Dave Darrin After the Mine Layers; Or, Hitting the Enemy a Hard Naval Blow

by H. Irving Hancock

By the time that the "Grigsby" had shut off speed and lain to, the decks of the "Gloucester" were observed to be crowded with people.

The two launches, with Dave Darrin in one of them, shoved off and were quickly alongside the hospital ship. Two ship's ladders were let down over the side. Up these went the two boarding parties as rapidly as they could move. Lines came swirling down, and canvas rolls and other supplies were hoisted to the deck. This work was all quickly done.

Not a second must be lost. Dave ordered Ensign Peters and several men forward to the bow of the hospital ship. With the remainder, Dave, carrying a roll of canvas over one shoulder, and all hands carrying some burden, started to go below.

With a group of Red Cross nurses who stood silently and calmly by the patients who were being borne to the deck, Darrin was sure that he caught sight of Belle.

But he did not look a second time. There was too much to be done now when seconds were precious. Nor did Belle look up from the work that she was doing among the wounded on stretchers.

A member of the crew led the American party below. Here Dave found two mates and a score of sailors already at work. They were trying to accomplish the very thing Darrin had come prepared to do—to rig canvas over the hole in the hull to shut out as much of the water as was possible.

If this could be accomplished, and if the "Gloucester's" pumps could drive out most of the water that got in past the canvas patch, then it might be possible for the hospital ship to keep afloat until other rescue craft could reach the scene.

"We'll take your orders, sir," spoke up one of the mates, saluting, as Dave and his party reached a forward hold where, despite the flimsy canvas patch already rigged, the water was almost waist-deep.

"We'll work together," returned Dave, briefly. "It may turn out that the ship can be kept afloat for an hour or two."

"The bulkheads were shut, sir," the mate explained, hurriedly, "but fragments of the mine entered this first water-tight compartment, and also the second. You'd better go down into the second compartment, too, sir."