“You’re just in time. We’re off Boston Light now. I am just going to send this message to the Commandant of the Navy Yard.”
The commander reached for his call-bell, but Henry held out his hand. “Let me take it,” he offered.
The captain handed him the message. Henry folded the sheet, writing innermost. The commander smiled approval. “You may read it,” he said.
Henry opened the blank. It was addressed to the Commandant of the Boston Navy Yard and read: “Request permission to land at Navy Yard to obtain supplies from the Oneida. C. Hardwick, Commander, Iroquois.”
“Do you have to get permission to enter the Navy Yard?” exclaimed Henry.
“Yes, indeed, whether you come by land or by sea.”
Henry carried the message to the radio shack, and Mr. Sharp got it off at once. Then he went to the bridge and bade the men on watch good-morning, but he had little inclination for talk. The wonderful scene that presented itself ahead fascinated him.
Already they had passed Boston Light, and the Iroquois was heading directly for a low-lying island that lay in the water like a huge, gray-brown button. It was George’s Island, and the queer-looking, mound-like eminence on it was Fort Warren. Henry learned that a moment later when he stepped into the chart-room and studied the map. He wanted to know exactly what he was seeing.
Close beside George’s Island lay Lovell’s Island, a big, hulking, rocky bit of land that reached some little elevation. There was also a third island, Gallup Island. And these three, like nuts between the extended jaws of a pair of pincers, lay between the long, tapering ends of the mainland that thrust out into the sea for miles. Behind these pincers was a great bay, practically land-locked, and filled with islands. Its coast line was cut and gashed with points and inlets. Everywhere the combers were crashing on the beaches and shining white in the morning sun. And on these islands and points, and along the shore, stood innumerable cottages, which Henry judged must be summer residences.
As the Iroquois approached George’s Island the ship was headed northwest one-half north. Now she steamed between Gallup and Lovell’s Islands, and Henry examined with interest the quarantine station on the former. Past Deer Island they went, with its huge and gloomy-looking prison and great stone walls, and past Long Island and Spectacle Island, which got its name because it is shaped not unlike a huge pair of nose-glasses. And, turning as the channel twisted, the Iroquois worked her way into the ever-narrowing mouth of the harbor, with the captain now on the bridge, conning the ship through the tortuous passage. Thompson’s Island was passed, and Governor’s Island, with Fort Winthrop, and now the narrow harbor was close at hand. Meantime the radio man had handed to the captain the answer to the latter’s wireless message, directing him where to dock the Iroquois.