“Well, it’s up to you!” the sailor answered. “Somebody’s going to report this to the police. There’s the jail—and here’s the navy. You’re within draft age, and the army’ll get you in the long run. Why not get in a good outfit?”
“I’ll choose the navy!” McDowell said. “Let’s go.”
He limped across the room to where his other low-cut shoe lay. Much to Hank’s amazement, he thrust his foot within it without so much as stooping to hold it or untie its laces.
That was how Soapy McDowell became a sailor back in 1917. Hank Miller shook hands with him and thought he had seen the last of the erstwhile professor. But a relenting providence jerked Hank off recruiting duty a couple of months later and ordered him to sea in command of the armed guard aboard the merchantman Crescenta. And when Hank got together his six men at the receiving ship at Brooklyn, there was Soapy—a boot fresh from Newport, with the collar-button mark still on his neck.
Beside Soapy there were Reynolds, Jones, Cardini, Morgan and Riley. The last named was a little Irish gunner’s mate who could point a five-inch like nobody’s business, but the others were seamen and most of them had only had the experience of the spotting board and a few hours’ drill at the guns in the armed guard school. They mustered on the dock, got their bags and hammocks together and took a motor sailer over to the Hoboken pier where the Crescenta lay, dirty and rusty, making ready to clear for Liverpool.
“She’s a hard-looking packet,” Hank swore when he saw their future billet. “Slow, and rough in heavy weather, you can bank on that!”
“Wonder she hasn’t stopped a torpedo long ago!” Riley agreed. “The navy’s still goin’ to hell, when you have to do duty aboard a tub like that!”
They went aboard and met the skipper, a weather-beaten old seadog named Jonathan, who whittled himself a pipeful from a plug of chewing tobacco and wished them luck.
Their quarters, allotted from space that was already at a premium, were smelly and crowded, and the one five-inch gun had been mounted aft in a little place where the deck gear had been cleared away and a special platform constructed.
“One good crack out a this baby and the ship’ll fall apart!” Riley complained.
“One good crack at a sub is all we’ll need!” boasted Reynolds with all the cocksureness of the recruit. Whereupon Riley set him and a couple of the others busy on the gun’s camouflage paint job, and they watched the shoreline fade in the mist as the Crescenta warped away and slipped out to sea.
* * * *
It was the following morning that Soapy limped up to where the chief stood on deck and voiced his complaint.
“Chief,” he said, “this navy is ruining my feet!”
“What?” asked Hank.
“I said this navy is ruining my feet. I can’t get a pair of regulation shoes that fit right. And I don’t dare wear these socks—I’ve discovered the dye fades, and that might infect your feet, you know. The first shoes I had issued me cramped the ends of my toes. Then I got this pair, and they’re about two sizes too large. They don’t cramp my toes, but they blister my heels. I have to hobble around with them untied and slip my feet out so they’ll cool every chance I get. But I simply can’t ruin my feet—what’d I do when the war is over?”
Hank suppressed a smile. He liked this big faker who was a little older than the average recruit and who went around always with the same grave expression he must have worn when in the midst of his seances, as he called them, back on the outside.
“You can’t do that; that’s right!” he agreed. “Why not go barefoot if it isn’t too cold for you. Everybody goes barefoot down around Guantanamo when the fleet is south. I’ll see if Jonathan has any shoes in his slop chest that might fit better, and when we get to Liverpool, or when we come back to the States, I suggest that you buy a pair of non-regulations. You know you don’t have to wear strictly regulation stuff aboard a packet like this!”
“Thanks, chief!” Soapy said as he limped away. “But I really wouldn’t dare go barefoot. I might step on a nail or something might fall on my feet!”
* * * *
The Crescenta lumbered on her way, deep laden and despairingly slow, creaking and groaning in rough weather, shipping heavy seas and rolling scuppers under. The armed guard kept one of its own number on the bridge as a lookout to watch for periscopes and to act as spotter for the gun crew should one be sighted. After interminable days of sailing, they came to the danger zone—that area on the chart which was bounded in red and reported to be alive with those sharks of the deep—the U-boats.
