“Is it?” he asked interestedly. “I’ve heard of Hatteras.”
“You’re in luck only to have heard of it,” grumbled the other. “Mostly you feel it! We’re getting into it now. This is the roughest stretch between Cape Cod and the Florida Keys. You want to try it when there’s a good off-shore gale if you want some real fun! This your first voyage?”
“My first in the Navy, except knocking around for a month or so on a patrol boat up north. I’ve never been south before. I suppose you’ve been in the service a long time.”
“Three years,” answered the yeoman nonchalantly yet proudly. “This is my fourth ship. I was on the old Missouri first. Then the Montana, and after that the Tacoma. Now it’s this old tub.”
“Oh, is the Gyandotte a tub?” asked Nelson with a smile.
“Sure she is. She’s sixteen years old and was out of commission until the war started. They’ve tinkered her up so she’ll hold together for a year or so, maybe. They say she’s got new engines, but I don’t know if it’s so. Reckon the Old Man’s keeping her close to shore in case she falls apart.”
Nelson looked through the port and across the leagues of tumbling muddy-gray water. “At that it would be a long swim,” he said with a smile. “Do you know where we’re going?”
The yeoman nodded above his folded arms. “Bahamas and around there. Anyway, that’s what I heard. The papers had a piece about a German raider off Great Abaco last week and I reckon we’re sent down to have a look-see. But, shucks, there isn’t a German ship this side of the Azores, unless it’s a sub that’s missed her way. We’ll go down there and cruise around for a month without getting foot on shore and then waddle home again and go into dry dock for repairs. It’s sure punk luck, getting stuck on this old spile-driver.”
“You don’t think, then, that they’ll send the Gyandotte across to the other side?”
“Her? She couldn’t do it, not unless they towed her,” was the contemptuous reply. “If you wanted to get across you’d better have stuck to your patrol boat. They’re sending those over all the time. Well, I’ve got to be stirring.”