BLOWN UP
The change from the huge Kennebunk to the comparatively tiny steamer was great indeed; and for the first few hours of the run shoreward the boys were afraid they would be ill. There was a heavy swell on, and the tender rode up the hill of each roller, and slid down the other side, dizzily.
They were two hundred miles off shore and three hundred from Hampton Roads. The time occupied in the journey could not be much less than three days and two nights. She was much slower than the motor boats; but she sailed much more safely, and the injured man could be made more comfortable on deck under the awning.
The poor fellow complained a good deal about having had his voyage cut short.
"No chance for me to get a crack at the Huns," he repeated again and again.
The boys from Seacove tried to comfort him. Ensign MacMasters told him that he had done his share, even if his fate was not so brilliant as that of men shot down in battle.
"I wouldn't mind being shot for my country," said the poor fellow. "But I hate like a dog to be boiled for it! There ain't nothing heroic in this, Ensign."
The cruise of the steamer was not unattended with peril. They were confident that German U-boats were beginning to infest the sea bordering on the Atlantic coast of the United States. One might pop up at any time and take a shot at the tender.
A sharp lookout was kept, and the gun crews scarcely slept. Every sail or streamer of smoke created excitement on board.
But the first night passed in safety and the day broke charmingly. The steamer was kept at top speed. Everything was going smoothly when, about midforenoon, they sighted a strange vessel hull down and somewhat to the northeast of their course.
It was rather hazy, and the strange craft was at some distance. Her course was not one to bring her very near that of the battleship's steamer.
She did not appear to be more than two hundred feet long, and the concurrence of opinion was that she was some small tramp freight boat and was laden heavily. She had a high bow, rail all around, and, as far as could be seen, she flew no flag at all.
"Some old tub taking a chance with a rich cargo," suggested the warrant officer, as Ensign MacMasters' second in command. "Why, at the present time, freight rates are so high and wages so much advanced, that shipowners can find skippers and crews willing to take regular sieves to sea!"
"She looks peculiar," Mr. MacMasters said. "If it wasn't for Grant, here, being in such pain, poor fellow, I'd throw a shell at her and hold her up. But we've got our orders to hasten to the Roads and return again to the Kennebunk as soon as possible."
Therefore the strange craft was allowed to pass unchallenged. Later they had reason to believe that they had made a small mistake regarding the unknown vessel, yet they had made no mistake in allowing her to go unmolested.
In time they raised the Capes of Virginia, and a few hours later steamed into the dock at Fortress Monroe. Grant, the injured fireman from the Kennebunk, was taken ashore and sent to the marine hospital.
Ensign MacMasters had his full orders from the commander of the battleship; but he had a wireless message relayed to the Kennebunk stating his arrival. The wireless instrument aboard the steamer was of too narrow a radius to reach the superdreadnaught in her present position.
Orders were soon repeated for the auxiliary craft to make for the battleship again, and laying the course for Ensign MacMasters to follow. There were storm signals flying; but the steamer was to keep near the shore until she got around Hatteras. It was presumed that she would find the Kennebunk within a week at the most, and the tender was well provisioned and took on extra fuel at the dock.
She went to sea without the boys having had an hour of shore leave; but they did not mind that. The fun of running on the steamer was all right; but they were getting eager now to return to the superdreadnaught.
They ran out between the Capes into what the warrant officer called "a Liverpool particular," meaning a fog almost thick enough to cut with a cheese-knife.
Every once in a while the nose of a steel-gray ship, small or large, poked through the mist, and her growling siren warned the smaller craft to get out of the way.
These patrol boats were very plentiful off the Virginia Capes at that time. A mine-laying enemy submarine would have small chance getting into Hampton Roads.
But that such a craft was in the vicinity the crew of the Kennebunk's tender learned was the fact within a few hours. Their course was southerly, and almost in sight of the coast in clear weather. But they broke out of the fog bank the next morning to see dead ahead two boats, each pulled by four pair of oars, wearily approaching the course of the coastwise steamships.
"I smell a U-boat about!" declared Ensign MacMasters, when he had directed the steamer's course to be changed to run down to the row-boats.
He was right. The boats contained the crew of the schooner Hattie May, out of Baltimore, which had been shelled and sunk twenty-four hours before by a German undersea craft.
And the report of the wearied crew included a description of the submarine. She was camouflaged by a high bow and a rail all around, as well as by a canvas smokestack to make her look like a tramp freighter.
"The craft we raised going into the Roads!" ejaculated the warrant officer. "It's her, for a penny!"
"No argument," growled Ensign MacMasters. "We fell down that time. Although we might have had our hands full if we had tackled her with our two small guns."
It seemed that the disguised undersea boat mounted four guns on her deck, but she was a slow sailer. She had moved up close to the schooner before showing her teeth.
Then she dropped two shells near the Hattie May to show the skipper that she had the range of his schooner. He had to surrender, and the U-boat moved up and gave him and his crew ten minutes to get into the boats. Then they sank the Hattie May by hanging bombs over her sides and exploding them simultaneously by an electric arrangement.
The skipper of the schooner was taken aboard the U-boat and said he was shown all over the ship. The German captain seemed to be inordinately proud of his craft and what she could do.
