"What the devil you laughing at?" barked out our skipper.
George took his eyes off the galley-door, but his grin remained. Said George: "Cap'n, I see de flame. The galley stove just done bust!"
The galley stove on our ship was an oil-burner. It had back-fired, and so the loud Woof!
Later it came out that the Clan Lindsay wasn't torpedoed at all; but one of our destroyers dropped a depth charge so close to her to get a U-boat that she thought she was.
The camouflaged big liner sank, but not until the two of our destroyers standing by had taken off every one of the 503 passengers, one taking the people off the deck, the other picking up those in the small boats. One destroyer—the 396, say—took off 307 of these passengers. Her skipper passed the word by radio to the 384, which had gathered in 196 passengers, including the commodore. The 384 got the message, only she got it 7 instead of 307 people rescued.
"Seven survivors!" said the 384's skipper. "I wonder why she radioed that?" He meditated over the puzzle and by and by solved it to his satisfaction.
"Of course, what she wants is for us to take off the seven and add 'em to our own." He took measures to meet the emergency, and then followed this little incident:
Aboard the 396 they were busy trying to find space for their 307 passengers when a lookout heard a Putt! putt! putt! coming over the water. The officer of the deck listened. Everybody on the bridge listened. Putt! putt! putt! it came. The officer of the deck reported to the skipper. The skipper wondered who it could be, when just then a radio message arrived: "Am sending a boat—384."
"Sending a boat? What for?" He meditated over that puzzle and then he solved it—as he thought. "Sure. That British commodore she picked up is coming to see how the survivors aboard here are getting on. That's it"—he turned to the watch-officer—"you know how these Britishers are for regulations. Even in the midst of a mess like this we'll have to kotow to his rank or he'll probably be reporting us. So rouse out six side-boys, line 'em up, rig up the port ladder, have the bugler stand by for ta-ra-rums and all that stuff."