CHAPTER I—THE FRIENDLY GRIP
“And yonder’s a snap-dragon; and that’s a buttercup. That is feverfew growing over there; and there’s foxglove right there in that swampy place. Those are cowslip blossoms—the English cowslip is different from ours.”
“Whew!” blew Phil Morgan, unpuckering his lips and breaking off the haunting little air he had been whistling. “I wouldn’t believe you knew so much about the flora of this strange land, Frenchy.”
“Oi, oi! Is it Flora he’s bragging about? Then Frenchy’s got a new girl!”
“Sounds to me,” mumbled Al Torrance, who lay along the flower-bestrewed bank with his hat over his eyes, “that he was discussing the fauna of the country—with his snap-dragons, and fox’s gloves, and cows slipping.”
“Ignoramus that you are!” scoffed Michael Donahue, otherwise “Frenchy.” “I am talkin’ to Whistler. He knows something and appreciates the profundity of me learnin’.”
“Ye-as,” drawled Torrance, otherwise “Torry,” as their leader began droning away, his lips puckered again. “He knows just enough to whistle the same awful tune for an hour. What is it, anyway, Phil?”
“The tune the old cow died on, I guess,” suggested Ikey Rosenmeyer.
“It’s a tune Phoebe was playing on the piano a good deal the last time we were home,” said Whistler with some gravity. “Wish I’d hear from the folks again. I am worried about Phoebe.”
He spoke of his eldest sister, who during the last few months had not been well. Although, like many brothers and sisters, Philip Morgan, by his chums usually called Whistler, and Phoebe had their differences, now when far from home, “the folks” seem nearer and dearer than ever in his mind.
Philip Morgan lay with his chums on a bank beside a tiny trickle of water called a brook in that shire, although it was nothing more than a rill. They were high up on “the downs,” overlooking a port in which the American destroyer Colodia lay at anchor amid a multitude of naval vessels of three nations.
Over the sea a thick haze, on land the yellow sunshine, so welcome when it is seen in England that it seems more beautiful than elsewhere. The boys had forty-three hours’ shore leave, and for that brief space of time they desired, as most sailors do, to get just as far away in spirit and in surroundings from the ship as possible.
They had tramped into the country the day before, spent the night in four wonderful beds in an old inn that might have harbored some of Sir Francis Drake’s men at the time of the Armada, and were now due at the wharf in a few hours.
Life aboard a destroyer or an American submarine chaser in foreign service is not very pleasant if it is exciting. The space for sleeping, for instance, on these fast vessels is scarcely greater than that assigned to the crews of submarines. As Ikey Rosenmeyer, who possessed a riotous imagination, had said at the inn:
“Oi, oi! sleeping in a real bed again is better than bein’ at home in Ireland, and Frenchy says that’s heaven ’cause his mother came from there. Why, it is better’n heaven! You could spread out your legs and wiggle all your toes without havin’ the master-at-arms down on you like a thousand of brick.”
Frenchy, in a dreamy and poetic mood, not infrequent when the romantic Irish blood in his veins was stirred, was gazing off over the sea at the fogbank.
“Think of it,” he murmured, “How many hundred an’ thousan’ of ships have sailed out of this harbor into just such a fogbank as that—”
“And never came back,” interrupted Torry. “Some tough old gobs, the ancient British seamen, boy.”
“‘Tough’ is right,” chuckled Frenchy, his poetic feelings exploded. “And they haven’t got over it yet. They’ve got old-timers in the British Navy now that can remember when the cat was used on the men’s backs, reg’lar.”
“And every British sailor had tar on his breeches—that’s why they used to call ’em ‘brave British tars,’” scoffed Torry. “Can it! These English chaps are all right. They aren’t much different from us garbies.”
“Is that so?” exclaimed Ikey, whose sharp eyes allowed little to escape them. “What kind of a deep-sea crab do you call this comin’ down the road right now, I want to know?”
Phil Morgan paid no attention to what his mates were talking about. The peaceful English landscape charmed his eye.
Down the gently sloping road which, after a mile or so, led into the Upper Town, as it was called in distinction from the port, or Lower Town, the stone cottages—some almost hidden by vines—stood sentinel-wise along the way.
One rather larger house was a schoolhouse. Nothing at all like the schoolhouses in America in appearance. But Phil Morgan knew it was a schoolhouse, and that the school was in session, for he had seen the children filing in not long before and their voices had been raised in song just before Frenchy had begun to note the different flowers.
The excited chatter of the other boys finally aroused Morgan from his contemplation of the peaceful scene. In the other direction, toward which his mates were looking, the outlook was not so peaceful. At least, not at one particular spot in the hedge-bordered road. It did not need a sailor’s weather eye to see that the situation was “squally.”
