CHAPTER XV—COMBING THE SEA
Suddenly the red edge of the sun appeared above the eastern sea line. He had not forgotten to rise! For an instant—the length of the intake of the breath the two astonished boys drew—the mirage painted by nature against the western sky was flooded with the rising glory.
Then the wonderful picture was erased, disappearing like a motion picture fade-out, and there no longer remained any sign of the startling vision in the sky, save a mass of formless and tumbled cloud.
“What do you know about that?” murmured Ikey Rosenmeyer, in amazement.
“You’ll never see the like of it again, boys—not in a hundred years,” Ensign MacMasters said with confidence. “That was a wonderful mirage!”
“But, Mr. MacMasters,” cried Whistler Morgan, “that vision was the reflection of something real, wasn’t it? An actual picture of a part of the sea?”
“So they tell us.”
“Where do you suppose that piece of water lies?” demanded the youth eagerly.
“I have no idea. ‘Somewhere at sea’! It may be north, east, south, or west of the Colodia’s present position. As I tell you, there is no means of making sure—that I know anything about,” he added, shaking his head.
“Oi, oi!” exclaimed Ikey. “Then we don’t know any more than we did before where that super-submarine is.”
“If that was a picture of her,” said Whistler thoughtfully.
“It is truly ‘all in the air’, boys,” laughed Ensign MacMasters. “We saw something wonderful. Every mirage is that. But it is a mystery, too.”
“Maybe that wasn’t the picture of the submarine, after all,” Ikey suddenly suggested. “Maybe that was the mirage of a real freighter we saw. Two stacks and as long as this old destroyer, I bet! Maybe it only looked as though it rose from the sea.”
“I’d wager money on it’s being a picture of a huge German submarine,” said Whistler with confidence.
“Why so sure, Morgan?” asked the ensign with curiosity.
“You couldn’t see the water pouring off her sides as she came up in that mirage,” scoffed Ikey.
“No; but another thing I did notice,” Whistler declared, answering both the doubting ones. “She had no flag or ensign flying!”
“Good point!” cried Mr. MacMasters.
“If she had been a regular steamship, no matter what her business might be, she would have shown at least a pennant. And we would have seen it fluttering, for there is a good breeze.”
“Right, my boy,” admitted Mr. MacMasters. “I must report to the chief. But, of course, we can have no surety as to the direction of the craft, nor of her distance from us.”
The mirage caused considerable excitement and a good deal of discussion aboard the destroyer. Aside from the more or less “scientific” explanations offered by the old-time garbies in the crew, Ikey Rosenmeyer suggested one very pertinent idea: As he had sighted the ship which two other witnesses agreed was a submarine, was he not entitled to the twenty-dollar gold piece which was Commander Lang’s standing offer for such a discovery?
“Catch Ikey overlooking any chance for adding to his bank account,” Al Torrance declared. “Why, he’s got the first quarter he ever earned and keeps it in a wash-leather pouch around his neck.”
“Bejabbers!” agreed Frenchy in his broadest brogue, “an’ that’s the truth. Did yez iver see the little flock of trained dimes Ikey’s got? Wheniver they hear the spindin’ of money mintioned, they clack in Ikey’s pocket as loud as a police rattle.”
“You certainly can stretch the truth, Frenchy,” admonished Belding. “Truth in your facile fingers becomes a piece of India rubber.”
“Gab, gab, gab!” ejaculated Ikey, seriously. “It doesn’t prove anything. I want to know if I am going to get the twenty? I saw the submarine first.”
“A mirage,” scoffed Frenchy.
“That’s all right. It was a reflection of a real ship. Mr. MacMasters said so. If I’d seen a submarine picture in a looking glass, rising right off yonder,” and he pointed over the rail of the destroyer, “wouldn’t I have yelled, ‘There she blows!’ and got the double-eagle?”
“But you gave no alarm,” grinned Al. “Did he, Whistler?”
“I guess he did call the attention of an officer to it,” Whistler responded, with great gravity. “Are you going right up to the Commander with your claim, Ike?”
