“’Cause when there’s something doing I want to be in it. No sitting around on a stool for mine, getting my head knocked off and jabbing out, ‘Shell has just entered radio room, killing operator. Good bye!’ That may be heroic and get your picture in the paper, but it don’t get you much else!”
The Wanderer left Dumpling Rock Light on her starboard and swung her bow more to the west. By nine o’clock, down in the “forecastle,” they were predicting a visit to New York or Brooklyn, and Perry, first-class shipfitter, was licking his lips in anticipation.
“I’ve got friends down there,” he said, half closing his eyes and swaying ecstatically back and forth on the edge of a bunk in time to the rocking of the boat. “They’ll ask me to dinner. There’ll be chicken, like as not, and lots of pie. Maybe two or three kinds of pie.” He looked around to see how the announcement affected the others and was disappointed. “Maybe lemon pie with suds atop,” he added desperately.
Lanky Staples grunted. “You can have all the pie you want,” he said. “Me for a real feed on Broadway. I know the place, too. A stack of wheats as high as that——” He held his hands some fourteen inches apart—“and about a pint of maple syrup, and two or three cups of real coffee, not the stuff Spuds gives us——”
“Yeah, I know the place, too,” interrupted the cook sarcastically. “You get a couple of flies in the syrup an’ they don’t charge you a cent for ’em! You wouldn’t know good coffee from a cup of bilge water, you long-legged giraffe!”
“Think we’ll get liberty?” asked Endicott longingly. “I got folks out to Flatbush.”
“We won’t get that much liberty,” replied Lanky, gently. “Maybe we’ll get a day. Why don’t you telegraph your folks to come half-way and meet you?”
Their dreams of the gayety of New York were doomed, however, to a sad awakening. When the morning watch went on at four the Wanderer was swinging at anchor in a choppy sea with nothing in sight in the gray darkness but a stretch of ghostly breakers a half-mile to the west. As the light grew a beach became visible beyond the surf and, finally, a low island stretched before them. Nelson, coming on deck at eight, viewed it curiously. It appeared to be about a half-mile long and, he guessed, scarcely more than a quarter of that in width. At no place did it rise more than ten feet above the ocean. In the gray, cold light of a cloudy day it was about as desolate and lonely a spot as one could imagine. Not even a hut broke the monotony of the sky-line, but at the farther end a cluster of low, wind-tossed, misshapen trees made a darker blot on the expanse of sand and beach grass. There were low bushes here and there; bayberry, probably, and sweet-gale; and in one place, not far from the Wanderer’s unquiet anchorage, a ledge cropped a few feet above the sand. Gulls fluttered over the island, but they constituted the only signs of life.
“What do you make of it, Chatty?” asked Cochran, gunner’s mate, ranging alongside. Nelson shook his head. “Doesn’t look as if we’d come all this way to picnic on the beach, does it?” He looked around in all directions. “Where are we? That’s what I’d like to know. We’ve been pretty well over these waters for a week or so, but I’ll swear to goodness I never saw that cheerful looking reef before.”
“Nor I,” said Nelson. “It must be one of the Elizabeths, don’t you think?”