The “deep-sea crab,” the presence of which Ikey had announced, proved on further examination to be two individuals, not one. But they were closely attached to one another and the way they “wee-wawed,” as Torry said, from one side of the road to the other, certainly would lead to the supposition that intoxication was the cause of such tacking from hedge to hedge.
“And one of ’em’s one of our own garbies,” declared Frenchy. “Isn’t that a shame?”
“But look at that big feller, will you?” gasped Ikey. “Why, he must weigh a ton!”
“You’re stretching that a bit, Ikey,” admonished Whistler, breaking off in his tune to speak. “But he is a whale of a man.”
“Biggest garby I ever saw,” breathed Torry, amazed.
It was the big fellow only, it proved, who was partly intoxicated. He was a British sailor. His companion was both perfectly sober and perfectly mad. His face was aflame as he and his unwelcome companion approached the four Navy Boys.
The big fellow gripped him by the collar of his blouse, and it was utterly impossible for the Yankee lad to get away from “the friendly grip.”
“Talk about this ‘hands across the sea’ stuff,” murmured Torrance. “Here’s a case where it is going too far. We’ll have to rescue a brother garby, won’t we?”
“Believe me, that’s a reg’lar mamma’s boy Johnny Bull has got his grip on, too,” chuckled Frenchy.
“Hush up, you fellows,” advised Phil Morgan, with sudden interest. “I believe I know that fellow.”
“Not Goliath yonder?” cried Ikey Rosenmeyer. “I didn’t know you sailed with such craft.”
“The other chap,” Morgan explained.
“If he’s a friend,” began Torrance, commencing to roll back his sleeves suggestively.
“Sit down!” advised the older boy, sharply. “We’d look nice piling onto that big fellow, wouldn’t we?”
“And the whole of us couldn’t handle him,” murmured Frenchy.
“You never know till you try,” said the optimistic Torrance.
“This is a case for strategy,” stated Morgan. “Now, don’t any of you fellows lose your heads.” Then he hailed the two tacking along the road:
“Ahoy! Hey, you!”
The American lad who was held in durance by the British sailor looked up and showed something besides the red flag of annoyance in his countenance.
“I say, you fellows!” he cried. “Help me out of this, will you?”
At this the huge British seaman for the first time appeared to see the four boys on the bank beside the road.
“My heye!” he bellowed, standing still, but wagging his head from side to side in a perfectly ridiculous way. “My heye! ’Ere’s a ’ole bloomin’ ship load of ’em. Ahoy, me ’earties, let the heagle scream!” and he led off in a mighty cheer that awoke the echoes of the heretofore peaceful countryside.
Frenchy and Ikey, in great glee, sprang up and cheered with him. But the expression in the countenance of the giant’s captive caused the two older Navy Boys to smother their amusement.
“That’s the way he’s been going on for four hours—and more,” groaned the captive. “Why! he hung on to my collar all the time we were eating dinner up there at that inn. Made the barmaid cut up his victuals for him. Paid her a shilling for doing it.”
“Say, is her name Flora?” Ikey asked, at once interested. “Is that the girl Frenchy was just talking about?”
But Torrance quenched him with a hand on his mouth. The situation of the Yankee youth in that giant’s hands seemed more serious than they supposed. The grip of the big hand never relaxed.
“’Ere we are, all together, me ’earties,” rumbled the giant. “Hi’m glad to know yuh. Hi’m Willum Johnson, ’im that ’ad a barrow hin the Old Kent Road before the war. Hand jolly well knowed Hi was to the perlice,” confessed the man frankly.
“Hit allus took six bobbies to take me hin, lads. Hand now one o’ the bloomin’ hofficers makes me walk a chalkline, haboard ship. Hi tell yuh, ain’t this war terrible?”
“That’s what it is,” admitted Frenchy, staring at the man with wide-open eyes.
“Come over here and sit down—and tell us all about it,” Whistler Morgan said, beckoning.
“Hi’ll go yuh!” declared the giant seaman. “Hand so wull me friend—one o’ the nicest little Yankees Hi ever come across.”
The strange Yankee sailor was too much disturbed by his situation to look very closely at Phil and his comrades. The viselike grip of the semi-intoxicated giant on his collar was the principal thing in the victim’s mind.
Almost as soon as the British seaman sprawled on the grassy bank his head began to nod and his eyes to close.
“He’s going off,” whispered Al Torrance.
“You’d think he would,” returned the victim of the over-friendly seaman, in the same tone, “if you could have seen him eat and drink. You never saw such an appetite! He had everybody at that inn standing around and gaping at us.”
It was evident that the young sailor felt his position deeply. He was a nice looking fellow, very neat in his dress, and with delicate features.