While the boys and the rest of the crew were joking about the mysterious submarine, the officers of the Colodia were seriously engaged in discussing the immediate course of the destroyer. They were under orders to find the Sea Pigeon, a very fast raider; but they could not refuse very well to try to pick up this big submersible, if she could be overtaken.
The wireless messages from the Que Vida had ceased hours before. That afternoon they sighted a regular flotilla of small boats on the quiet sea and knew at once that the submarine had again been at work. This time, however, the Germans had been more merciful than usual to the crew of the sunken ship.
Nevertheless the two life crafts and four boats were a long way from either Fayal or Funchal. The sea was quiet, but the German submarine commander did not know it would remain so. He had gone directly contrary to international law in deserting these people.
They proved to be the crew and passengers of the Que Vida, more than twenty-four hours in the boats. The captain had been carried away, a prisoner, by the huge submarine that had attacked the steamship from Buenos Aires.
The story of the chief officer of the lost ship was illuminating. The Que Vida might have escaped the Germans, being a fast vessel, had it not been for the fact that the former appeared to be a merchant ship, and flew a neutral flag, as did the Que Vida.
This enabled the submersible to get within gunfire range. Suddenly she revealed her guns fore and aft and threw several shells at the Argentine vessel. The latter was then so close that she was obliged to capitulate immediately.
The German then ran down nearer and ordered her victims to abandon ship within half an hour. She sent a boat for the captain of the merchant vessel.
When the boats and rafts were afloat, a boatload of Germans on their way to put bombs aboard the Que Vida stopped and pillaged each boatload of victims, taking their money, jewelry, any other valuables they fancied, and especially pilfering the woolen garments of both men and women.
The Que Vida carried some coin and her captain was evidently made to tell of this. The Germans searched the ship before putting the time bombs in her hold.
“Then, Señores,” said the chief officer, in concluding his story, “when the poor Que Vida was sunken, the great submarine steamed away with Señor Capitan di Cos. Perhaps they have killed him.
“But we—Well, you see us. That gr-reat submarine is the most wonderful ship. I would not myself have believed she could submerge did I not see her go down with my own eyes not a mile away from our flotilla.
“And three hundred feet long she is, I assure you! As long as this destroyer, Señores. A so wonderful boat!”
“Once we drop a depth bomb over her, we’ll knock her into a cocked hat, big as she is,” growled one of the Colodia’s petty officers in Whistler’s hearing.
“And the captain of the Spanish ship—what of him?” murmured the Seacove lad.
The taking aboard of the wrecked ship’s company caused considerable excitement on the destroyer. These torpedo boat destroyers do not have many comforts to offer passengers, women, especially.
“Cracky, Whistler!” observed Al Torrance to his chum, “there are girls come aboard the old destroyer. What do you know about that?”
“Well, the Old Man couldn’t very well leave them to drown, could he?” responded Morgan gravely.
“Spanish girls, too. One is a beauty; but the other is too fat,” said Frenchy who claimed to be a connoisseur regarding girls and their looks.
“Hold him, fellows! Hold him!” advised Ikey, sepulchrally. “He’ll be off again, look out!”
“Aw, you——”
“Don’t forget how he fell for that Flora girl when we were back there in England.”
“Shucks!” said Belding laughing. “Flora was the goddess of flowers.”
“Ah,” said Ikey, shaking his head, “you don’t know Mike Donahue. He’ll call this Spanish girl a goddess, yet. You just see.”
The Colodia, however, was driven at top speed for the nearest port, there to be relieved of the shipwrecked company from the Argentine steamship. So the susceptible Frenchy was soon out of all possible danger.
There was a keen desire, on the part of both the destroyer’s crew and officers, to overtake the craft that had brought the Que Vida to her tragic end.
It was well established now that the big submarine and the Sea Pigeon were two different vessels, though they might be working in conjunction. But either or both of the German craft would be welcome prey to the United States destroyer. The latter continued her tedious work of “combing the sea” for these despicable enemies.