Here the worst thing that could have befallen the Crescenta came, and the armed guard, despite the little catch of fear it must have felt in its collective breasts, gathered around the five-inch and snickered with the derision of the navy man for a merchant vessel. The ancient tramp’s engines began to lie down on the job every hour or so!
“What a ship!” roared Hank Miller. “The old Tuscarora you hear about in the navy—the one with the sixteen decks and a glass bottom—well, she had nothin’ on this packet!”
“Yeh, we’re loggin’ six knots and liable to stop that any minute,” Riley grumbled. “We go six miles, then we wallow along while they patch the engines, then we go another six miles. If we sight a sub it’ll be our luck to lose headway and drift around broadside for her to aim a fish at.”
“Hell, she wouldn’t waste a fish on this!” snorted Hank. “She’d stand off and shell us. And I guess you fellows have heard what the Germans threaten to do to armed guards? Treat ’em like pirates—shoot ’em. You might as well be up in a frontline trench as in the armed guard service!”
“There you go, chief, always bein’ a Pollyanna!” Reynolds complained.
* * * *
It happened eighteen days out of Hoboken, when, by all rights, the Crescenta should have docked at Liverpool. She was hobbling along like a crippled old lady crossing a muddy street. It was a bright day, with low swells, and the armed guard was at breakfast, with Morgan standing lookout.
Nobody saw a thing. The first warning was in the shape of three rapid shots from somewhere on the port quarter. They sang overhead, missing by many yards, and the crew, captain and armed guard tumbled out on deck with their mouths full of food, ready for battle.
“She’s in the sun streak!” Morgan sang out, and it was another full minute before they sighted the conning tower. It was far away, and just as they saw the tiny gray oblong the deck gun popped again and another shell screamed overhead.
“Let her have it!” Hank Miller shouted. The gun crew sprang to their posts. Morgan telephoned his estimate of the range as eight thousand yards, which wasn’t far off, and the five-inch tore loose with an explosion that shook the Crescenta’s ancient deck plates and jarred Captain Jonathan’s bridgework.
A fountain spouted short of the low whaleback. Morgan telephoned the information that the shell had fallen two hundred yards low. Different, this was, to gluing your eyes to the slot at the end of a spotting board and having a shipmate move a bit of white cotton about in representation of the “splash!”
Another shell from the submarine shrieked over them, and Riley, pointing the gun, elevated its muzzle a little and jerked the lanyard.
“Boom!”
It was still short, Morgan told them. More shots from the German, but they all went over. Apparently the sub, confident that she was out of range, closed in about five hundred yards, and here a shot from the Crescenta’s gun was seen to strike dangerously near the enemy craft. The sub dropped back to its former position, keeping up a continuous fire, but missing. The Crescenta’s gun answered steadily, fast as they could reload and fire her.
* * * *
Jonathan had put his wheel hard over, and for a time the Crescenta was almost stern-on to the sub, offering as little target as was possible. But the German was far superior in speed; she cruised swiftly around on the port beam, keeping well out about the eight-thousand-yard mark, and began dropping her shells too close for co
mfort.
Boom!
The next shell screamed its way over the water, and back came the sound of the impact of metal on metal. It had struck the German a glancing blow well aft of the conning tower. The sub veered off almost instantly, keeping up her fire.
“Atta boy!” yelled Hank. “A few more like that and she’ll go down like an elevator!”
Crash!
A shell from the German tore into number one hold. She, too, had found the range at last. Another shell came over promptly on the heels of the first and ripped into the engineers’ storeroom. Clouds of smoke began to pour past the gun crew.
“Hey, chief! We’re afire!” Reynolds shouted.
“Never mind the fire, just keep loadin’ this gun!” Hank ordered. “We got to work fast now!”
A seaman came running aft.
“Captain has set off the smoke pots to spoil their aim!” he announced.
“Hell!” snorted Hank. “He’s spoilin’ ours too! Tell him to lay off so we can see what we’re shootin’ at!”
