CHAPTER IV
S. P. 888
The result of the boys' campaign for recruits to the Navy was veryencouraging. They had been to places besides Elmvale; and several oftheir old friends in Seacove were getting into one branch or another ofthe service.
Many of the young men in the neighborhood, of course, were of draft age;but, being longshore bred, they naturally preferred salt water service.So they enlisted before the time came for them to answer the call oftheir several draft boards.
The interest of our four friends, and of Seven Knott even, was notentirely centered in this patriotic duty of urging others into theservice. Their release from duty might end any day. Under ordinarycircumstances the chum would have been assigned before this to somepatrol vessel, or the like, until their own ship, the _Colodia_, madeport.
Mr. Minnette, however, was trying to place them on the _Kennebunk_, thenew superdreadnaught, for a short cruise. If he succeeded the friendsmight be obliged to pack their kits and leave home again at almost anyhour. The _Kennebunk_ was fitting out in a port not fifty miles fromSeacove.
Meanwhile the chums were "having the time of their young sweet lives,"Al Torrance observed more than once. The home folks had never beforeconsidered these rather harum-scarum boys of so much importance as nowthat they were in the Navy and becoming real "Old Salts." From DoctorMorgan down to Ikey's youngest brother the relatives and friends of thequartette treated them with much consideration.
To tell the truth it had not been patriotism that had carried IkeyRosenmeyer and his friends into the Navy. At that time the United Stateswas not in the war, and the four friends had thought little of the prosand cons of the world struggle.
They thought they had had enough school, and there was no steady andcongenial work for them about Seacove. Entering the Navy had been a larkin the offing.
As soon as they had joined, they found that they had entered anotherschool, and one much more severe and thorough than the Seacove HighSchool. They were learning something pretty nearly all the time, both inthe training school and aboard the _Colodia_. And there was much tolearn.
However, Whistler and Al took the work more seriously than theiryounger mates. They were studying gunnery, and hoped to get into the guncrew of the _Kennebunk_ for practice if they were fortunate enough tocruise on that ship. Just at present Frenchy and Ikey Rosenmeyer weremore engaged in getting all the fun possible out of existence.
The thing that delighted the latter most was the way in which his fathertreated him. Mr. Rosenmeyer had been a stern parent, and had opposedIkey's desire to enlist in the Navy. He always declared he needed theboy to help in the store and to take out orders. Ikey had got so that hefairly hated the store and its stock in trade. Pigs feet and sauerkrautand dill pickles were the bane of his life.
Now that he was at home on leave, Mr. Rosenmeyer would not let Ikey helpat all in the store. If a customer came in, the fat little storekeeperheaved himself up from his armchair and bade Ikey sit still.
"Nein! It iss not for you, Ikey. Don't bodder 'bout the store yet. Wehaf changed de stock around, anyvay, undt you could not find it,p'r'aps, vot de lady vants. Tell us again, Ikey, apout shootin' decamouflage off de German raider-poat, de _Graf von Posen_. Mebby-so delady ain't heardt apout it yet. I didn't see it in de papermeinselluf."
So Ikey, thus urged, spun the most wonderful yarns regarding hisadventures; and he was not obliged to "draw the long bow"; for theexperiences of him and his three friends had been exciting indeed.
Mr. Rosenmeyer had become as thoroughly patriotic as he once had beenpro-German. It was a great cross to him now that he could not learn tospeak English properly. But German names he abhorred and German signs hewould no longer allow in the store. He even put a newly-printed signover the sauerkraut barrel which read: "Liberty Cabbage."
Into the store on a misty morning rolled Frenchy Donahue in his mostpronounced Old Salt fashion. Frenchy had acquired such a sailorish rollto his walk, that Al Torrance hinted more than once that the Irish ladcould not get to sleep at night now that he was ashore until his motherwent out and threw several buckets of water against his bedroom window.
"Hey, Ikey! what you think?" called Frenchy. "Channel bass are running.Whistler and Torry are going out in the _Sue Bridger_. What d'you knowabout that? Bridger's let 'em have his cat for the day. Never was knownto do such a thing before," and Frenchy chuckled. "Oh, boy! aren't wehaving things soft just now? Want to go fishing, Ikey?" Ikey favored hisfriend with a sly wink, but only said crisply:
"I don't know about it. I was going to wash the store windows. Where areWhistler and Torry going?"
"As far as Blue Reef. They say the bass are schoolin' out there."
"They'd better be on the lookout for subs, as far out as the Reef," Ikeysaid solemnly. "I don't believe they've got this coast half patrolled.We don't often see one of those chasers in the cove here."
"Mebbe we'll catch a submarine instead of bass," remarked Frenchy.
"You petter go along mit your friends in dot catboat, Ikey," said Mr.Rosenmeyer, who was listening with both ears and his eyes wide open. "Ifthere iss one of them German submarines in dese waters idt shouldt beknown yet. Ain't that right?"
"Yes. We'd have to report it, Papa, to the naval authorities," admittedIkey seriously.
"Vell, you go right along den," urged his father. "Nefer mindt yet dewinders. I can get a winder washer easy."
"Well, if you don't mind, Papa," said Ikey, with commendable hesitancy.
"Come along, Ikey," urged Frenchy under his breath. "And be sure youbring along your submarine tackle--I mean your bass rod," and he rolledout of the store, chuckling to himself.
"Undt take a lunch, Ikey!" cried Mr. Rosenmeyer after his son. "Ham,undt bologna, undt cheese, undt there's some fine dill pickles----"
"Oh, my!" groaned his son. "No dill pickles."
He joined Frenchy in a few minutes with a basket crammed with things toeat, as well as his fishing tackle. It was not far to Bridger's float,off which the twenty-four-foot catboat, _Sue Bridger_, was moored.
