"You mean Ted Wainwright?" asked Jack.
"Yes, he will be my aide and relieve the wireless operator at times," explained "Little Mack." "As a matter of fact," he continued, "I will ship the most of my old crew on the U-boat. The Dewey will be out of service for some time and Cleary will probably take her out on her next voyage with a brand new crew."
Jack excused himself in a few minutes to hurry away and acquaint Ted with the news. He found his chum writing letters and broke the news to him. The two did a fine young hornpipe dance, so delighted were they over the fact that they had been assigned together to the same vessel again—-and to the famous U-boat.
The next ten days were taken up by the new officers of the U-boat in acquainting themselves thoroughly with the operation of the captured craft, and in preparations for the new trip to sea. Latest news from the front had shown the Allies closing in on the German naval bases along the North Sea front. The combined armies of the Americans, the French and the British under one commander had driven the Huns northward till Zeebrugge was in danger of being wrested from them. Consequently, the American lads were anxious to get into the fray with their powerful new vessel.
"What are they going to call our new Kaiser-buster?" asked Jack of his chief one morning while they were inspecting the ship's storage tanks.
"So far as the Germans are concerned she is still the U-91," said the little captain. "You notice that we haven't changed the outside dress of her a single bit. Unless I lose my guess we are going to get pretty close to the Boche with this old boat of theirs."
And then "Little Mack" confided to Jack that the German code book had been captured with the U-boat, and that, furthermore, the U-91 had shipped as her wireless chief a former secret-service chap, Hal Bonte, who had worked for a time in the offices of a German-American steamship line in New York and knew the German language "like a breeze."
"Of course the U-91 has been re-named," continued the captain. "She will be known hereafter in the navy department records as the Monitor. You remember what that other Monitor did."
And Jack, of course, recalled at once the famous battle in Hampton Roads during the Civil War when the little cheesebox of John Ericsson had whipped the much touted Merrimac after the Confederate terror had completely dominated the Federal fleet and for a time wrested the prestige of the sea from the Union.
"Pretty good record to live up to," commented Jack as he recalled the feats of the famous little Ironsides that had saved the day for the Union.