The U-boat hunters Part 8

"Can't _you_ see where you're going?--keep off yourself."

By that time the signal quartermaster was awake and bounding across the bridge. He grabbed the wheel and began to spin it around. The ship's bow turned. Doc saw the big hulk go by him in the dark.

"Good work," said Doc. "How'd you spot him so quick?"

"I didn't spot him, sir. I don't see him yet. I went by the sound of his voice."

"Special little angel perched up aloft to look out for Jack when at sea--" sang Doc. "I thought that was a nursery rhyme. Now I know it's true. Between you and me, quartermaster, we'll get this ship to port yet."

They finished that night and the next day without seeing anything or having anything happen. Nothing except the argument about the forward compartment.

Among the sh.e.l.ls which had come aboard the steamer was one which had punched a fine big hole in her bow. The ship's crew had put a plug there which worked all right till the ship took to rolling, which it did this day. The hole was just at the water-line. Before they knew anything about it there was the plug gone and the water up to a man's knees in the forward compartment. Doc said it should be stopped.

The old skipper wanted to know who was going to stop it. His crew? No, sir. He wouldn't ask any of 'em to go down there--besides, they wouldn't go. They were all used up since the battle with the U-boat. It made no difference if the ship sank. He'd had so much trouble that trip anyway that he wasn't too sure he wouldn't just as soon see her sink. He wasn't too sure they wouldn't all be better off in the boats. The U-boat had ordered them into the boats, and, only the destroyer had come along when it did, they would 'a' taken to the boats, and then they'd 'a' been picked up and no more watches or ships or holes in the for'ard compartment to worry about.

There was nothing left but for Doc to call for volunteers from among the gun crew. They were bluejackets, and their only complaint on the trip had been that the U-boat's guns had outranged their guns. They volunteered in a body--even the three wounded members. Doc took all the sound ones and went down into the forward compartment with a mattress and some scantling he found in the hold. The water was by then about up to the men's waists. It was hard, cold work, but they got it done--the mattress stuffed into the hole and the scantling shoring it up. It still leaked, but not much--a little auxiliary steam in there at intervals did not quite keep her dried out, but it kept her head above water, so that was all right. All that day she was a lone steamer plugging her halting way over a wide sea. Seven knots was her speed, and all hands tickled to be making that because of weak places showing from time to time in her steam department--damages by sh.e.l.l fire which they did not appreciate properly at first.

They were nearing the coast of France. They would have to make a landfall soon, and running without lights, as they were, made things hard, so the old skipper began to talk to Doc. If the doctor didn't mind, he would take full charge of the ship himself. She was a big ship with a three-million-dollar cargo, and if anything happened her, the owners would naturally look to him, the master, for it.

Doc thought it was a pretty cool way to wash out all record of what his little force had done, but he also recognized the old fellow's position.

"It sounds reasonable," said Doc, "but I think you ought to give me an idea of what you're going to do."

"There's been no sun for a sight these two days, but we were here"--he made a new dot over an old one on the chart--"and logging so many knots to-day noon we ought to be"--he made another dot--"about here now."

"How about the tides?"

"The tides? Oh, yes! Well, I don't know about the tides. You see, I never made a port in France before."

"You didn't?"

There was a coast chart-book in the rack. Doc took it down and began to read it. He made regular trips down to see how his wounded patient was getting on, but always hurried back to his coast chart-book. Interesting things in chart-books--he used to read them aboard the destroyer.

That night the first mate came up on the bridge. Doc asked him what kind of a light he expected to pick up. The mate told him. Doc thought he was wrong, and said so.

Well, that was the light the old man had said they would make. Where was he now? Asleep, and Lord knows he needed it.

Doc did not wake him up. He had argued enough with him, but he didn't think the old man had allowed for the tides, and if anything happened there would be no more arguments--he would just a.s.sert his rank and take charge of the ship.

Doc went below, gave his worst wounded patient a night potion and saw him to sleep. He also went down to see the chief engineer, who had been wounded three times--once in the head. The Doc talked to him awhile--he was inclined to rave--gave him a half-grain jolt of morphine and saw him to sleep. He told the signal quartermaster that he had better have a nap before he dropped in his tracks.

"But the night-watches, sir?"

