Chapter IV: Heroes in Port

“Where’d you get it?”

That was a pert, black torpedo boat, the next afternoon, jumping across the _Conklin’s_ bows a half mile ahead and wigwagging flippantly from a perilous deck.

“About two hundred miles back,” replied the _Conklin_. “She’s the _Neusatz_.”

“Congratulations!” The torpedo boat was visibly impressed. Perhaps a bit disappointed, too, for she added: “Been looking for her myself.” Then, wallowing off: “Shall I report you?”

“Please do,” answered the destroyer. “Am making Wick.”

The torpedo boat said something more, but distance and intervening waves hid it.

They had had calm seas until nearly noon that day, but now, some 180 miles from the Firth, the northeast wind was tossing the waves high and the _Neusatz_ was making hard going and the bilge pumps were busy every moment. Lieutenant Chapin had managed to keep near the _Conklin_ all night, no mean task in the darkness, and with a starboard engine continually demanding tinkering, and at dawn was only three miles to the southwest. The sea got up more toward evening and the sun went down in a bank of angry-looking purple-red clouds that by four bells in the first watch had covered the sky and hidden the stars. The wind freshened considerably and the _Conklin_ rolled and wallowed hard, and there was much anxiety aboard for the smaller convoy. They picked up North Rona Island about midnight and left Stack Island to port shortly after daylight, and when Dave went off morning watch a hazy streak eastward was said to be the Orkneys. They made Turn Ness before noon and steamed into Pentland Firth. By that time they were in busy waters. Suspicious trawlers demanded their business and once a small gunboat labored near and held a long conversation. Past Stroma Island mine sweepers were working diligently and the _Conklin_ was warned to keep well away from Duncansby Head. It was mid-afternoon when the two destroyers, victor and vanquished, came to anchor in Wick Bay, enthusiastically welcomed by a small flotilla of patrols and trawlers.

There the prisoners were landed and the _Neusatz_ handed over to the British Admiralty officer, and the _Conklin_ took on oil. She laid at Wick that night, the Old Man, who had scarcely left the bridge a minute for forty hours, sleeping the clock around, according to rumor. The next day they were off again, back through the Firth and then down along the west coast of Scotland, in a blue-gray mist that held the _Conklin_ to half speed or less until she was in the Minch and hid the coast from sight. After that the sun came back and there was much to see; islands that sent them wandering from their course and headlands that put them back again; glimpses of mist-draped mountains and firths and lochs stretching inland like broad blue ribbons.

Dave and The Pickle tried to follow their progress on a folding map that was eternally flopping itself back on its creases, and almost got lockjaw attempting to pronounce such words as Ardskinish and Kilchenichbeg and Maol-na-cala. There were more difficult ones, too, but they knew better than to attempt those. Pete didn’t take much interest in geography, preferring to put his back against something――most anything answered――and fall asleep. For Pete, like all the others who had spent two nights and the better part of two days aboard the Austrian destroyer, was so far in arrears as to sleep that he despaired of ever catching up. Pete had twice attempted to describe that second night on the _Neusatz_ and had twice been forced to give up for lack of a sufficient vocabulary. His attempts always ended with a hopeless shake of his head.

There was a U-boat alarm as they approached the North Channel, and the _Conklin_ sounded general quarters and Pete became very nearly wide awake. But the periscope――if periscope it was that had greeted the lookout’s gaze――disappeared and Pete went promptly to sleep again, leaning against Number Five gun. They met a long column of empty transports off Belfast, American ships of many shapes and sizes, guarded by four destroyers, and the _Conklin_ was able to talk to some one again in her own language. The naval guards on the transports waved their caps and semaphored ridiculous messages to the passing destroyer. The _Conklin_ rounded Power Head the next afternoon and an hour later dropped her anchor off Queenstown again, and, oh, but the old town did look good to her crew! They were heroes of no mean caliber when they went ashore, and they made the most of it. For three days they threw their chests out a good two inches beyond normal and put their shoulders back so far that you could instantly tell a _Conklin_ gob a block away from his similarity to a pouter pigeon! It is fair to assume that the Old Man, too, felt a bit cocky as he went ashore to make his report to the Admiral, and none of the crew blamed him. The only question in their minds was whether he would be made a captain or jumped to a commodore. There were some who believed promotion to rear admiral was the least he could expect. As a matter of fact, all that did happen was commendation in orders; except that the British Admiral wrote out a compliment of his own which was posted on the bulletin board.

