Under Foch's Command: A Tale of the Americans in France

by F. S. Brereton

The very mention of it tickled him so much that, in spite of their precarious position, this honest, burly sailor burst into uproarious laughter. Indeed, he might well do so, for the picture down below in the engine-room would have exercised the same influence on anyone of British nationality and blessed with a sense of humour. In amongst the eddying clouds of steam, with the thud and thump of the pistons and the deafening whirr of machinery filling the air, stood Jim on one of the engine-room gangways, gripping the rails and looking over into the smoke-clouds down below, peering now in this direction and then in that, fixing his eye upon some German "greaser"—just fixing his eye on him for a moment—and then swinging round to stare in another direction. No need to show the revolver, which he now wore strapped round his waist, no need to shout a peremptory order, no need to point, to gesticulate, to shake a fist. Those "greasers" knew. They cast glances askance at the young American now and again, and, seeing his square jaw, his determined appearance, flung themselves upon the task of keeping the engines going, well knowing all the time that they were steaming away from their own people.

From the stoke-hold, near at hand, from which now emerged bigger, whiter clouds of steam and smoke, came the clank of spades upon the steel decks, and the scrape as fuel was shovelled up and thrown into the furnaces. There, in what appeared to be an inferno of smoke and flashing beams of light as furnace doors were opened, amidst fiercest heat and sweat and incessant movement, stood two of the recently escaped British sailors, nonchalant, erect, one hand gripping the muzzle of a rifle and the other akimbo, resting upon their hips. They, too, glanced now here, now there, noting every movement of every man under their charge, but never moved. The glance alone was sufficient.

"They're keepin' them at work as if they was willin' slaves," Jack roared, mopping the perspiration from his streaming forehead, "and you'd hardly believe me, sir, but when I comes up on deck—and glad to get there too, for it's hot down below—I finds our deck hands a-fallin' in and makin' all ready to repel boarders. It looks like the good old days, and if only the Germans do get up, why, repel boarders it will be!"

Bill took a glance around him; not that he had not done so on many an occasion, and had seen all that was going on, but his chief attention was now engaged with the pursuing trawler and with the torpedo-boat destroyers, and with conjecturing where the next shell would fall and what chance he and his men stood of escape from the double danger behind.

"I'm beginning to think," he had just told Larry, "that the German destroyer will soon have her attention fully occupied by the other one—that is, supposing she's British; so if we can escape the shells she's firing at us now we shall have merely the trawler to deal with. She's drawing nearer, I'm sure. Perhaps her engines are bigger and stronger than those in this vessel; in any case we shall soon see. I don't fear her nearly as much as I do the destroyer."

Larry, from the view Bill and Jack obtained of him, cared very little as to what might happen. With his hat tilted forward in the most approved manner, sucking at his cigar again, he peered in the most nonchalant manner over the rail at the pursuing trawler, and hardly lifted his eyes as her gun spoke and repeated the shot—hardly even deigned to turn his head to watch where the missiles went, though when one sailed close over the bridge he cocked his eye overhead, gave a shrug, and whistled.

"It's the miss that don't matter," he told Bill. "If she was plugging them things into us all the time a chap might get nervy and unsettled, but, as it is, this is playing. Seems to me, young Bill, that you'll soon be having to give other orders. You see, as things are, we're steaming away dead ahead of the trawler, and our gun, perched up there in the bows, ain't able to rake her, while she, with her gun in the same position, can fire at us all the time, and with no fear of return shelling. Now supposin' that destroyer there, what's German, does happen to give over because the other happens to be British, what's to prevent us turning round and going full ahead at the trawler, or steaming off at an angle, as you might say? Gee! Then we could pound her with our own weapon. D'you get me, young fellow?"

Bill did—Jack too, for the matter of that; for he smacked the American so violently on the back that Larry began to cough and looked at the burly sailor with some amount of indignation.

"You ain't got no call to do that, Jack," he spluttered. "No forcible argument of that sort ain't needed. Just say what you think of the suggestion."

"Think!" the burly sailor shouted. "Why, you couldn't have suggested anything that would ha' pleased me and the men we've got aboard better. If that there destroyer does get fully engaged by t'other—and it's too good a thing to think of—then what's to prevent us going head on for the trawler? Ain't we entitled to have our own action? What's to prevent us making her a prize, same as she'll try to make of us? Just you think what the boys back in Dover town 'ud think if we came sailing in with this 'ere boat, and another with a prize crew aboard her. They wouldn't half shout, would they?"