Twilight crept out of the east over leagues of empty sea. The Antietam, patched and tinkered, hobbled slowly toward the oncoming darkness. A mile away the Gyandotte kept her company. A few miles astern a spreading patch of oil marked the grave of the U C 46. For the rest all was tumbling sea, gray green ahead, glinting with copper lights behind where the last rays of the sun touched it. Somewhere behind the darkening horizon lay the shores of France—and safety for the wounded, corpse-laden Antietam.
In a quiet niche of the lower deck a little group sat and talked after supper. Two of them sat very close together, a tall, thin man with grayish hair and a smiling, wistfully happy youth of eighteen. With them were Martin and Tip and Garey. Captain Troy had told his story for them and they had listened raptly. They had heard how, after the explosion of the first shell aboard the Jonas Clinton, he had come to himself in the water, and how, dazed by a blow on the head and consequently unconscious, he had vainly tried to get back to the schooner, and had only recovered full consciousness days later, when he found himself lying in a bunk in the submarine. They had treated him fairly enough and had landed him a week later on German soil. After that he had been taken, with many other prisoners of war, to a great prison camp in East Prussia. He had been there almost a year when he and nearly a hundred others of many nationalities, all of whom had been sailors, were packed into cars and shipped westward again. At some port—the Captain believed it to have been Bremerhaven—they had been given their choice of going onto the submarines or working on the fortifications on Heligoland. Captain Troy had hesitated but a moment. The sea was his home and, once afloat again, he believed he could make his escape. But there had never been a chance. He had been the only prisoner aboard and they had watched his every movement. The U C 46 had been out nearly three weeks before she had sighted her first prey, the Antietam. By that time Captain Troy had in a measure gained the confidence of the officers and crew and was given work in the engine room. His chance had come that day when the U-boat had gone to the surface and the crew had been serving the deck guns or watching the destroying of the merchantman. He had not tampered with the valves, for he had not known how to, but, finding a moment when he had the motor room to himself, he had managed to disconnect and short-circuit the main feed cable between battery and dynamo. He had expected to be found out and killed, but, with the Gyandotte’s shells raining about them, the officers of the U-boat had been too confused to trace the trouble. Finding that the motors would not work and that they could not submerge, they had blown out the tanks again and surrendered. Evidently no suspicion had attached to him, for he had been allowed to follow the others on deck, from where he had leaped overboard and tried to reach the cruiser.
“And now, sir,” asked Tip when the tale was ended, “what will you do?”
“Get back home as soon as I can,” replied the Captain unhesitatingly, “and find another ship. She’ll be steam this time, I guess. And she’ll have a gun and a gun-crew aboard her, and all I’m asking is that one of those dirty ‘fishes’ will poke her pipes up where I can see ’em!”
“I wish I was going to be along,” said Nelson. “I’d like to point that gun for you, dad!”
“Then come. I’d be mighty glad to have you, boy.”
But Nelson shook his head slowly. “I guess not, sir. I think I’ll stay right here. I suppose I couldn’t change if I wanted to, and I don’t want to. No, sir, I’ll stick and see it out on the Gyandotte.”
“Well, just as you say, Nelson. I’d like to have you with me, but you seem to fit pretty well where you are. Maybe it won’t be for long now, son. There’s got to be an end of it some time.”
“And it’s going to be the right end, when it comes,” said Tip emphatically. “No half-way business, Captain Troy. We’re going to fight Germany to her knees, sir!”