The smoke pots evidently failed of their purpose, for another shell hit the Crescenta well aft and low down on the water line. She began to circle, and the cry came from the bridge that the steering gear had been disabled. Around in a wide sweep the merchantman steamed, turning her broad, clumsy side full toward the maneuvering submarine.
A shell screeched overhead, but not without effect. It ripped off the Crescenta’s mainmast clean as though an ax had sliced through, and down came the wireless antennae in a tangled heap.
“Now we’ll play hell gettin’ any help, unless somebody’s already picked it up!” Hank murmured. “And now—I thought so!”
A cough and a wheeze from the depths of the engine room. The throb of the machinery ceased; the Crescenta slowed and lurched helplessly in the swells, her rudder disabled, her engines still.
“Stand by to abandon ship!” Jonathan bawled.
“We’ll take the last boat!” Hank shouted. “Keep firing!”
“You’re a damn fool!” yelled the skipper. “She’ll shell the boats if you keep on!”
“She would anyway!” Hank retorted. “Furthermore, you’re another. Now shove off and let us fight—just leave us one boat!”
The submarine, sensing victory, was pouring a rapid and damaging fire at her helpless victim. One shell pierced number two hold, others fell short or went over as the ship wallowed along and lost headway. The gun crew stood by and placed its shots carefully. At least one more indirect hit was tallied against the U-boat as Jonathan and his crew lowered three of the lifeboats and rowed away from their vessel.
“We’re making ourselves unpopular as hell, boys!” Hank said. “The Krauts have announced that they’ll treat all armed guards as pirates and shoot ’em. What do you say—shall we stick until the old tub is actually sinkin’— or shall we take to the boat now?”
“Stick, you louse!” came from the headset of the spotter’s phone. Morgan was still at his job on the bridge. And the gun crew chorused its assent.
“But say, chief!” broke in Soapy McDowell, who was passing shells. “There are but six shots left!”
“My God—have we been shootin’ that much?” demanded Hank. “That’s a lot of shells gone! Six left! Hold that fire a minute!”
The chief frowned, glanced over the almost deserted vessel. Out a couple of hundred yards away from the ship the three boats were pulling to safety. Jonathan’s voice bellowed out over the intervening distance, advising the crazy fools aboard to save their necks.
“Strategy—we ought to use strategy!” the chief exclaimed. But how?
The next shell from the Germans answered him in part, at least. It shrieked over the water and smashed the remaining lifeboat to splinters where it hung on its davits. Their means of escape was cut off.
“Well, that’s something!” Hank announced. “We can’t go now. Leave the gun, gang. Let’s go forward and wait a minute to see what the Krauts will do. Probably they’ll come alongside and board us. When they do, don’t make any move unless I give the word. This may be a decent Heinie, this skipper, and they may treat us like prisoners of war are supposed to be treated. And they may shoot us. War sure is hell!”
The submarine’s skipper probably was watching them through his glass, but he took no chances on a new trick of the dreaded “Q-boats.” His craft circled warily, keeping well off until he was certain no trick was intended. Then he closed in, still circling, while the seven men aboard the Crescenta sweated with uncertainty and waited, standing by the rail.
“He’s picking up Jonathan!” Reynolds announced suddenly.
The sub had approached the three boats; it threw one of the small craft a line and took it in tow. The other two stood by a minute, several men transferred from the boat which held the skipper to the other two. Then the U-boat proceeded, towing the lifeboat and heading almost directly for the ship.
The minutes dragged like hours. Up came the submarine, so near now the men on the Crescenta could recognize their shipmates in the boat astern. Captain Jonathan was not among them. Apparently he had been placed in one of the other boats, and now this one only held enough seamen to man the oars.
* * * *
The submarine halted a quarter of a mile distant from the Crescenta, keeping its gun trained on the crippled ship. Its commander and several of his men stepped into the Crescenta’s number three lifeboat and had the American seamen row to the ship.
“Ahoy, on deck!” the officer yelled. “Stand by! We have our gun on you!”
