CHAPTER XXII.
THE CUTTING OF A CABLE.
Submarine E-16, taking an air bath off Tenedos, and floating in theshadow of the mighty "Warspite," awaited orders that would send hernight-groping under the strong current of the Dardanelles channel, andwith the set purpose of clipping a cable connecting the European andAsiatic shores of the straits.
If not detected by the Turkish searchlights, the expedition might winforward, and, perhaps, back. Captain Montgomery, a regular fire-eater,was in command, with a picked crew, including our young friend, JimmyStetson.
The enterprise was to have aviation aid, and sure-shot candidates forsuch participation were the veteran pair, Johnson and Freeman. As therewas possibility of a bit of a scrap before the affair ended, it wasdeemed expedient to carry extra pilots in case of accident.
"Keeping it all in the family," was Johnson's humorous way of latertelling Billy and Henri that he wanted them to go along.
The upshot of it was that in the late afternoon of the day fixed for theundertaking, two biplanes rose high above the Aegean sea, high enough tomake them appear as mere specks in the sky. Turning north, their coursefollowed the line of the Dardanelles.
The submarine waited for nightfall before it made the plunge that wouldstart its journey in the same direction pursued by the aircraft on high.
Porus-Tabia battery, on the European shore of the straits, stands closeto the ruins of the ancient stone fort, Bokal-Kale, from where there isa submarine cable that connects it with Nagara on the Asiatic shore.
This was the cable that the military promoters of the submarine journeyproposed to sever, if they got near enough to it.
The aviators were to play into the scheme in some manner yet to bedeveloped. It would not be Johnson or Freeman if their long heads failedthem on this or any other occasion. It was a safe wager that they hadsome sort of working plan up their sleeves, and the two boys in theircompany were certainly ready to produce a vote of confidence.
The lay of the land here is an elevation, not approachable from thefront without sure discovery, but some opportunity for concealment atthe rear--more favorable, for example, for a drop-down party to operateand escape immediate detection.
Four aviators, at least, were taking the chance of a night prowl here,after coming down at dusk, with muffled motors, behind a clump of trees,and within fairly easy reach of the ruins of the ancient fortress.
"Now, my hearties," advised Captain Johnson, when the four edged againsta clammy stone wall for council, "this is only a two-gun battery; thegarrison is not expecting company at the back door, and for this reasonit's a fair shake that we might be able to attend to a little businesshere and get away with it.
"The active end of this position, further up," he continued, "I proposeto visit a little later on, and it is a crawling contract all the way. Ifeel sure that the two guns here are in need of repair, and I guess I'llhave to fix them!"
The captain mixed a chuckle with these concluding words, and set a deepbite in a lengthy plug of tobacco.
"What's the object, anyhow, of this cable-cutting business?" askedBilly, who liked to dig at the roots of anything that puzzled him.
"To strike terror in the heart of the Turk," commenced the captain--buthe switched off to the practical statement that he only knew thatmilitary strategy demanded it--and so ordered. To the soldier thislatter was all-sufficient reason.
This conversation was in tone audible only to the closely knit group inhiding.
Now the captain was making ready to "repair" the guns above the waterfront. He took off his boots and his topcoat, transferring therefrom tothe inside of his blouse a tool commonly known as a monkey-wrench,tightened his belt and pulled his cap down to his ears. Revolversswelled both of his hip-pockets.
"If you hear any shooting," he whispered, "just make a break for thebiplanes, stand by until you see 'em coming, if I don't get there first,and then pull out."
With these words the veteran airman disappeared in the darkness with allthe stealth of an Indian in moccasins.
"When the submarine crowd gets to work on the shore end of the cablethere will be a stew in the operating room up here. The captain fearsthat in the excitement those defective guns might explode and hurtsomebody. That's the reason he is so anxious to get everything fixed toprevent accident."
Josh's explanation was taken no more seriously than he intended it tobe. The boys knew well enough that the captain was taking his life inhis hands to so upset the mechanism of the guns that they could not beused in throwing lead at the submarine, if discovered during thecable-cutting performance.
An hour passed, in which the anxious waiters, in the chill precincts ofthe ruins, would have promptly testified was six times sixty minutes.
