“You had a hard time trying to make shore, too, when the ‘Jerries’ let you get off with your lives--after you saw them whipsaw a bomb under your schooner, and--and----”
The big captain put out a big hand as if warding off something.
“She crumpled up like a paper bag,” he said sorrowfully, “and went down.... Yes! we had a row of fifty-eight hours in the dories--rough sea, too, part o’ the time--before we sighted land.”
“Anything to eat, had you?”
“One bag o’ biscuits that the cook grabbed up when we were ordered to leave her, a gallon of water between sixteen of us, and three parts of a rhubarb pie that we gave to the--kid.”
“Yes, I heard that you had a thirteen-year-old boy--a Boy Scout--with you.”
“So! Son of one of the fishermen--dead game, too!” Captain Bob nodded. “He was standing at the vessel’s rail. I told him to get into the first dory. Not a bit of it! Not until he was sure his father was safe! When at last we reached shore a woman asked him if he had ‘steered’ the dory at all. He misunderstood her, being weak--having gone fifty hours on that three-quarters of a rhubarb pie--mean sour it was, too; we hadn’t much sugar aboard! But, Statue o’ Liberty! you should have seen him fire up: ‘No!’ he yells at her weakly; ‘I wasn’t skeered!’
“True--he wasn’t! Kept a scout’s mouth on, as they call it, all the time, corners turning up--an’ whistled, curled up in the bow, as long’s a drop of the rhubarb juice held out, to--well, to wet his whistle!”
Eyes were wet now among the ship-carpenters--Atwood’s, too! He tickled Blind Tim’s ear and wished that he could muster up enough horse sense to understand the story.
“Well, the game young one spoke for the rest of you; you’re none of you ’skeered o’ the subs if you’re ready to go out again--looking for another vessel!”