“We couldn’t find him, Nelson. He must have been forward when the first shot hit us. I think he was—I’m afraid——” The mate’s voice trailed off into silence. A fourth shot struck the schooner. They could see the brief scarlet glare of the bursting shell and hear the havoc caused by the flying shrapnel. But Nelson neither saw nor heard. He was staring dumbly, agonizedly into the night, while Pickles, clasped close in his arms, whimpered his sympathy.
CHAPTER II
WITH THE COAST PATROL
The U. S. S. Wanderer plunged her nose into the blue-green waters of Nantucket Sound, tossed them high in glittering spray that rattled against the slanting glass of the little wheel-house—only they liked to call it the bridge on the Wanderer—and raced on at a good twenty knots, leaving a fine hillock of sea under her low taffrail and a long snow-white wake behind. It was a brisk, sunshiny morning in late April. A blue sky that held a half-cargo of cottony clouds grayed into mist at the horizon. A few points off the starboard bow Handkerchief Light Ship swayed her stumpy poles and marked the southern limit of the four mile shoal. Beyond, the sandy shore of Cape Cod glistened in the sunlight, and to port Nantucket Island came abreast.
The Wanderer was but ninety-six feet over all and was built with the slender proportions of a cigar. Barely more than a month ago she had been a private cruising yacht, but a fortnight in a Boston basin had changed her appearance greatly. Now she was the color of tarnished pewter from stem to stern, from keel to tip of signal pole. Her deck was bare save for a rapid fire gun at the bow and a three-pounder aft and a gray tender swung inboard amidships. Below, however, something of her former magnificence remained in the form of mahogany and egg-shell white and gold lines, but curtains and soft cushions and similar luxuries had been sternly abolished. She carried a personnel of fourteen, Naval Reserves all, for the Wanderer was listed as Number 167 of the Coast Patrol. Of the fourteen, two were commissioned officers, Lieutenant Hattuck and Ensign Stowell, five were petty officers and the rest were seamen, if we except that worthy and popular personage “Spuds,” whose real name was Flynn and whose rating was that of ship’s cook of the fourth class.
The commander was an ex-Navy man, his junior a yachtsman of experience. The chief machinist had come from a Great Lakes freighter and his mate had run a ferry in Portland Harbor. Some of the others were ex-service men, but the electrician was just out of the Radio School and three of the seamen had been swinging their hammocks in the barracks at Newport a month ago. Of the latter trio, one was a well set-up youth of barely eighteen, with a pair of very blue eyes and a good-looking face set in rather serious lines. There was something about the lad that impressed one with a sense of ability and determination; or perhaps it was a number of things, such as the firm molding of his chin, the straight set of his mouth, the back-throw of his broad shoulders or the quiet, direct way of speaking. In the ten days that the Wanderer had been on duty most of its occupants had come into nicknames, or had brought them with them, and this boy was known as “Chatty.” It was Cochran, GM2C, who had labeled him the first night at sea when, clustered in the tiny forward cabin that served as forecastle, those off watch had proceeded to get acquainted. The boy, a second class seaman, had had so little to say that the gunner’s mate had finally turned on him with a sarcastic: “Say, Jack, you’re a chatty guy, aren’t you? Come across with a few words, just to show there’s no hard feeling!” For the rest of the evening Cochran had addressed him as “Chatty” and the nickname had stuck. Now, aside from the officers, it is doubtful if anyone aboard knew the boy’s real name.
That one at least of the officers did was proved presently when Ensign Stowell turned from listening to Cochran’s lecture on the mechanism of the bow gun delivered to “Spuds,” Hanson, radio man, and Jaynes, chief machinist, and stopped in the lee of the deck-house where “Chatty” was leaning against the life-buoy that hung there and gazing thoughtfully across the sun-flecked water to the distant green expanse of Nantucket.
“Well, Troy,” said the Ensign, “seen any periscopes yet?”
Sighting a periscope was an over-used joke in the patrol service those days, but it usually brought a smile, just as it did now.
“Not yet, sir. I’d like to.”