On shore in Spain, he was once more in a familiar environment, one that brought his extraordinary faculties into full play. With nothing but his wits and the small bundle of belongings he had brought under the deck of the kayak, he launched himself on the enterprise of getting into Gibraltar unnoticed, and making himself desired as a radio operator and trusted in that capacity. How he overcame the innumerable and formidable obstacles to such a course would require a volume in itself. But that is another story, and we must return to Punta Delgada.
After a week had elapsed, Evans began listening every day at the appointed hours to see if the enemy traffic showed any signs of Kendrick’s magic touch. The excuse of testing his new device had to be worked for all it was worth, until one operator remarked to another, after he had gone, “He’s tested it every way he can; he seems to be so pleased with it he just wants to listen in even if there’s nothing in particular to pick up.”
Three weeks elapsed during which Evans and Barton met now and then and speculated over Kendrick’s probable fortunes and the prospect of hearing from him. At last, late one afternoon as Evans was listening in, he picked up a pencil and began writing on a slip of paper; slowly he wrote, only five or six words a minute instead of the usual twenty to twenty-five at which messages are received. For nearly five minutes he wrote, then stopped, and, after listening a moment more, he took off the head-phones and slipped out of the radio room. Taking the first boat ashore he hastened to Commander Barton.
“What’s the news?” asked Barton eagerly, as Evans entered his office.
“He’s there. Got an operator’s job that gives him access to a good transmitter,” answered Evans; and he pulled out of his pocket the slip of paper with Kendrick’s message and handed it to Barton.
“That’s real business,” said Barton with unrestrained joy, on reading the message. A long conference ensued in which Barton and Evans reviewed the possibilities opened by this new channel of communication with Heringham in Constantinople, and laid their plans for making the most of it.
CHAPTER IX
THE ROUND-UP
An earlier chapter has told of the planning of a fleet of net-laying ships to coöperate with chasers on their drifting patrols and to surround at short notice a designated spot where a submarine had been located with hydrophones. This fleet of ships, eight in number, completed at last, arrived at Punta Delgada about the first of December. In accordance with their instructions, they commenced practicing the maneuver of proceeding at speed to a spot designated by signal from a destroyer or chaser and then surrounding it in such a way as to enable them with a minimum of lost motion to lay their lines of nets completely around the spot at a specified radius from it. This maneuver required a high order of team-work and a correspondingly large amount of drill; after a few weeks of this, however, the personnel acquired enough proficiency to make the officers feel ready to carry it out in earnest, and they grew impatient to try it on a real submarine instead of an imaginary one.
Then they began to go out as planned surrounded at a distance by groups of chasers on drifting patrols. But the ocean is very large, and the days and weeks seemed long as they waited for their first chance to put this new method of hunting to the test of a real “fix.” The skippers of these ships began to complain that their time was wasted—not to mention the elaborate equipment—when the chance of picking up a scent seemed so remote. Yet enemy submarines were abroad, as was shown by the toll of merchant ships, sunk in spite of the best efforts to lead them in organized convoys through to safety. An unfortunate atmosphere of grumbling at being tied up in what appeared to be an elaborate failure began to develop and to spread from the net-laying fleet to Headquarters. Was this vast project to prove a waste of effort and a failure, after all?
The enemy was gradually increasing the efficiency with which he planned and executed his submarine forays. The principal secret of this lay in the concentration of his submarine forces. Groups of five, six, or seven submarines would await a favorable moment in the conditions of ocean traffic; then proceeding together, combining their resources in the matter of detecting the approach of hostile craft, and skillfully disposing their force, they would deliver a concerted attack on a convoy, and often would take a heavy toll of tonnage.