It was a fact that the submarine had left her base with the raider known as the Sea Pigeon. The underseas boat convoyed the bigger craft through the danger zone. It was not a difficult guess that when the two German boats had separated arrangements had been made for certain rendezvous at future dates—when and where? Besides, both boats were furnished with wireless.
“I would make that Heinie tell the whole story,” Ensign MacMasters said.
“He might not tell the truth, sir,” suggested Whistler Morgan.
“Then I’d hang him,” declared the officer. “A threat of that kind will make these brave Heinies come to time. I know ’em!”
Commander Lang had his own way of going about this matter. He used his own good judgment. Whether he believed he had obtained the full truth from the prisoners or not about the Sea Pigeon, he turned the destroyer’s prow toward the reaches of the western Atlantic, leaving the eastern steamship lanes behind.
The crew only knew that the Colodia must be following at least some faint trail of the raider. For the destroyer had been sent to get the German ship, and Commander Lang was not the man to neglect his work.
The radio men picked plenty of chatter out of the air; but, as far as the Navy Boys knew, though they tried to find out, little of it referred to the German raider.
One thing George Belding did learn from his friend, Sparks: The “ghost talk” was rife in the static once more. This wireless spectre had all the operators in a disturbed state of mind, to say the least.
“Sparks seems to have lost his common sense for fair, over it,” Al Torrance observed. “You know more about this aero stuff than any of us, George. What do you really think it is? Somebody trying to call the Colodia?”
“That is exactly what Sparks doesn’t know. He admitted to me that he caught the destroyer’s name, but not her number. It’s got so now this ‘ghost’ breaks in at a certain time in the afternoon watch—just about the same time each day. One of his assistants says he has spelled out ‘Colodia,’ too. But it may be nothing but a game.”