Perhaps she was going across the ocean to prey on the American coastwise trade! This was a suggestion that put the Seacove boys and Belding on edge.
There was, however, something rather uncertain about the stories regarding the Sea Pigeon. Some of the merchant crews that had already met her, declared her to be a huge new submarine—a submersible that looked like a steam freighter when she was afloat, and that she was all of three hundred feet long.
“Some boat, that!” observed Mr. MacMasters. “We’ve seen ’em with false upperworks, boys. But you know, even the Deutschland was no such submarine as this one they tell about.”
Whistler put forth the idea that there were two ships working in these waters; but not many accepted this until, the day after they left Fayal, and the destroyer was traveling west, Sparks suddenly picked up an S O S from the south. The Argentine steamship Que Vida was sending out frantic calls for help. She was being shelled by a monster submarine two hundred miles off the port of Funchal of the Madeiras.
“This is the real thing—Sea Pigeon or not!” the radio operator confided to George Belding. “She’s the super-sub we’ve been hearing about. The operator on this Buenos Aires’ ship says she came right up out of the sea at dawn and opened fire with guns fore and aft. Has used a torpedo, and has upperworks like a regular honest-to-goodness steam freighter.
“There! He’s off again!” he exclaimed, as the radio began to spark, and he turned back to the machine.
So was the Colodia off again, and at full speed, dashing away in quest of the Que Vida and the great submersible that had attacked her.
CHAPTER XIV—THE MIRAGE
Phil Morgan, coming up suddenly from the berth deck just as sweepers were piped at 5:20 in the morning, fairly overturned a smaller lad who had been straddling the top of the ladder.
“Hi, you sea-going elephant, you!” complained Ikey Rosenmeyer’s voice. “Look where you are going!”