“It’s one chance in a hundred, Troy,” he said. “Take the average Yankee skipper and it’s dollars to doughnuts that he’s thin and tall and middle-aged. You see, about all the American prisoners the Germans have got so far are men they’ve taken off ships. It wouldn’t do any harm to hear what that Fritz has to say, but I wouldn’t hope for much. What camp was it?”
“He didn’t tell me. I was going to ask, but the guard butted in just then.”
“Well, you get speech with the Old Man and maybe he can fix it for you. He will if he can, anyway.”
But it wasn’t to be, and Nelson never saw the round-faced German from St. Louis again. The next morning, soon after daybreak, the Gyandotte pulled her anchors up from the bottom of the Gironde and picked her way down-stream and through the mine fields and headed back toward Queenstown.
Nevertheless, after his first disappointment, Nelson was happier for that chance meeting. Sometimes he told himself that it was silly to think that the German had really had speech with his father, but, as drowning persons clutch at straws, so Nelson clutched at that little bit of encouragement. It made life far happier, in any case, and now that Martin was gone life wasn’t terribly joyous.
For a month longer the Gyandotte had her base at Queenstown and spent more than half her time at sea convoying transports and great cargo ships back and forth through the danger zone. Six days outside followed by three days in port was the usual rule. Excitement was always just over the horizon, but seldom appeared to cheer the monotony. Only once was the Gyandotte engaged with a U-boat, and that was a long-distance affair that netted nothing save disappointment. The German submarine was not anxious for battle and, after firing four shells wide of the mark, quickly submerged. The Gyandotte’s fire was no more deadly than the U-boat’s, nor did the depth bombs which were later dropped from the cruiser succeed any better than the shells. All the comfort the Gyandotte could gain from that brief and unsatisfactory encounter lay in the fact that the tramp steamer which had been the U-boat’s intended prey was rescued.
On every trip there were alarms, and sometimes a periscope or conning tower was actually sighted. But always the sub dived before she was in range. Nelson found himself sympathizing with the destroyer men who chanted a ditty to the effect that:
“We joined the Limie ‘gobs,’ also,
To battle with the Hun,
And now we’re waiting patiently