The _Conklin_ underwent repairs and her gobs spent every possible minute ashore. There was mail for all hands, and many home papers to be read and not a few boxes to be opened. And there were many meals to be eaten in waterfront hotels, for it was surely a fine change to sit at ease in a chair and stretch your legs under a real table and not have the coffee spill down the front of your shirt. And steak and onions, and hot, heavy puddings, were a vast improvement on bacon and stews and canned salmon. A day after the _Conklin_ got into port the _Wood_ returned empty-handed from her search, and the _Conklin’s_ men lorded it over the _Wood_ gobs and there was a fine battle behind a warehouse between husky representatives of the two destroyers in consequence. When the dust had subsided Conroy, seaman, U. S. S. _Conklin_, was lifted up tenderly and borne away for repairs, and the _Wood’s_ crew held up their heads again now that honor was vindicated.

But the flesh-pots of Queenstown palled at the end of the third day, which should have been the last day, too, in port, and there were grumbles to be heard when it was rumored that the _Conklin’s_ repairs would keep her tied to a dock another forty-eight hours. They watched the _Wood_ up-anchor and depart jauntily, her men waving derisive farewells and shouting insulting messages as she steamed past, and they watched the _Conyngham_ slide up the harbor fairly radiating vanity. The _Conyngham_ had, to use Pete’s disgusted report, “gone and got her a little old eighty-foot sub and was so stuck-up you couldn’t talk to ’em!” That was all right, too, but if there were subs to be had it was time the _Conklin_ was getting hers. And she wouldn’t be satisfied with any half-portion U-boat, either. If she couldn’t bring in a regular man-sized boat she’d bring none. So declared the _Conklin’s_ lower deck with appropriate emphasis, and meant every word of it. In consequence there was deep joy when the destroyer was at last again ready for sea duty, and the delight of steaming into Cork Harbor six days before was as nothing to the delight of steaming out again.

This time it was patrol duty, and the _Conklin_ was assigned to a certain numbered square of the North Atlantic Ocean lying some 200 miles due south of Cape Clear. When their hunting ground was made known to them there was some disappointment aboard, for it was too far south for the lanes and too far west for German mine layers. It was felt that the admiralty was not giving them a fair show. The Pickle, however, suggested that perhaps as the _Conklin_ was a newcomer she mustn’t expect the choice locations. “I suppose we have to take what’s left,” he said. “But we’ve got the satisfaction of knowing that the fellows who come after us will get worse places.”

“I’ll bet there’s a lot o’ favoritism in it,” said Pete, darkly. “Look what we went an’ done. Nabbed the _Nuisance_ when the whole blame British navy and half of our own was tryin’ for her. An’ the Frenchies, too, maybe. Ain’t that something? What? Don’t that show we know our business? Well, then, what’s the idea of shovin’ us away out there where there ain’t nothin’ to see but whales an’ altroboses?” (Pete never could say “albatross.”)

“At that,” remarked Gooding, machinist’s mate, “we might make a find. Maybe the tin fish are leery of the old routes, now we’ve gone and cluttered them all up with patrols. Maybe we’ll walk right into a regular blooming convention of them.”

“Yeah,” assented Pete, sarcastically, “maybe we will. An’ maybe the best we’ll get’ll be the worst. Honest, fellers, I don’t believe there’s a quarter as many subs around here as they think there is. They see the same Hun two or three times in different places an’ they think he’s a different one each time. Stands to reason, don’t it, that if there was as many as they make out we’d see one now and then? I been fiddlin’ aroun’ here more’n a month an’ never seen but one.”

“I know fellows who’ve been over here since May and haven’t seen any,” replied Gooding. “So there you are. Cheer up, though, Pete. The luck may change.”

“All I’m afraid of,” Pete grumbled, “is that the war’ll be over before I have a chance to shoot the daylights out o’ one o’ the murderin’ things. Bet you if we do find one, Lanky, it’ll be off to port where I won’t get a whack at it! That old Kaiser’d ought to fix things so’s we’d a better run for our money. I always said he was a piker!”

“The best way to find a U-boat,” observed The Pickle wisely, “is to get on a transport. It isn’t us fellows they’re looking for, it’s the ships with troops on them, or cargo boats full of grain and ammunition and stuff. They’re wise owls, those U-boats. They don’t take any chances. That’s why they live to a ripe old age.”

“That’s no jest,” agreed Pete. “Safety first’s their motto. I seen in a New York paper the other day where they’d got twenty-four British ships one week a while back. That’s fierce, ain’t it? Maybe I’m wrong about it. Maybe there’s all the subs they say there is.”

“Those figures the British give out don’t take any account of all the trawlers and sweepers and small boats that are sunk,” said Dave. “I guess they think that if they made a clean breast of it we’d get discouraged and quit.”

“The dirty, sneakin’, murderin’ scoundrels!” growled Pete. “Know what, fellers? Well, I’m goin’ to get me one o’ them U-boats before I quit, take it from Pete! I’m goin’ to get me one if I have to cruise round this old ocean for ten years! An’ stoppin’ the war ain’t goin’ to make no difference to me, either. I’ll be right on the job the day the kaiser and King George sit down to lunch together!”