"Let's have the rest of it, boys," said the Captain of the
Firefly. "We may as well have the whole thing at once."
"Well!" said Porky 'sighing, "that's how things went until to-day—or I guess it was yesterday, wasn't it? Anyhow, I can't tell just when anything happened. All I know is that everybody was just as though they were strung on wires.
"And that Captain got uglier and uglier. He talked German to the men, and then he would turn around and speak the best English you ever heard. It seemed awfully funny. He knew a lot of people back home, all the high-brows, and when he got pretty full, he would commence to sing. And say he had that Caruso guy lashed to the mast, I bet. He sang love stuff, and sob stuff, and a lot of opera stuff that sounded like gargling. Gee, it was great!
"Then he would make me and Beany stand at attention, and he would tell us all about the German army, and how strong it is, and all about their navy, and how we just had to be wiped off the map. The United States, I mean, and he would make us repeat all sorts of statistics about what the Germans had won and done."
"He said there was one chance in a million of our escaping," said Beany, "and he wanted us to have a lot of inside dope to tell our people. Of course it was all brag, almost every bit of it. We could see one thing. Those fellows were all sore. They didn't know what at, but they were sore just the same. Our fellows are never like that."
"You bet they are not!" said Porky, fondly and proudly. "The difference is plain as the nose on your face. I tell you what I did do; I made some little drawings of some of the things we heard. Sort of plans they were talking over. But you can see the submarine yourselves. You say she is safe."
"Get to what happened this morning—I mean yesterday," said
Beany.
"Well," said Porky, "first thing we knew, the Captain looked through the periscope, and then he turned around and told the others something, and, say, they were pleased to death! You see they wanted to make up their required number of ships torpedoed, and get back to port. The Captain called me over, and told me to look, and there you were, way off, but plain. It was not really light. We submerged right away, and the Captain told me to fix some coffee. They wanted coffee nineteen times a day or so. I went over to the little corner where they cooked what few things they did cook, and then I happened to think of that bottle. The one with Anesthetique on it. That looked near enough to Anesthetic to be the same thing; and I wondered what would happen if I dumped some of it in the coffee. I didn't know what it was; but there was a chance anyhow for it to work. It might make 'em sick if nothing else, and I couldn't seem to see them pegging away at one of our ships with one or two or three of those torpedoes, even if I had monkeyed with their tail feathers.
"So I tipped the wink to Beany to kind of hold the center of the stage, and, say, that was funny! Beany braced up to the Captain, and saluted and said, 'Is it an American ship out there, sir?' and the Captain said, 'Sure thing, kiddo!' He could talk just like anybody, you know. Then Beany looked as though he was going to cry; and he said, 'Can't you make an exception, Capt, let this one go?' The Captain thought that was a big joke and pretended to think about it, and finally he said, 'No, I can't see my way clear to do that; but I'll tell you what we will do. We won't leave a single boatful to starve. We will destroy every human-being on the transport and the convoys. I think we will meet a sister U-boat here this morning, and we will have a real good time.'
"Beany saw I had dumped the stuff in the coffee pot, and he just hung his head and walked off, the Captain looking after him and sneering.