When the lifeboats had been overhauled, and the occupants taken off by the destroyer “John Adams,” the shivering wretches had a sad tale to tell. It was at that moment believed, and afterwards confirmed, that some sixty persons had lost their lives.
“Even after we pulled away in the small boats,” sobbed an American woman, “the brutes shelled us.”
“A cook in our boat was hit,” a man took up the narrative. “The shell struck him at the waist, hurling his head and trunk overboard and leaving his legs in the boat. And a child’s head was shot from its shoulders. You noticed the splashes of blood in our boat? I’m fifty-nine years old, but if any recruiting officer in four armies will accept me I’m ready to enlist and fight these beasts—navy or army!”
“And I’m going to enlist!” quivered a young boatswain’s mate. “I can’t get into the trenches soon enough. I won’t take any German prisoners at the front, either,” he added, significantly.
Late in the afternoon, not many miles from the submarine base, French and American destroyers waited to escort the transport fleet the rest of the way to France. At about that same hour the evening papers in Berlin declared that an American transport fleet had been encountered, and that nine of the ships, containing more than twenty thousand American soldiers, had been sent to the bottom. The truth was that one transport had been sunk and eleven Americans killed and wounded!
Many of the destroyers that had brought in the transport fleet to the point where the new escort awaited it, now turned seaward once more. Dave Darrin and the “Logan,” however, were under orders to go to the base port, for the trial of Ober-Lieutenant von Bechtold was close at hand.
When Dave and Dan went ashore they took with them Seaman Jordan under close guard.
After slipping that note to Seaman Reardon and then receiving no further results from it, Jordan had suddenly suspected the ruse that was likely to put his neck in a noose. So now, as he went ashore, that young seaman was gloomy and pallid.
Hardly had Darrin stepped on the wharf when a waiting jackie saluted smartly.
“Why, hullo, Runkle!” cried Dave, halting, for this sailorman had been of great assistance to him in former undertakings.