“Tell us something new!” growled Hank Miller.
The sub’s skipper and eight German sailors swarmed up the boatswain’s ladder dangling from the starboard side. Herr Hauptmann was a Prussian, tall and haughty, and he and several others carried automatics.
“We find we shall need some of your supplies,” he remarked pleasantly, smiling at Hank. “You and your men will lead the way to the master’s cabin, after which we will have no further use for your services.”
He gave his men an order and they searched the Americans for weapons.
“I don’t like the way he said that,” confided Soapy McDowell to Riley as Hank led the way aft. They entered Jonathan’s cabin.
The remains of the skipper’s breakfast were still on his table, and there lay his pocketknife and a plug of tobacco where the sub’s first shell had interrupted him as he whittled a pipeful. The cabin was spacious for a vessel of the Crescenta’s age. There were several chairs about the table, and the German ordered Hank to be seated. Soapy McDowell sank into the chair opposite him with a sort of sigh, Riley took his place at the end of the table and Cardini occupied the remaining chair. The officer said something in German, and one of his men departed.
“As you know, armed guards on merchant ships really constitute violation of international law and should be treated as piracy,” the German informed Hank. “I should obey orders and have you shot. But I couldn’t think of being so cold-blooded, my friends. I shall merely have you tied and left aboard. Then we will replenish our provisions and take what instruments we can use—incidentally unshipping the gun with which you did such accurate shooting and taking it with us if possible—and then we will stand off and enjoy a bit of target practice.”
“You dirty so-and-so!” Hank replied. “If you think you can scare us you’re off your nut!”
The captain laughed. He jerked a corner of the oilcloth table cover, and dishes and silverware clattered to the deck. The seaman returned with a coil of stout line and they began tying the Americans. They slipped a loop around Hank’s hands after they were bound, and made them fast down between his knees by securing the line to a round of the chair. He was trussed up like a pig ready for market.
This work was over in a minute, and the seven Americans were bound helplessly, Morgan and Jones lying on the deck, the rest sitting upright at the table where they could read the despair in each other’s eyes. A couple of Germans were put on guard, Lugers in their hands, and
the captain led the rest forth in search of provisions. The doomed men could hear them loading canned goods into the boat; heard them knocking off brass and copper fittings and rummaging for documents and instruments. They heard the captain urging haste, and they prayed for the coming of some vessel which might have picked up those first few flashes of the Crescenta’s wireless.
“It looks tough, gang!” was all Hank had a chance to say before one of their guards jammed the Luger almost in the chief boatswain’s mate’s mouth and ordered silence. Hank could see from the expressions in the eyes of the other men at the table just how tough it was. Only Soapy McDowell’s face, still gravely pale and holding a quiet dignity, was inscrutable.
The officer was returning; they heard him just outside the cabin door, chuckling over the success of his raid on the Crescenta’s stores. He carried his Luger in one hand, the other arm embraced a couple of cartons of toilet soap as though it were worth its weight in gold. Hank remembered how someone had told him how scarce this common necessity was in Germany, where fats were at a premium.
“Very nice, very!” the captain remarked. He placed his pistol on the table and ripped the cover off one of the cartons to smell its contents. “You never know what good soap means, my friends of Yankee pigs, until the day comes when you are forced to do without it.”
Hank’s eyes were on the Luger, within his reach on the table top. If he could only wrench a hand free! If there were only some way of getting that gun! They’d die like rats in a little while if something didn’t happen. He strained and swore under his breath. The thongs held like steel, biting into his sweating wrists.
Across the table, Soapy McDowell sat, face pale, looking straight into the chief’s eyes. His own eyes were burning with an intensity that attracted Hank’s gaze and held it spellbound; the former “professor” seemed trying to tell the chief something, something that meant a lot to the men in that little room—rescue, perhaps! Hank’s eager mind grasped at the thought; instinctively he knew that Soapy dared not say a word, dared not even move his lips lest he be detected.
The Adventure Megapack: 25 Classic Adventure Stories Page 35