“How did you come to fall in with him in the first place?” Al asked, as the giant began to snore.
“Why,” explained the stranger, “I started to walk down to the port because it was so pleasant. He was sitting outside the place where I stopped for tea and muffins after I’d walked a way. I had no idea he was so—so far gone. But he must have been drinking for days,” casting a disgusted glance at his close companion whose hamlike hand never relaxed. “He learned where I was going, and he at once got a grip on my collar. He hasn’t let go since—I never saw such a man!” concluded the stranger morosely.
“His hand will drop off when he gets sound asleep,” Whistler said comfortingly. “Then we’ll sneak.”
“Don’t you believe it!” whispered the other in vast disgust. “He fell asleep after dinner, but his fingers are just clamped on to my collar. When I tried to wriggle away, he awoke. See!”
He tried to pull away from the friendly grip. At once the British seaman half aroused; but his fingers never relaxed.
“William Johnson his my nyme—
Seaman’s my hav-o-cation!
Hi’m hin this war for a penny-bun—
Hand so is hall my nation!
Hoo-roo!” mumbled the gigantic sailor, and fell asleep again.
“Now, what do you know about that?” demanded the victim of brotherly love. “And me—Well, I’m due aboard the Colodia to-day.”
“The Colodia!” exclaimed the four Navy Boys in chorus.
None of them wore a designating mark, for they had on their white service caps. But the Colodia was the Yankee destroyer to which Morgan, Torrance, Donahue and Rosenmeyer belonged. The four gazed on the stranger with increased interest at his statement.
“Say,” Whistler asked, “aren’t you George Belding? Didn’t you and your folks come up to Seacove from New York five or six years ago and spend the summer in the old Habershaw House? I’m Phil Morgan. We lived right next to the Habershaw House.”
“My goodness!” exclaimed the strange youth, sticking out his hand to grab Whistler’s. “And your father, Dr. Morgan, and mine went to college together. That’s what brought us up to Seacove. Sure! My mother wasn’t well. We all got fat and sassy up there. I declare I’m glad to see you, Phil Morgan!”
“Me long lost brother!” whispered Frenchy to the others. “Have you still got the strawberry mark upon your arm?”
But Al Torrance was quite as serious as Whistler and the newly-introduced George Belding.
“Say, fellows,” Al said, “if he’s going to be one of us on the old destroyer, we’ve got to help him out of this mess.”
“Go ahead! How?” demanded Ikey.
Al produced a pocketknife which he opened quickly. It had a long and sharp blade. He approached the snoring giant on the bank.
“Oi Oi!” gasped Ikey Rosenmeyer. “Never mind! Don’t kill him in cold blood. Remember, Torry, it’s Germans we’re fightin’, not these Britishers.”
“What are you going to do?” demanded Belding.
“Cut your collar away,” said Torrance. “That’s about all you can do. If he wants to hang on to the collar, let him.”
“It’ll spoil his shirt,” objected Ikey.
“Sh! Go ahead,” murmured Belding. “It’s a good idea. I couldn’t get at my own knife and do it, with him hanging on to me so tightly.”
“Take care, Al,” advised Whistler. “And you other fellows stand aside. Be ready to run when George is free.”
His advice was good. The giant seaman still snored, but it would not take much to rouse him.
The five boys were now so much interested in the attempt to get Belding free that they took no heed of anything else. So they were all shocked when a chorus of steam whistles and sirens suddenly broke forth from the port below them. A gun boomed on the admiral’s ship. Pandemonium was let loose without warning.
“Oh, my aunt!” groaned George Belding, “what is that?”
“Willum Johnson” awoke with a start and a grunt, and, sitting up on the bank, demanded of everybody in general, “’Oo’s shootin’ hof the bloomin’ gun?”
But Whistler and Torry had whirled to look out to sea. They had heard a similar alarm before. Out of the blue-gray fogbank over the sea, and high, high up toward the hazy sky, whirled a black object, no bigger at first than a bird. But how rapidly it approached the port, and how quickly its outline became perfectly clear!
“A Zep, boys!” cried Al Torrance. “There’s a raid on! That’s a German machine, sure’s you are a foot high!”
“Are you sure?” murmured Belding, who had been dragged quickly to his feet by the giant.
“Hit’s the bloomin’ ’Uns—no fear it ain’t!” ejaculated the big British seaman. “Ah! There goes the a-he-rial guns.”
Splotches of white smoke sprang up from several shoulders of the hill that overlooked the port. The watchful coast-defense men were not unprepared; but the enemy airship, rapidly growing bigger in the boys’ eyes, winged its way nearer to the land, boldly ignoring the shells sent up to meet it.
“She’s going to drop her bombs right over the town!” gasped Whistler, grabbing Belding, who was nearest.