Ikey remarked: "Sometimes I almost faint when I see the change in papa.He never wanted me to have a bit of fun before. He didn't have no funwhen he was a boy. He always worked. That is the German way, he says.
"But he don't have any use for _any_thing German now--not even the waythey bring up children."
"Ain't it a fact?" chuckled Frenchy. "Me mother makes the kids git upand give me the best chair when I come into the sitting room.
'Git up out o' that, Ye impident brat! An' let Mr. M'Ginnis sit down.'
That's the way she treats me. Me head's gettin' that swelled I couldn'tdraw a watch cap down over me ears."
The exhaust of the auxiliary engine of the catboat was spitting whenFrenchy hailed their mates. Whistler was loosening the points of the bigsail while Torry worked at the engine.
"How'll we get over there?" demanded Ikey. "There's no boat here."
Whistler Morgan, barefooted and with his sleeves rolled up, came aft andtossed Ikey the end of a coil of line.
"Draw her in to the float. I'll pay out the mooring cable. What have youin that basket?"
"A litter of pups a neighbor wants him to drown," answered Frenchysolemnly. "You fellows brought lunch enough for all, didn't you?"
"Couldn't get any at my house," Al confessed. "The girl's on a strike."
There was no mother at the Torrance house, and sometimes thehousekeeping there was "at sixes and sevens."
"I was going to get some crackers and sardines," confessed Whistler."I had no idea we could get this boat when I left the house. But I canrun up and get Alice to put us up a snack."
Frenchy was carrying Ikey's basket very carefully--indeed, lovingly. Heallowed his mate to catch the line and draw the _Sue Bridger_ in to thefloat alone.
They stepped aboard, and Al made a grab for the basket handle with hisgreasy hands. "Let's see the pups," he demanded suspiciously.
"Have a care! Have a care!" cried Whistler as the two struggled forpossession of the basket. "What is in it, Ikey?"
"Oi, oi! Oi, oi!" moaned Ikey. "They will the basket haf overboard yet!Stop it! Stop it!"
It was Whistler who rescued the lunch basket with a firm hand. In thestruggle Frenchy came near going overboard, but he fell into the bilgein the bottom of the boat instead.
"Wow!" he yelled. "Me clean pants! This old tub is leaking like a sieve,Whistler!"
Whistler and Al were peeping into the basket. Their delight wasacclaimed at once.
"Good boy, Ikey!" declared Torry, smacking his lips. "You must haverobbed the whole delicatessen shop."
"You don't know my papa," declared Ikey with pride. "He would like tofeed the whole American Navy--that's the way he feels about it."
"He's all right," agreed Torry. "Come on, now, fellows, let's stiraround. The best of the day will be gone soon. Don't worry about yourwet pants, Frenchy. Get up and pump out the bilge. She hasn't been usedfor a fortnight, and of course some moisture has gathered."
"'Moisture?' Good-night!" growled the Irish lad, setting to work as hewas told with the tin pump. "I bet I have to sit and do this all daywhile you fellows fish."
The engine was only for an emergency. Captain Bridger had told themthat. Gasoline was expensive. So Whistler and Ikey got up the sail, itfilled, and they cast off the moorings. The catboat began to edge herway out into the cove. There was no rain falling; but fog wreaths rolledin from the sea.
"Get your scare!" shouted Whistler as he ran back to take the tiller."Toot away once in a while. We don't want to stub our toe against someother craft, and that before we get out of the cove."
"A submarine, for instance?" chuckled Frenchy, soon becoming pacified."Ikey's father thinks maybe he might bag one while we're out here."
"I'd like to get a close-up view of one of those submarine chasers,"remarked Torry, finding the horn in the forward locker. He tooted itraucously, and then continued: "They say some of 'em can go like thewind."
"Go right through a tub like this, if once we got in the way," commentedWhistler. "Mind you! faster than the _Colodia_--and that's some speed."
"Wow!" cried Frenchy. "Don't believe anything on water ever does gofaster than a torpedo boat destroyer."
"Oh, yes, there are faster boats. How about a hydro?" Phil said, whenIkey broke in with an inquiry:
"Say! lemme ask you: Why do they call the _Colodia_ and her sister ships'torpedo boat destroyers'? We don't see many torpedo boats anyway. Theyare all old stuff."
"That's right," Torry said. "What is the why-for? All naval craft aresupposed to be destroyers anyway--I mean service craft."
Morgan was the oracle on this occasion.
"Ikey is right. I've read that torpedo boats antedate the Spanish War.Their exclusive business was to run up close to an enemy battleship anddeliver against it an automobile torpedo. These boats were great stuffin the beginning.
"Then they invented a craft as an antidote for the torpedo boat--thetorpedo boat destroyer. Our Admiral Sims called this new vessel 'a tinbox built around a mighty big engine.'"
"Wow! And he is right," cried Frenchy Donahue. "That's just what our_Colodia_ is."
"And these subchasers are still faster," Torry observed. "They tell methey can make thirty-five, and better, an hour."
"Oi, oi!" cried Ikey Rosenmeyer at this juncture. "Speak of the OldHarry and hear his wings, yet! What's that off yonder?"
The _Sue Bridger_ was now skimming out of the cove, and the fog waslifting. They got a sight of a patch of open sea across which a low,gray vessel was shooting like a shark after its prey.
"What a beaut!" shouted Torry.
"That's one of the new chasers all right," Whistler agreed. "Their baseis at New London where the submarine base is."
At that moment the sun broke through the murk overhead. Its rays shonebrilliantly upon the patch of blue sea on which the submarine patrolboat steamed at such a rapid pace.
The sunbeams pricked out the letters and figures painted so big upon theside of the craft and the Navy boys repeated in chorus:
"S. P., Eighty-eighty-eight."