[There was a crash as the shell sped from the gun.]
The Gyandotte didn’t escape unscathed, for the enemy scored seven hits during the battle. One of the cruiser’s guns was early put out of action and a shell bored its way into a coal bunker and caused devastation below decks. That the Gyandotte presented only her bow to the enemy saved her from worse treatment. Less than an hour after the action had begun, the enemy ship signaled surrender. She was then in a sinking condition, with her starboard rail well under water. Firing ceased at three minutes past four and the Gyandotte, her men waving and cheering, steamed slowly toward the defeated enemy and began to lower her boats.
CHAPTER IX
OFF FOR THE OTHER SIDE
The captured steamship proved to be the Mahlow, before the war a French passenger ship plying between Marseilles and Spanish ports under the name of the Golfe du Lion. She was of some thirty-seven hundred tons. She had been armed with small caliber guns in profusion, for her main deck fairly bristled with them and a multiplicity of ports had been cut on the lower deck. The latter were not apparent when closed, and, as the deck guns were easily hidden, she doubtless looked quite harmless when posing as a merchantman. She was credited by Lloyd’s with being a fast ship, and her inability to get away from the Gyandotte was later explained by her engineer force as due to poor coal taken aboard at a South American port. She had been at sea two months and had in that time caused considerable havoc from Rio de Janeiro north to the Caribbean. When taken she had on board twenty-six men of the crews of the San Felipe and a second vessel, both destroyed within the past three weeks. These men, however, seemed scarcely more pleased to reach the deck of the Gyandotte than did the bulk of the German sailors. About half of the Mahlow’s complement was taken aboard the cruiser and the rest was taken care of by the United States gunboat Hastings, which appeared shortly after the surrender. The Hastings’ men were a disgruntled lot, for the tiny gunboat had nearly ripped her seams for six hours in an effort to get to the scene. The Mahlow had twenty-two dead and a score injured, while aboard her adversary eight had been killed and nine wounded. Of the dead five were of the crew of Number One gun and the rest were of the engineering force. Among the Mahlow’s wounded was her executive officer, a young junior lieutenant, who later died in hospital. What happened to the other prisoners Nelson never learned. The last he saw of them was at Norfolk two days later when they were marched away under a guard of marines.
The Mahlow was hopelessly battered and sank about six o’clock, rolling over like a dead whale just before she went under. Her officers looked on unemotionally from the decks of the two enemy ships, seeming to those who watched them more relieved than sorry to see the last of the raider. To Nelson fell the duty of guarding a squad of the prisoners the next day. The men were herded in two lots on the lower deck and the officers occupied fairly comfortable quarters aft. Many of the prisoners had been supplied with clothing, for when taken aboard they were in some cases in tatters. Nelson found that nearly half of the German sailors spoke English enough to be understood. To him they seemed a rather childish lot, more concerned with the rations dealt to them than with their recent misfortunes or their ultimate fate. There were exceptions, however, notably one dark-visaged man who wore the insignia of a machinist’s mate. This man refused to eat any food for the first twenty-four hours and spent his time reviling his captors and, or so it appeared, his companions. The latter seemed in fear of him, but the fact didn’t keep them from grinning at him behind his back.
The ship’s doctor and assistants were busy all the way across to Norfolk, for some of the wounds sustained by the injured men of the German ship were serious. The bodies of the dead aboard the Mahlow had gone down with the ship, but on stretchers, under sheets of sailcloth the Gyandotte’s dead went back to their own country for burial. Nelson couldn’t help reflecting that the shell that had wrecked Number One gun might just as easily have chosen Number Four, in which case it was probable that he would have been lying quiet under a tarpaulin or groaning in the sick bay at this moment. But he didn’t let his thoughts dwell overmuch on that subject. Life was a thing one risked when one joined the country’s forces in time of war, and whether one was to die or come safely through was up to the Great Commander.
At Norfolk the Gyandotte underwent repairs and lay in the harbor four days with steam up. Liberty was granted the second day, but not after, and life aboard threatened to grow monotonous in spite of drills and duties. The newspapers made all they could of the action off Bermuda, but, as the Navy Department had given out but the barest facts, there was little to build a story on. Nelson made friends of a sort and picked up all the information and lore obtainable on the subject of guns, ammunition, explosives and fire control. Garey, gun captain of Number Four, was the chief victim of Nelson’s passion for knowledge, and Garey, who wore two service stripes and the Navy “E,” and who was an untalkative chap ordinarily, spent hours at various times on the boy’s enlightenment. Nelson soon had a large fund of information on many subjects concerned with gunnery. He learned the why and wherefore of gas check pads and rings, and how to seat them, learned how to clear powder chamber and mushroom head of oil before firing, how to sponge and re-oil after, learned that anyone using emery or brick dust on certain parts was inherently a criminal who would murder his poor old blind grandmother, learned how to find leaks in the recoil cylinders and how to refill them and much more severely practical information, some of which he had known and forgotten and much of which was new to him.
He dipped into the subject of explosives, which he found intensely interesting, and borrowed a book about them from the ship’s library and, I suspect, made rather a nuisance of himself during those four days at anchor and for several days after.
Norfolk was a busy scene just then and scarcely a day passed that didn’t witness the arrival or departure of one or more warships. There were submarines there, too, and Nelson often wondered if Martin Townsend was aboard one of them. On the morning of the fourth day of the Gyandotte’s stay there was much activity in the submarine basin, followed just before noon by a wholesale exodus of the little underwater craft. They went sliding past the cruiser on their way out to sea, one after another, until Nelson had counted eight of them. Somehow and somewhere the rumor started that they were going across under their own steam, which rumor, whether true or not, aroused much enthusiasm on the Gyandotte, and as the subs filed past they were roundly cheered.