Chapter VI: The Mutiny

“They were a rum-looking lot, those squareheads,” began The Pickle. “They looked as if they hadn’t had a square meal for two weeks. Well, you saw them yourselves, so you know. But lined up on the deck there, with their hands up and looking down at us as if we were their long-lost brothers, they were sure a sorry, white-faced bunch. The way the skin was pulled over their cheek-bones and the way their clothes flapped around them got me! The ensign and Willet and I went down through the hatch and the minute we got our heads under we wished we hadn’t. The smell was frightful. It wasn’t just foul air or battery fumes; it was――well, we soon found what it was. The ensign took one of the men down with us, a sort of chief gunner I guess he was, and he was so weak he fell the last half-way down the ladder, and Willet had to pick him up and put him on his pins again.

“There wasn’t any sort of a conning tower, as you saw, but you went right down straight into the central station. Things were in a fierce mess down there and it was half dark. On the floor alongside a desk with charts and papers on it lay the captain, dead as a doornail. He wasn’t a pretty sight, for some one had bashed his head in. The ensign turned to the Hun that was with us and pointed. I don’t know much German, but I managed to get some of what they said. ‘What happened to him?’ asked the ensign. The fellow shook his head. He was a stolid sort of chap, about twenty-three or four, I guess. ‘Who killed him?’ asked the ensign. Then the Hun said he didn’t know, although you could see he did. ‘That’s the captain,’ said the ensign to Willet and me. ‘They’ve probably done in the first officer too. We’ll see.’ He was a bit pale, was the ensign, and I didn’t feel any too good myself just then. The captain had been dead several days and it wasn’t very pleasant there. Why they hadn’t got rid of the body I don’t know, unless they were too weak to get it up the ladder. We found the next thing that the sub was a mine layer, for there were two wells on her, with mines in each ready to drop.

“It was Willet found the first officer. They’d shot him in his berth while he was asleep.” The Pickle shivered. “Then we lugged the squarehead into the stateroom and showed him the body and he ’fessed up. As near as I could make it out his story was something like this. They’d left Zeebrugge twelve days before with orders to proceed to some place off France and drop mines. The first day they were out the men found that she was poorly provisioned. They were most all old U-boat men and knew what they were up against. So they talked it over and put it up to the captain. Told him they hadn’t enough grub aboard for a week, let alone three, and demanded that he return to a base and stock up proper. But the cap said he’d got his orders and wasn’t going to turn back and a lot more, and was pretty fairly brutal.

“Things went on for three days and then they sighted a merchantman without escort off the east coast of Ireland and they got orders to give chase. Well, they wouldn’t. They were half-starved already, not having had more than one day’s rations in four, and were desperate. So, when the Old Man threatened them with punishment for mutiny they thought they might just as well be hung――or shot――for mutton as for spring lamb, and when he drew a revolver one of them laid him out from behind with a wrench. As he went down they grabbed the revolver and did for the first officer, who was asleep in his bunk.

“Then they were in a bit of a pickle, for they knew that if they took the boat back to Germany they’d get short shrift. They talked it over and decided that the only thing to do was to surrender to an enemy ship. So one of them, a sort of chief petty officer, took charge and they set out to get themselves pinched. But it wasn’t easy, because you see, just as soon as they’d show themselves the enemy would start in to plug them without asking any question. They tried the trick by wireless, but all they got was the merry ha-ha. Every one who picked up the message thought some one was trying to get gay with him, I suppose. So yesterday they tried us to see what we’d do. They’d been following us ever since early morning. Well, we didn’t act friendly and their courage gave out and they beat it. But they kept us in sight and tried again in the afternoon. They’d put up that white flag of theirs, but it was always wet when they came up and wouldn’t do much but wrap around the periscope. Finally, this morning, they decided that they might as well get killed as starve to death. What do you know about that for a sea story?”

Although The Pickle had guessed at some of his details, he had got the facts concerning what was perhaps the strangest surrender ever made on the high seas correct enough. Meanwhile, however, the ensign had made his report to Captain Gannett and the _Conklin_ got busy. The submarine’s crew, twenty-eight in all, were taken off, some of them so weak that they had to be lifted from deck to boat and from boat to sick bay, and the bodies of the two officers were carried up and unceremoniously buried at sea. After that, having very casually reported the capture by wireless, the _Conklin_ made a hawser fast to the towing-hook at the submarine’s bow, and under orders from the flagship, set out for Queenstown.

