“That’s what I’ve been thinking,” declared Rawlins. “The whole thing’s blamed funny. I’ve a hunch it’s all a blind. I’ll bet that message was sent by the sub or the plane just to get us away from here--or something.”
“Hunches or not, I’m not taking chances,” declared the Commander stiffly. “If I get an S. O. S. I answer.”
“Righto!” exclaimed the diver. “Glad you do. And, if luck’s with us, we may get there in time to sight the sub and kill two birds with one stone.”
But to find a ship or its survivors when its exact latitude and longitude are known and to find such a tiny speck upon the broad ocean when only its general direction is known are two very different matters. So meager had been the sudden call for aid which had reached the destroyer that no one could say whether the ship that sent it had been five or fifty miles away and as there had been no time in which to move the loop antenna of the radio compass about until the exact direction was determined, the chances of the destroyer’s finding the vessel or any of her company were very remote. Throughout the day and all through the night the destroyer searched, steaming in circles and with her powerful searchlights sweeping the sea.
In the hopes that another signal might yet come in, men were kept constantly at the radio instruments listening and sending forth messages, but the only replies received were from far distant ships asking what the trouble was. To all of these the operators gave what little information they had and asked if others had heard the frenzied call for help. But only one had, a tramp bound from Cuba for Curacao, and unlike the destroyer she had received the S. O. S. by her regular antenna and so could not know the direction whence it came.
“Well, some of those ships may pick up the poor rascals,” said Mr. Henderson when on the following morning Commander Disbrow reported the messages which had been exchanged. “But it’s odd none of them heard the call except that tramp.”
“I think that proves the vessel was near us,” declared Tom. “If Mr. Bancroft got it on the loop and they couldn’t hear it on their regular aerials, the message must have been sent from very close.”
“Yes, that’s quite true,” agreed Mr. Henderson. “But it doesn’t make matters much simpler. Even a few square miles of sea is a big place.”
“You said it!” exclaimed Rawlins. “And a blamed sight bigger to the poor beggars hanging on to wreckage or in a small boat than to us. But I still have an idea it was a blind. That would account for those ships not getting it.”
“I don’t just see what you mean,” said Mr. Pauling.