"We'll leave the night-watches to the ship's crew and Providence. The watch may sleep on the job, but the Lord won't--at least I hope not.

Anyway, I know I'm doggone tired," said Doc, and turned in.

Doc could have slept longer--about twenty-four hours longer, he thought, when he found himself awake. It was a sort of grinding under the ship which had wakened him.

By his illuminated wrist-watch he saw that it was three o'clock--three in the afternoon, he hoped. But it wasn't. It was three in the morning.

He had been asleep two hours.

He went on deck just as his signal-officer came to tell him the ship was ash.o.r.e.

Doc found the old man and the mate looking over charts under a hand-light in the chart house. "I could 'a' bet we'd 'a' picked up that other light," the old man was saying.

"The bettin' part don't explain it," said the mate. "A fine place to be high and dry and a U-boat come along in the morning and plunk us another few sh.e.l.ls between our livers and lights. I'm tired of keeping my mind on U-boats."

That was when Doc horned in on the old skipper. "I been pretty easy with you-all. You ought to been twenty miles farther east. You listened to me and you-all would have been. Look here"--he hauled down the chart-book and showed them. "And now I'll take charge."

It was low tide when she ran on to the beach. With the flood-tide and the engines kicking back they had her off at daylight. After that, with Doc on the bridge, everything seemed to go all right. The mate said he must have come over the side with a medicine-chest full of horseshoes.

By eleven o'clock next morning they were taking on a pilot outside Havre.

Havre is a regular French port with jetties leading down from the heart of the residential places almost. The people, seeing her coming, she bearing the evident marks of her late battle, crowded down to greet her.

About five minutes was enough for her story to circulate. The bluejacket gun crew, being in uniform, caught their eyes first. They cheered them, the brav' Americains. And then the wounded came. Oh, the pity! Three or four of the wounded, who had all that day been cavorting around deck, saw the dramatic values and a.s.sumed most languid poses. Oh, the great pity! Whereat two more almost fainted.

The worst wounded one--there was no pretense about him--had to be carried down the gang-plank. Doc went with him. Good nursing was what he needed; and he was going to see that he got it.

He got it in the port hospital; and then Doc and his two a.s.sistants turned in and slept sixteen hours by Doc's illuminated wrist-watch.

After cabling and getting his orders, Doc headed for his base. Their journey back by train and steamer--the two men in dungarees and life-vests, and Doc in sea-boots and one of those sheepskin coats they wear on destroyers--was noteworthy but not seagoing, so it is pa.s.sed up here.

Doc made his port. We met him in the King's Hotel smoke-room, and he told us all about it. We had had it already from the quartermaster and the hospital steward, but Doc was to have a little touch of his own.

"There she was, a little down by the head, but safe in port," concluded Doc; "and while I was waiting for my orders I had a look around the place. There was a little square there with little cafes all around the square, and I sat in front of one of them and had my coffee."

"So this was France," I kept saying to myself. All my life I had been reading more or less about France, and it used to be a sort of dream to me to be thinking I might some day get there. And there I was--only a little corner of France, but it was France, and a pretty sunny little place after our week to sea.

"And while I sat there people came up and looked me over. I thought it was my needing a shave, but it wasn't. I had my cap on, and by my cap they knew me for the officer of the heroes of the ship. After a while they came up and spoke to me. I didn't get quite what they were all saying, but I was one brave man--we were all brave men, there was no doubt about that part. When they all got through one little girl came up and gave me a bunch of flowers."

He pulled out some kind of a faded flower and sighed. "She was about eight years old."

"No use talking," I said, "it's a great life." And the quartermaster--he stood with his signal-flags sticking out under his armpit--said:

"Yes, sir, a great life if we don't weaken."

"What's there to weaken about? Something doing every doggone minute since we left our ship."

THE 343 STAYS UP

Most sh.o.r.e-going people, after a look at a fleet of our destroyers, would not mark them high up for safe ships. They are too long and slim and floppety-like.

But no one can tell their officers and crews anything like that. They have tried them out and know. You take a destroyer in a ninety-mile breeze of wind, put her stern to it, give her five or six knots'

headway, and there she'll lay till the North Atlantic blows dry.

And that is not their only quality. Speed, of course; but not that either. They have a way of staying up after being cut up. There was that one which was of the first to cross over for the U-boat hunting game.