“I wish we could have found some of those submarines,” one was saying, “especially with the manœuvres so nearly over. Our orders to end by fetching a compass round the whole fleet make it almost certain that we will be caught ourselves, so it does seem as though we might have got something.”
“Yes,” said the other. “I believe if I could only fire off that torpedo rocket to tell one of those uppety submarine commanders he is sunk, I would be the happiest man in Uncle Sam’s Navy. There’s no hope now of our finding that battleship either.”
The destroyer sped on through the rain and the dark, the two officers stood silently at their posts and Billy curled up closer in his corner, soaked and cramped and aching and happy. He thought a moment of that boy who had walked up the path between Captain Saulsby’s bent, old willow trees, a sullen boy who had sniffed the salt breeze disdainfully and vowed that he did not like it. That was some entirely different person whose name might have happened to be Billy Wentworth, but who had nothing whatever in common with the boy he was now. He closed his eyes as he was thinking it over, and even might have dozed a little until a sudden exclamation from the nearest officer startled him into alert attention. The rapid volley of excited orders that followed told him at once that something unusual must have occurred, and, forgetting all caution in his eager interest, he stood upright that he might watch the better. It seemed as though he saw a looming bulk in the blackness ahead of them, as though he actually heard a voice speaking somewhere beyond there in the dark. Then, all in a breath, a myriad of electric lights went on and there sprang into form the outline of a huge battleship, right across their bows. She seemed to tower above them like a mountain, enormous, massive, moving at no very great speed, but inexorably as though there were no hope of her swerving or checking her course.
The little destroyer ducked and plunged as she came hard over, she caught the big bow wave and floundered for a second but nevertheless pressed manfully on. They were cutting under the big dreadnaught’s bows, they were bound to be rammed amidships at least; no, it would be nearer the stern. Oh, wonder of wonders, they were going to win clear. It seemed to Billy, as he clung to the rail, that he could almost have stretched out his hand and touched the vessel’s vast steel side as they went by. He heard some one near him laugh out loud in pure, joyful excitement and he saw that it was the commander of the destroyer, himself, who seized the pistol and fired the signal rocket. Up it went in a flaming stream, directly over the dreadnaught’s bridge, described a crimson arch above the heads of the startled officers and dropped on the other side. On both vessels there could be no shadow of a doubt that a desperate night attack had been successfully made and that according to all the rules of the war game the battleship New Mexico had gone to the bottom with all on board.
For Billy, who was as full of thrills as any of the rest, who hung forward to watch with all his eyes lest he should miss something, there was a separate passage of the adventure that was all his own. For as the ship’s searchlights slanted down upon them a moment too late, cutting a wide, white circle upon the water, they showed him a most unexpected sight. There, bobbing serenely on the waves, her sails drooping and a little bedraggled as though she were very tired, but her gay red pennant fluttering bravely still, rode the little craft that had been the cause of all his adventures. There could surely be no doubt that it was the Josephine. A moment she sailed serenely alongside, then the roar of foaming water from under the destroyer’s bow reached out and caught her. She staggered, careened, rose boldly on the summit of a wave, then sank. She had sailed far and carried calamity in her wake, but she made a brave end and went down with colours flying.
His excitement in watching the Josephine was most rudely interrupted by the discovery by the young officer that there was some one on the bridge who had no business to be there. Just what was said to him, Billy preferred afterwards not to remember. He was bundled down the steps with far more haste than ceremony, and presently found himself, much chastened and subdued, back in charge of his friend, the bluejacket. Even then he refused to be taken below, for the destroyer was now coming into the zone where she must make the perilous passage through the whole fleet, and he was bound that he would not lose one breathless instant.
The wind had dropped a little and the sea was growing quieter. The torpedo-boat checked her speed and moved forward more slowly and almost without a sound. There was nothing, Billy thought, but a waste of empty water and starless sky, but wait, what was that darker shape showing vaguely through the gloom? Presently he was aware that it was a ship, and another one beyond, and another and another, vessels on every hand lying in wait, hostile and threatening. The destroyer crept onward, feeling her way, altering her course every now and again to avoid some man-of-war swinging at anchor ahead of her. Far off on the horizon there shone out a twinkle of lights and the beam of a searchlight was lifted to the sky.
“The rest of the torpedo-boat flotilla is coming in, too,” said the sailor at his side, chuckling gleefully. “That fellow over there has been caught slipping by, but it wasn’t us.” Suddenly their vessel gathered speed and shot away with her engines crowded to every pound of steam. She had passed the danger lines and had only to put a safe distance between herself and the battleship fleet. The watchers on the nearest vessel must have heard the hum of her machinery or the rush of water from her bow, for immediately lights flared up, seeming to spread from ship to ship, straight gleaming, groping fingers flashed back and forth, signalling, hunting and questioning. Billy, looking back, seemed to see the whole sky an interwoven maze of shafts of light as every warship searched for her enemy. One long beam swung toward them in a wide, sweeping curve, approached, almost touched them, but just missed, leaving them safe to speed away into the safety of the darkness.
“It’s twelve o’clock, and the war game’s over,” said the sailor at his side, “and I believe our old boat has made a pretty good record after all. Now you’re to come below and turn in, young man, or you’ll surely be a dead boy in the morning.”
The novelty of sleeping in a sailor’s hammock was quite lost on Billy, for he was deep in slumber almost before he could clamber in. He was nevertheless uneasily conscious, even through the heaviest of his repose, of the swinging and bumping that attended his slumbers. He thought he must be still dreaming when some one shook him by the arm.