"She's got torpedoes, but she don't use 'em because they are expensive," said the skipper. "They are saved for a last resort. But she is a mine layer, for I saw two wells and saw the mines, too. She has been out five weeks and is numbered U-Two Hundred Fifty."
"Two hundred fifty!" gasped Whistler to his chums, who were hanging over the rail to listen to this report. "What do you know about that?"
"That's the very number that man Blake used in the restaurant, talking with the skipper of the oil tender, wasn't it?" asked Frenchy of the quick memory.
"You mean Franz Linder, the German spy!" ejaculated Torry, with emphasis. "He spoke of this very sub."
The steamer's wireless operator was sending out an S O S call and a destroyer quickly answered. The steamer remained by the two boats from the sunken schooner until the fast-flying naval vessel appeared in the west.
After that the boys on the steamer kept their eyes open for sight of the camouflaged U-boat. As the boat picked up speed again and kept to her course. Whistler Morgan and his mates discussed the matter with much excitement.
"Do you s'pose Mr. MacMasters will let us shell the Hun?" demanded Frenchy eagerly.
"She'll more likely shell us," declared Torry, inclined to be pessimistic.
"I bet we can run away from her," cried Ikey Rosenmeyer.
"Say! this tender is no sub chaser. In a race with the S. P. 888, for instance, she wouldn't have a chance."
"Aw, well," Frenchy broke in, "that U-boat will not have a speed of over fourteen knots on the surface. We can do better than that."
"But if she sneaks up on us as that other one did on the Kennebunk," Whistler observed, "we might easily be potted."
"Right-o!" declared Torry. "Whichever way you put it, I don't want to see that U-boat till we're aboard the Kennebunk again—if ever."
After leaving the crew of the Hattie May to be picked up by the destroyer, the tender continued to run parallel with the coast. Land was seldom wholly out of sight, for Mr. MacMasters had orders as to his course, expecting to meet the superdreadnaught on that vessel's return from the south.
The fog in which they had run out from the Capes was the forerunner of a storm which increased as the day advanced. The gale was behind them, however, so there was no fear of the tender being cast ashore.
The sea around Cape Hatteras is notoriously rough in a gale, and the outlook was not promising when they sighted Hatteras Light that evening. Seaworthy as the steamer was, she pitched terrifically in the seas that threatened now to overwhelm her.
There was a pale and watery moon that evening, with wind-driven clouds scurrying across its face and quenching its light every few minutes. The steamer pitched so that her propeller was frequently entirely out of the sea.
Phil Morgan, in his watch on deck, thought the situation was as nasty as any he had experienced since joining the Navy. With every hatch and door battened to keep the seas from flooding her, they ran on, making scarcely five knots an hour. Now and then they were completely overwhelmed with the seas; and always the craft plunged and kicked as though she actually had to fight for supremacy with each wave.
As the bitter night crept on they wore around the Cape, and then, when it seemed safe to do so, Ensign MacMasters ordered the helm shifted and they edged farther in toward the land.
In time the out-thrust of the coast partly sheltered them and the steamer ran into more quiet waters. But the gale still held, and from the same quarter.
They sighted only smacks and other small fry, including some few coastwise steamers whose routes hugged the land. Surely they might expect safety from submarines so far inshore, for this coast is treacherous.
Another day and night passed. The wireless operator had thus far failed to raise the Kennebunk, although he called every hour.
Mr. MacMasters and the warrant officer studied the chart anxiously. There were shallow waters hereabout, and although the steamer demanded little depth, there were bights between the reefs that were dangerous.
At daybreak of the fourth day out they were in the track of Charleston craft and quite near to a string of islands. There was plenty of water between the two outer islands. The passage was, indeed, a popular channel for both steam and sailing vessels.
The Kennebunk's tender was half way through this gut when suddenly, and without warning, it seemed as though the bow of the craft hit squarely upon a rock.
She stopped with an awful shock, seemed to rebound, and then the forward part rose on a wave that shot it into the air. The explosion that followed was muffled; but the sea about the doomed craft fairly boiled.
"We're sinking! All hands on deck!" shouted the warrant officer.
The boatswain's mate piped his shrillest. Those below swarmed upon the already settling deck. It was plain at once that the steamer had but a few moments to live.
"A mine!" declared Ensign MacMasters. "That is what did it! That Hun mine-sower has been this way!"
The men and boys went to quarters coolly. They had been drilling every day on the steamer just as though they were aboard the Kennebunk.
There was both a liferaft and a tight yawl aboard. These were got over into the comparatively quiet sea, water and an emergency ration-cask put aboard each, and Mr. MacMasters brought his instruments and papers, taking his place in the stern of the boat. The latter had a small engine, and there was a hawser with which she might tow the raft.
Meanwhile the wireless operator had been calling for help. He got a reply from a land station, but none from any sister naval ship. However, they were so near land that it did not seem that this mattered.
"Let her go, boy!" shouted the ensign to the operator. "Come on! She's going down."
They pulled away just in time, and got the little engine to kicking as the wrecked auxiliary craft of the Kennebunk sank stern foremost under the sea. As she went down her bows rose out of the water and the castaways saw the great wound torn in two of her water-tight compartments by the mine.