Billy started to say as much, when Josh gave him a poke in the ribs inthe way of mute advice to keep still.
There was some sort of commotion breaking out in the quarters of thecable operators, at the north end of the ruins.
"Something doing now, sure."
Henri sidestepped further along the wall in order to get a little closerto the scene of action.
"The connection's shut off, that's what's the matter," predicted Josh,speaking into Billy's ear. "The job down below is going on. We'll knowin a minute or two whether or not the captain has 'fixed' the big guns."
A door was flung open and a broad stream of light penetrated the outsidedarkness. In the illuminated opening was framed a stalwart Turk, and hestarted a yell, which found echo in the high-pitched voices of severalmore of the fez wearers behind him.
The sentries at the fort, two hundred yards distant, responded quicklyto the summons, coming in twos and threes, pell mell, toward the cablestation, brandishing their rifles, and doing some shouting on their ownaccount.
"Gee whiz," muttered Billy, "it's a regular riot!"
Then to the rear of this noisy demonstration, the real note of alarm tothe trio of watchers in the ruins rang out in the night.
Crack, crack--the whiplike snap of small-bore shooting irons!
The last words of the captain had been for his companions to make forthe biplanes when shooting commenced. In compliance, the trio retreatedin single file, close to the wall, and then ran like deer across theopen, luckily for them a little way and partially screened by trees.
Up to the moment there was never a boom from the big guns, and even thespatting of the lesser weapons had ceased after the first few shots.
As instructed, Josh and the boys "stood by" the biplanes. The captainhad failed to get there first, and it did not look like he was going toeven get there next, for already the soldiers of the garrison werescattering in search of a certain disturber, who had the nerve to fireback when he was fired at.
The entire garrison appeared to be charging about except the disgustedgunners, who found that they could not pump even a single shell at asuspicious-looking object off the water front.
The cable operators, with a number of the sentries, had raced down thesteep incline to where the cable lifted from under the current of thestraits. The casing of the wires on shore had twisted up like a greatsnake, hacked apart from the tension-creating line under the channel.
For a scant minute or two the far-reaching rays from the lighthousetower on Bakkal headland splintered on a polished surface like a whale'sback, which quickly disappeared in a circle of foam below the rushingtide.
The gunners above had seen much more of the submarine before it dived,but that is about all the good it did them.
It was dawn before any of the Turks stumbled upon the hiding place ofthe aviators and their craft, and there was only four of this advanceguard.
Josh counted a red furrow across the cheek after the first fire, andretaliated with one of the big service revolvers he carried, sending themarksman who marked him to the ground with a shattered knee-pan. Anotherof the attacking party got a chunk of lead in the shoulder, and theremaining two backed out for reinf
orcements.
In the meantime, the boy pilots had started the motors to humming, andJosh, though his fighting blood was up, concluded that there were toomany coming just then, and hopped aboard with Henri.
"Not by a blamed sight are we leaving the captain to skirmish forhimself," he announced with the uprise; "we'll hang around here tilldoomsday but what we'll get him out."
It was a mighty brief hang-around, after all, for the aviators werebarely out of range of the Turks' rifles, when Billy's quick and rovingeye caught the vivid flutter of a bandana handkerchief, CaptainJohnson's favorite colors, from a cactus cluster in the sandy expanseover which the aircraft circled.
The Turkish troopers had ceased fire at the biplanes--a mere waste ofpowder now--but when they saw one of the machines dip and dive, a dozenor more of them, howling in triumph over the belief that their bulletsreally had winged one of the big flyers, charged full tilt across theplain.
Billy, however, had the bulge on the quick-comers, in that he wasskimming the sandy soil before the Turks were fairly started, andCaptain Johnson swung a leg in the aeroplane without compelling a stop.
The soldiers popped away with their rifles, but made no holes in thedeceptive target. On the rise, Captain Johnson gave them a couple ofrounds from his revolvers, and shouted, as a farewell salute:
"Dern your pictures, haven't you got enough yet? We'll come back someday and carry off the whole fort!"
"Of course," concluded the captain, settling into his seat in thespace-killing biplane, "they couldn't understand a word, but there isnothing like relieving your mind of extra pressure."
He also relieved the tobacco plug of about a third of its weight.