of their uneasiness and had given up haunting the rail and straining their eyes over the side. Familiarity had bred contempt, or, if not contempt, a philosophy akin to the skipper’s. If they ’it, they ’it, and that was all there was to it.

Dave, Pete, and The Pickle lost interest in mine sweeping after chow and found a sheltered place amidships and talked. They speculated on what was to happen to them when they reached Queenstown, if they ever did. Thus far not so much as a fishing smack had approached near enough to be hailed and it looked very much as if they would have to remain on the _Good Venture_ until she returned to Plymouth the next evening.

“Of course,” said Pete, “they’ll give the Old Man another command right away; leastways, as soon as they have one for him; but what’s to become o’ us? ’Tain’t likely we’ll be let lay around with nothin’ to do, is it?”

They agreed that it wasn’t, and Dave said: “I hope we can keep together, we three, but I don’t suppose we can.”

“Not a hope,” agreed Pete, “not a hope. Say, I wish they’d put me on a destroyer. That’s the life! Somethin’ doin’ all the time, Kid! Rampin’ an’ rarin’, that’s them! Skyhootin’ around all over the shop! A feller’s got some chance to be a hero an’ get his stripes on one o’ them.”

“I was hoping for destroyer duty too,” said Dill. “But they tell me they take only service men. No ‘rubber socks’ need apply.”

“Don’t you believe it,” Pete denied. “That was the rule, but they take anything they can get now. Have to. There ain’t enough real ‘gobs’ to man ’em all. Why, they’re even takin’ Reserves!” And he winked at Dave.

“They need a few to tone them up,” responded The Pickle untroubledly. “Guess I’ll run up and see Sims when I get ashore and ask him for a berth on one of the new destroyers.”

“Sure,” approved Pete. “Drop in about noon an’ take dinner. He’ll be tickled to death to have you. An’ you might mention my name to him, too.”

“And mine,” laughed Dave. “I’d advise you to get some other togs first, though, Bob. You wouldn’t make much of a hit at the Admiralty the way you are!”

The Pickle observed his attire judicially. He wore a faded brown sweater, much torn and moth-eaten, a pair of old gray trousers and shoes at least three sizes too large for him. For that matter, neither of the others could boast much of their apparel. “How are we going to get uniforms, Pete?” Dill asked. “Will they give us new ones for the asking?”

“Sure! If they don’t I’ll disgrace ’em by sittin’ on the Admiral’s front doorsteps all day with a sign on me: ‘This is the way Uncle Sam dresses his sailors!’”

“They’d think you were a tramp, Pete,” said Dill, “and pull you in for impersonating a sailor. Say, I wish they’d quit dragging for these blamed mines and hike out for home. What sort of a burg is Plymouth?”

“How do we know?” asked Pete. “What do you take us for, perishin’ Britishers?”

“Well, how do we get to Queenstown, then?”

“Walk,” suggested Pete. “Seems to me these fellers might drop us at Queenstown or some place this side, so long as it’s Ireland. We ain’t but a dozen miles off now.”

“It’s a long dozen,” said The Pickle, stretching his neck to look over the rail. “Hello, there’s the whole English navy coming! Or――or something! Have a look, fellows!”