“Huh,” said Pete that night, “I guess the _Conyngham_ ain’t got anything on us, Kid! This prize we got’s a regular boat, an’ a mine layer at that. As our Limie friends say, ‘Wot price mine layer?’ Only they’d say ‘lyer’ instead of ‘layer,’ wouldn’t they? Guess the _Conklin’s_ pretty bad, ain’t she? Guess she don’t do much for her country, eh? Two prizes in a week ain’t anything to be proud of, is it? Say, Pickle, take a slant overside an’ see if the Hun’s still in tow. I wouldn’t want to lose her after the trouble she’s cost me.”

“You, you flat-foot! What did you have to do with it?” asked Dill.

“What did I have to――Say, didn’t you know that I had the little old Number 5 trained right on the geometricous center of that tin fish? If it hadn’t been for me those bloody-minded murderers would have killed you an’ all the rest of your boardin’ party! What did I do, says he! Huh!”

“Maybe you’ll begin to believe that there are such things as German submarines after all, Pete,” suggested Dave.

“Sure! I always did believe it. Only I say there ain’t so many as folks think. Why, look here, now, don’t what happened yesterday and to-day prove it? When we seen that submarine the second time every one thought she was a new one, didn’t they? Same thing this mornin’. I heard you fellers sayin’ ‘Gee, but that’s funny! Three in two days!’ Well, she was the same little Hun all the time, wasn’t she? Just followed us around she did. That’s what I was sayin’ the other day. Folks see the same sub twice an’ put it down for two!”

“You win,” laughed The Pickle. “What gets me, though, is how they managed to follow us last night in the dark.”

“I don’t believe they did,” replied Dave. “They knew we were on patrol and all they had to do was wait for us to come back on the next course.”

“That’s it, I guess. Well, anyway, it’s a queer business. What do you suppose will happen to those poor hoboes?”

“They’d ought to be shot at sunrise,” answered Pete, unfeelingly, “but they won’t be. They’ll be put in a nice, steam-heated prison camp an’ took care of till the row’s over. I don’t know as I blame ’em a whole lot for killin’ off the officers, if the officers were like what you hear tales of, but I don’t just admire ’em for it.”

“The Old Man got a fine lot of papers and books and truck like that,” said The Pickle reflectively. “He was as pleased as Punch about it and he and the executive are up in the ward room now having a lovely time with them. We got a copy of their secret code and a lot of interesting stuff. Looks to me as if the Old Man would find himself in about right with the Admiral pretty soon. Wait till we get ashore and rub it into the _Wood_ crowd.”

Pete chuckled. “Yeah,” he said. “Wait till I tell Quinn, that slant-eyed, lantern-jawed cox o’ theirs. Maybe it won’t take the wind out of his sails.”

“It would be funny, though, wouldn’t it,” suggested Dave, “if the _Wood_ got back there with a sub, too.”

Pete observed him disapprovingly and The Pickle with sorrow.

“Gee, you can think of more punk things to say, Kid,” remonstrated the latter. “Gloom must be your middle name.”

The _Conklin_ glided into harbor the next morning very proudly and towed her grim, gray prize fairly under the noses of five American and one British destroyer before she came to anchor. On the main deck every gob who could get there stood negligently and boredly as congratulatory messages came from the bridges of the other ships. Their attitude asked plainly: “Why so much turmoil about a mere U-boat? It’s an old story with us.”

That attitude vexed the _Plaisted’s_ gobs and they made derogatory remarks in voices inaudible to the bridge, but heard on the _Conklin’s_ deck, and gestured derision. “Where’d you get the old cook stove, _Conk_?”

“What’s that you’re towin’, partner? Some new kind of patent log?” “Did the Kaiser make you a present of it?” “Say, fellers, see what the cat’s brought in.” But the _Conklin_ men only smiled in serene contempt. They could afford to let the envious world gibe.

The _Wood_ wasn’t in port when the _Conklin_ arrived, and so Pete had to wait two days for the pleasure of crowing over Coxswain Quinn. But perhaps it was worth waiting for, for if Pete’s condition when he returned to the ship that afternoon was any sign he must have had a thoroughly good time. He seemed very desirous of avoiding the gaze of the officer of the deck and plunged below so rapidly that he scraped some of the skin from his ribs. But a little more lost skin was of small moment to one who had already parted with so much! In short, Pete was a cheerful wreck, and raw beef secured from the galley and much plaster from his first aid kit failed to make him more than half presentable. But no questions were asked by the executive, and the Old Man, catching a glimpse of Pete the next morning from the bridge ladder, only smiled and went on up. It was by that time generally known throughout the ship that the _Wood_ would be short the services of a coxswain for one or two days. Neither Dave nor The Pickle were witnesses of that encounter, but those who were feelingly pronounced it the best battle of the war up to date!

The _Conklin_ spent one more day of idleness and then pulled up her hooks and set forth again for her mission of “making the world safe for the democrats,” as Pete phrased it. But this time it was not patrol duty that called her. “Special and distant service” was the word that went around below deck.