Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns Part 8

"A power boat pa.s.sed us. She was not as long as this chaser and not very swift. She was steering into the sou'east, and she left a streak of oil in her wake. She was laden to the guards with oil casks, I believe."

Ensign MacMasters made no comment for a moment; then he got the full significance of Whistler's meaning and he briskly demanded:

"Sure her casks were filled, Morgan, and not empty?"

"She had a full cargo of something, sir," said Whistler, nodding.

"And headed southeast?"

"Yes, sir."

Mr. MacMasters wheeled to speak to his navigating officer. In thirty seconds the swift craft started.

"Hold on, Mr. MacMasters!" cried Torry. "We've got to get ash.o.r.e somehow for supper, you know."

The ensign smiled at him. "I am afraid you will have to remain aboard and help eat some of your own fish for supper. No time just now to put you boys on land."

CHAPTER VII

FOG HAUNTED

The S. P. 888 was shaking throughout her structure before she came square with the exit of the cove. If a destroyer is "a tin box built around a mighty big engine," the term even more nearly fits one of these chasers.

The four Navy boys from Seacove were amazed by the quickness with which she got under way and the brief time it took to tune her up to top-notch speed.

"She's a hundred and ten feet long," said Mr. MacMasters, "about as wide as a happy thought, and can make her thirty-five knots an hour without any particular effort."

"No effort?" muttered Torry. "And it feels as though she was shaking herself to pieces!"

"She's faster than the _Colodia_," observed Whistler, somewhat as though he felt pained by that fact. That any other craft should be a sweeter sailer than his beloved destroyer seemed to him almost a crime.

"She most certainly is," agreed Ensign MacMasters. "She is some speed boat!"

"Why!" Frenchy cried, "she must be faster than the admiral's hydroboat we saw at Newport."

"No, no!" said the ensign. "Those hydroboats have got every other craft in the Navy beaten to a standstill. And about all they use 'em for is pleasure boats."

"They'll be dispatch carriers maybe?" suggested Whistler.

"What do they want of dispatch carriers in a day of wireless?" returned the ensign, and went about his duty of conning the S. P. 888 as she shot through the breach between the claw-like capes that defended the cove, and so straight out to sea in a southeasterly direction.

The "bone in her teeth," as sailors call the white water under the ship's bows, became a windrow of sea, foamed-streaked and agitated, parted by the knife-sharp bows, and rolling away on either hand. The S. P. 888 traveled so swiftly that at a distance "shark" really was the name for her.

She was not camouflaged, as were the hull and upperworks of many Navy vessels with which the four friends were familiar; but her dull coloring made her well nigh un.o.bservable at a few miles' distance when she lay at rest. When she was in action no amount of deceiving paint would hide her, because of the water she disturbed.

The motor boat Phil had suspected had more than an hour and half's start. If she had kept straight ahead on the course she was going when last observed by the boys, she must now be twenty miles or more off sh.o.r.e.

The chaser, propelled by her powerful engines, could traverse that distance, and the oil boat's additional miles, in less than two hours.

If the pursued vessel did not change her course she could be easily overtaken before twilight.

Ensign MacMasters was too busy to talk further with the four chums; indeed it would not be conducive to discipline for the commissioned officer to give the apprentice seamen too much of his attention.

But Mr. MacMasters and the four Seacove boys had been through some warm incidents together; and there is always a particular bond between those who have been shoulder to shoulder in a good fight.

"Remember the rumpus we had, Mr. MacMasters and us fellows, when those Germans tried to recapture the _Graf von Posen_?" Ikey asked his mates.

"Are we likely to forget it?" retorted Al.

"What about it, Ikey?" asked Michael Donahue, complacently. "It was a lovely fight!"

"Do you s'pose the fellows on this oil tender we are chasin' will fight?" asked Ikey.

"Not a chance. Here's fifty men on this chaser. The Germans--if they are Germans--wouldn't stand any show. There are only a few of them," said Torry.

"Including the black-whiskered chap Whistler tells about," Frenchy said.

"Hey, Whistler!"

"What is it?" asked the older lad seriously.

"D'you really think that power boat we saw is going out to meet a submarine?"

"Ask me an easier one," said Morgan. "I can't guess. But she might. We know very well that German submarines and German raiders, and even Germany itself, pa.s.s news back and forth by wireless. We can't control the vibrations of the air--worse luck!"

"Now you've said something, boy!" agreed Torry.

"They read all the news that pa.s.ses between our ships, too, unless it is in a secret code. And they pick everything they need to know about our ship movements out of the air."

"Too bad wireless was ever invented, then," grumbled Torry.

"Six of one and half a dozen of the other," grinned Frenchy. "You bet our operators steal German messages."

"It's likely. You know that chap on the _Colodia_ whom we all liked so well, the chief wireless operator, got lots of information that was supposed only to be picked up by German submarines.

"In this case," added Whistler Morgan, "the sub may have wirelessed word for supplies. We don't know how many alien enemies may be running wireless stations in the United States. The Secret Service men are unearthing them all the time."

"Well," sighed Ikey, "I only hope we'll catch up with this oil tub we're hunting just as she is unloading her cargo onto a sub. Then! Blooey!

We'll drop a depth bomb or two, and settle Mr. Submarine."

"Just like _that_!" drawled Whistler. "It sounds easy. How many times did the _Colodia_ chase a U-boat and lose it?"

"Crickey!" breathed Torry, "even the _Colodia_ couldn't travel like this shark."

"Oh! you admit it, do you?" grinned Frenchy. "Well, we are going some!"