“It wouldn’t do to speak of it to that gunner,” said the chief of staff, “but I may as well tell you that before I left Washington I had a talk with Commander Rich who handles the radio business in the Bureau of Engineering. He’s a man of sound judgment and good old-fashioned horse sense, who understands the point of view of a well-balanced, all-round naval officer, and he doesn’t at all believe in having the fighting efficiency of the ships sacrificed to the caprice of scientific specialists. He told me a great deal of the radio junk furnished this ship was authorized against his better judgment, and he believed I’d do well to let the equipment be reduced in practice to the simple, standard gear we are all used to.”
For some time White kept this information to himself. Evans returned to the mother-ship of the destroyer flotilla, and, slipping on dungarees, plunged into a bit of experimental engineering on which he had recently embarked. He worked at it the rest of the day and late into the night, all alone in the radio test shop.
“If only we had Fraser for chief of staff,” he said to himself, “we’d have a fleet that could stand up to the enemy with little fear of the outcome; but with this dummy—God help us! The old Admiral’s all right, but he’s got to have a good chief of staff to swing this fleet.”
With feverish energy he wielded pliers and solder-iron till after midnight. Then he put down his things and said, “Well, I’ve got to sleep on this thing if I can,” and turned in.
His sleep was restless and full of stress and worry. He dreamt that he saw a miniature admiral in a cocked hat, standing on the deck of a frigate of the olden days, brandishing his sword. The ship was no bigger than a toy, but the little admiral, puffing with pride, strutted up and down. He looked like Captain Brigham. As the dream progressed, the ship grew smaller and smaller, and the admiral shrank proportionately; but the more he shrank, the more pompous became the bravado with which he brandished his sword. A giant dreadnaught came over the horizon and bore down on the little admiral, her great turret guns trained on him. Nearer she came, her guns growing to monstrous size, till the admiral seemed but a speck in front of the yawning muzzle of a gigantic gun. A projectile, bigger than any the world has ever seen, slid out of the great muzzle, and knocked off the admiral’s head which fell into the sea with the splash of a tiny pebble.
Evans awoke with an oath, turned over and slept again. When next he dreamed he found himself sailing in his own little ketch, the Petrel, gliding through tranquil waters by an enchanted shore where great trees hung out far over the water, casting a deep, cool shadow beneath them—trees now resembling the great tree-ferns and other tropical forms of the Borge garden, now the familiar oaks and pines of the New England shore.
In the morning he returned to his engineering task in the radio test shop. The electricians at work there noticed that he was not himself this morning. Most of the time he was silent and abstracted, with a far-off look in his face, or frowning gloomily. Now and then he would show exasperation, wielding his tools as if bent on annihilating the apparatus with which he worked. Now and then he would come out of his trance, crack a joke, and restore the usual good-humor of the test shop.
By the middle of the afternoon he finished his task, put down his tools, and went ashore. With the usual handful of breadcrumbs he sought the Borge garden, wandering through the tree-fern grottoes, and came at last to the ancient watch-tower under the old cedar tree. Here he sat down and gave himself over to luring his little friends, the birds, down from the trees with a tempting array of crumbs. Soon he was surrounded with his feathered coterie, presenting a scene of busy festivity. Then he gazed off over the blue expanse of the sea, dotted with the great ships of the Allied fleet riding easily at their moorings, a panorama of strength and majesty which could scarcely fail to thrill the beholder. But to-day the thrill for Evans was swamped by other emotions.
“Scrap iron and paint, with that poison adrift in the fleet!” he muttered to himself.
He threw some more crumbs on the ground. “What would you do with him, little bird?” he said as one of them hopped up close to his hand. “Throw him overboard? Throw him overboard damn quick, if you’ve got the sense I give you credit for.”