CHAPTER XIX
OFF HELIGOLAND
The Gyandotte steamed out of Queenstown one October twilight in company with four destroyers and headed southeast, a departure from the usual proceeding that excited comment and conjecture from one end of the ship to the other. The bulletin was eagerly searched, but the Old Man had nothing to say as yet as regarded destination or duty. It was not until morning and the Gyandotte, still in company with the destroyers, was seen to be off the southern coast of Cornwall that the unprecedented was known to have happened. So far the Gyandotte had never dipped her nose into the waters of the English Channel. Few of the American patrol boats had, either, for their sphere of activity was principally to the south and west. Naturally the rumor that they were to rendezvous with the British Grand Fleet somewhere in the North Sea for an attack in force on a German naval base became current, mainly because that was the thing that every man’s heart longed for. All that day they steamed slowly through treacherous waters, waters far more populous than those they had been frequenting. Mine layers and sweepers, sea-planes, torpedo boats, cargo boats, destroyers, chasers—they saw them all. They passed within sight of Plymouth and the Isle of Wight, with Portsmouth hiding around the corner of it, and finally Eastbourne, and by that time the coast of France was clear to the eastward, and a Channel steamer plowed past them quite as though war was a thing of the past. The cliffs of Dover loomed up toward evening, and it was then that Nelson saw mine sweepers actually at work for the first time. Directed by a saucy little patrol yacht, the two blunt-nosed trawlers steamed westward on parallel courses, a long cable connecting them. Although Nelson watched eagerly as long as they were within sight they apparently found no mines. They were still at it when distance and twilight hid them from view. Some time that night the Gyandotte emerged into the North Sea, for the next morning she was rolling merrily out of sight of land and the quartet of destroyers were rolling even more merrily ahead and astern, stretched out for nearly a mile. Nelson thrilled at the thought that somewhere to the east of them was Heligoland and the entrance to the Kiel Canal and the German navy lying behind its network of mines in the land-locked harbors. Heligoland was a word to conjure with, and Nelson peered into a typical North Sea mist as though he meant to penetrate to the distant rock by sheer force of will.
“I bet you it makes England sick,” remarked Garey, when Nelson mentioned the German naval base. “She swapped that rock for something, I forgot what, and I guess she wishes now she’d kept it, all right. Gee, it’s a cinch for Germany! They say she spent fifty million dollars on it, making fortifications and so on. I’ll bet Gibraltar hasn’t a thing on Heligoland nowadays. Hundreds of eleven-inch guns they’ve got there, they say. A lot of good it would be for a fleet to try to shell that! And a fine chance it would have of getting around it. Yah, that man Salisbury played the goat, all right, when he engineered that deal! Wouldn’t you think the English would have been afraid to give up an outpost like that?”
“Yes, but suppose England still owned it,” objected Nelson. “Could she have held it today? It’s almost within gun range of the shore, isn’t it?”
“About forty miles, I guess. Sure, she could have held it. All she had to do was fortify it just as Germany has done——”
“But maybe Germany would have objected to another power fortifying a place so close.”
“Suppose she did object? What could she have done about it?”
“Why, I don’t know. Appeal to the Hague——”
“Hah! You make me laugh,” jeered Garey. “If England had kept that rock in the sea this war would be over.”
“Really? Why?”