Part 6 (1/2)

The skipper's first act was to shake up the second watch-officer, who also happened to be acting as chief engineer of the s.h.i.+p, and to pa.s.s him the word to speed the s.h.i.+p up to twenty-five knots. We were steaming at the head of the convoy column at eighteen knots at the time. The first watch-officer, having finished his breakfast and a morning watch, was just then taking a little nap on the port ward-room transom with his clothes and sea-boots still on. The active messenger shook him up too.

The two officers made the deck together, one b.u.t.toning his blouse over a heavy sweater, the other a sheepskin coat over his blouse.

Word was sent to the _Luckenbach_ that we were on the way. Within three minutes the radio came back: ”Our steam is cut off. How soon can you get here?”

Up through the speaking-tube came a voice just then to say that we were making twenty-five knots. At the same moment our executive officer, who also happened to be the navigator, handed the skipper a slip of paper with the course and distance to the _Luckenbach_, saying: ”That was at nine-fifteen.”

It was then nine-seventeen. Down the tube to the engine-room went the order to make what speed she could. Also the skipper said: ”She ought to be tearing off twenty-eight soon as she warms up. And she's how far now?

Eighty-two miles? Send this radio: 'Stick to it--will be with you within three hours.'”

By this time all hands had an idea of what was doing and all began to brighten up. Men off watch, supposed to be asleep in their cots below, began to stroll up and have a look around decks. Some lingered near the wireless door, and every time the messenger pa.s.sed they sort of stuck their ears up at him. He was a long-legged lad in rubber boots who took the deck in big strides. His lips never opened, but his eyes talked. The men turned from him with pleased expressions on their faces.

There was a little steel shelter built on to the chart house to port. It was for the protection of the forward gun crew, who had to be ready for action at any minute. Men standing by for action and not getting it legitimately, try to get it in some other way. So they used to burn up their spare energy in arguing. It did not matter what the argument was about--the President, Roosevelt, the Kaiser, the world series--any subject would do so long as it would grow into an argument. The rest of the crew could hear them--threatening to bust each other's eyes out--clear to the skid deck sometimes. But now all quiet here, and soon they were edging out of their igloo and calling down to the fellows on the main deck: ”That right about a s.h.i.+p being sh.e.l.led by a sub? Yes. Well!” They went down to their shelter smiling at one another.

s.h.i.+p's cooks, who rarely wander far from their cosey galley stoves, began to show on deck; ward-room stewards came out on deck; a gang black-painting a tank hatch--they all slipped over to the rail and, leaning as far out as they could and not fall overboard, had long looks ahead. And then they all turned to see what 352's smoke-stacks were doing. There was great hope there.

The black smoke was getting blacker and heavier. They were sure feeding the oil to her. The chief came up the engine-room ladder. An old petty officer waylaid him. Doing well, was she, sir?--She was. Hem! About how well, sir?--d.a.m.n' well. She was kicking out twenty-eight--twenty-eight good--and picking up.

Twenty-eight and picking up? And the best she showed in her builders'

trial was twenty-nine-one! What d'y' know about her? Some little old packet, hah?

It was a fine day, the one fine day of the trip, a rarely fine day for this part of the northern ocean at this time of year. It was cloudy, but it was calm. There was a long, easy swell on, but no sea to make her dive or pitch. The swell, when she got going in good shape, set her to swinging a little, but that did not hurt. A destroyer just naturally likes to swing a little.

Swinging along she went, rolling one rail down and then the other, but not making it hard to stand almost anywhere around deck, except that when you went aft there was a drive of air that lifted you maybe a little faster than you started out to go. Swinging along she went, a long, easy swing, carrying a long white swash to either side of her, vibrating a thousand to the minute on her fantail, streaming out a long white and pale-blue wake for as far as we could see, and just clear of her taffrail piling up the finest little hill of clear white boiling water.

Twenty-nine, they say, she was making, and still picking up. What!

Thirty? And a little more left in her? What d'y' know--some little baby, hah?

Another radio came to the bridge: ”A sh.e.l.l below our water-line.

Settling, but still afloat and still fighting.”

”Good work. Stick to it,” they said on the bridge, and wondered whether it was the skipper or the radio man who was framing the messages. He had the dramatic instinct, whoever he was.

Perhaps twenty minutes later came: ”Water in our engine-room.”

And then: ”Fire in our forehold, but will not surrender. Look for our boats.”

And: ”They are now shooting at our antennae.”

Radios to the bridge are not posted up for the crew to gossip over, but there was no keeping that last one under cover.

”Sh.e.l.ling their attenay? Well, the mortifying dogs! Whatever you do, don't let 'em get your attenay, old bucket.”

Our thirty-knot clip was eating up the road. We were getting near the spot. The canvas caps came off the guns, and the gun crews were told to load and stand by. A chief gunner's mate was told to make ready his torpedo-tubes. He was a famous torpedo-man. He would stay up all night with an ailing gyro or hydrostatic piston and not even ask to sleep in next morning for a reward, and he had a record of making nothing but hits at torpedo-practice. But he had been glum all the trip. He had stayed past the legal hour on liberty the last time in, and the sh.o.r.e patrol had come along and scooped him up. A court-martial was coming to him and so he had been glum; but not now. He went around decks smiling, with a little steel thing that looked like a wrist-bag but wasn't. It held the keys to the magazines.

Pretty soon he had torpedo-tubes swinging inboard and outboard, and between every pair of tubes a man sitting up in an iron seat that looked like the kind that goes with a McCormick reaper, which all helped the gunner's mate to feel better. He stopped ten seconds to tell the story of the new gun-crew man who was sent up the yard to the storekeeper for a pair of spurs to ride the torpedo-tubes with.

There were four guns, one forward, one aft, and two in the waist. They had been slushed down with vaseline to keep the salt-water rust off; now they were swabbing the grease off. Grease on the outside of a gun does not affect the shooting of the inside, but a gun ought naturally to look slick going into action.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Our thirty-knot clip was eating up the road. We were getting near the spot.]