The officer laughed. “By Jove, so would I! But I guess you and I’ll have to cross the briny before we have any such luck as that. You came from the Newport Station, didn’t you? What do they say there about getting across? The Reserves, I mean.”
“A good many have gone, sir. There was a detail of seventy left the day I did. They were to go to Halifax and board a transport for the other side. Nothing was known beyond that, but the general idea was that they were to be sprinkled around the destroyers over there.”
The officer sighed. “I’ve done my best to make it, but this is what I drew. Oh, well, something may happen even here. You know the Smith’s men stick to it that they dodged a torpedo off the Maine coast the other day.”
The boy smiled again, and the Ensign, watching, chuckled. “Just my idea,” he agreed, although the other hadn’t spoken. “Still, it would be something to even think you saw a ‘fish,’ eh? There’d be a dime’s worth of excitement in that! How did you happen to go into the Reserves, Troy?”
“I wanted to get into action, sir, and the folks I talked with thought I’d get there quicker if I enlisted in the Reserves than in the Navy. I’m not so sure now, though. Maybe I made a mistake.” The Wanderer called gruffly twice to a tug ahead and the tug unhurriedly replied. Ensign Stowell spoke to the man at the wheel, through the open door of the house, and turned back again.
“Blessed if I can tell you,” he answered. “Looks to me, though, as if they were going to need every man they can get before this shindy is over. Well I hope they’ll shove me over before long! I didn’t count on serving in a two-by-twice motor boat. Have you been to sea much?”
“I made two trips on a sailing vessel, sir, with my father. The last time was in the Fall. The Germans got her.”
“Got her! You mean sank her? Where was this? What ship was she?”
“The Jonas Clinton, sir. We were shelled about five hundred miles from the coast on the voyage back.”
“The Clinton! Of course, I remember that! So you were the captain’s son that was picked up by a British destroyer, eh? I remember reading about it. That was in November, wasn’t it?”