To Evans, drinking in the picture before him, it was hard to believe he was not in some strange dream. And being more impressionable than most men, his mood became that of a child witnessing for the first time a scene of fairyland artfully displayed on the theatrical stage.
To make the incongruity of the whole scene complete, a large American seaplane, returning from patrol, came whirring down out of the sky and lit on the harbor in a great splash of white foam, then taxied to her mooring. Rowboats, manned by natives of the town and loaded with pineapples and other tempting commodities, swarmed around the destroyer as she tied up to her designated buoy.
The sunlight on the hills and houses turned golden and then red, and finally disappeared. A pink sunset faded into twilight, and just before dark six destroyers cast off from their moorings, slipped out silently through the opening in the net and headed to sea on a hunting patrol.
Early next morning Evans went aboard the mother-ship of the flotilla and presented his orders at the Flag Office. When they had received the endorsement of the Chief of Staff, he was instructed to report for duty to Lieutenant Larabee, the radio material officer, a man of twenty-eight, whose technical assistant he was to be.
“Gunner Evans,” said Larabee. “Yes, we had a letter about you from the Bureau. I understand you have been assisting in some of the newer engineering developments there, and that you’ve had previous experience in a physics laboratory.”
Evans assented.
“There’s one thing you’ll have to learn on this job,” continued Larabee; “conditions afloat are very different from those in a laboratory on shore; a lot that goes there won’t go here.”
Evans received the advice with thoughtful deference, and as they discussed the problems before them, he studied with the closest scrutiny the mentality of the young officer, nearly twelve years his junior in age, but three grades his senior in rank. Neither in this conversation nor for long afterward did Larabee discover that Evans had served many months as a radio operator on a destroyer in the war zone during the war with Germany twenty years before, nor did he dream that his age was such as to render this possible.
In pursuance of the suggestion Evans had made to Mortimer, several men who had played important parts in the engineering developments at home were soon transferred to Punta Delgada—not without remonstrance on the part of those who had come to rely on their efficiency—and were now absorbed in the increasing organization at this point. In this way preparation was made to bring the engineering skill of the service into play at what would soon be the center of all operations. Among others a chief radio electrician of exceptional skill and understanding, a man Evans had picked before leaving Washington, to be his assistant, arrived and reported as he had done, for duty under the radio material officer.
On board the mother-ship there was a small radio laboratory or test shop where experiments with new apparatus could be conducted. Evans saw its present limitations and future possibilities (provided more space was available), possibilities of work of the first importance in the perfection of the technique of communication in all its complex phases. Larabee, eager to make the radio material service of the flotilla as good as possible, welcomed the assistance of a handy and competent radio gunner, and began to put up a strenuous fight for the needed space. The ordnance officers wanted the space and objected, and the executive officer backed them up. But at last, spurred on by his increasing sense of the importance of what he sought, Larabee succeeded in showing the ordnance officers how they could manage without the coveted space, and in convincing the executive officer of his need of it. Then Evans had a free hand to equip the laboratory to his heart’s content. Cabled requests went out to Washington for new supplies and apparatus, but during the necessary weeks of waiting Evans was never at a loss for methods of utilizing such crude materials as he could pick up in the machine shop or on the scrap-heap.