Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns Part 16

He grasped the cylinder as he fell, but it was s.n.a.t.c.hed out of his arms by the next plunge of the vessel. Seven Knott got to his knees and sought to seize the bomb again when it charged back across the deck.

The thing seemed actually to evade him; and swinging at an unexpected angle as Seven Knott threw himself desperately forward, the heavy cylinder banged the boatswain's mate on the head.

The man was knocked down by the blow. He suddenly straightened out and then relaxed, at full length, upon the sliding deck. Like an inanimate lump his body followed the runaway bomb, but more slowly, to the lower rail.

Again the deck heaved upon that side, and the cylinder roared across it.

It missed the unconscious petty officer. At that instant Whistler Morgan made his leap.

He had taken time to study the angle at which the bomb was rolling; he fell upon and grappled it as though it were a football.

"Oh! Oh! _Colodia!_" yelled his three mates in wild excitement.

"Hurray!"

"Well done, _Colodia_!" echoed a voice behind them, and Ensign MacMasters appeared from the after hatchway, with the commanding officer of the S. P. 888 in his wake.

Some of the chaser's crew were now approaching the scene from forward.

Ensign Filson leaped for the safety pin that had been jerked out of the depth bomb just as Phil Morgan, on his knees, set the bomb up on its flat end.

"Good boy, Whistler!" shrieked Torry.

Ensign Filson reached the spot and slipped the plug into place. Between them they held the bomb upright on its flat end until the seamen could pa.s.s a line around it.

The dangerous thing had yet to be held right there until Lieutenant Perkins ordered the submarine chaser headed up into the sea. Then the bomb could be removed to a place of safety.

The whole affair had occupied seconds, that is all. But all felt as though an hour had pa.s.sed!

"Good boy, Morgan!" declared Ensign MacMasters, his face s.h.i.+ning with approval. "Is the mate hurt badly?"

The petty officer was still unconscious. They picked him up to carry him below. Then the whole crowd began to cheer, and the officers did not forbid it. Even Lieutenant Perkins wrung Phil Morgan's hand as he stood abashed in the center of the congratulatory group on the quarter deck.

"I'd be proud to have you as one of my own crew, Morgan," said the commander of the submarine chaser. "Ensign MacMasters is to be congratulated that he takes aboard the _Kennebunk_ such an altogether admirable young man. You will hear from this, Master Morgan. You deserve the Medal of Honor and whatever other honor and special emolument it is in the power of the Secretary of the Navy to award."

He turned to MacMasters: "And your boatswain's mate deserves mention, too. That he did not succeed in doing what this young man accomplished, was not for lack of courage to attempt it. They are both men that the Navy may be proud of. With a will, men!" and he led in another cheer.

"Oi, oi, Whistler!" whispered Ikey when the greatly abashed Morgan went forward, "you'll be an admiral next. If you beat me to it, what will my papa and mama say?"

CHAPTER XIII

THE KENNEBUNK SAILS

Put back upon her course, the S. P. 888 was soon beating her way through the cross-seas--"bucking the briny" the boys called it--toward the port from which the _Kennebunk_ was to sail in the morning.

It was a wild night. The peril through which the s.h.i.+p's company had just pa.s.sed, and from which Philip Morgan had been able to save them, made the threatening aspects of sea and air seem small indeed. Let the wind shriek through the wire stays and the waves roar and burst about and over the submarine chaser as they listed, none of these dangers equaled that of the depth charge which had run amuck.

Seven Knott was brought to his senses in a short time, and, after staring about a bit, murmured:

"Well, I didn't get it, did I?"

"Not your fault, my man," declared Ensign MacMasters cheerfully. "Wait till Lieutenant Commander Lang, of the _Colodia_, hears about it. You have done well, Hertig. He will be proud of you."

At that the petty officer smiled, for he was inordinately fond of the commander of the destroyer.

Mr. MacMasters made it plain to the boatswain's mate that apprentice seaman Morgan had saved him, as well as the rest of the s.h.i.+p's company, from disaster, and Hansie Hertig grinned broadly.

"That Whistler--he can do something besides make tunes with his mouth, eh?" he observed.

Most of the crew of the submarine chaser, as well as the members of the squad going aboard the _Kennebunk_, personally congratulated Whistler on his courage and quick action.

"This is an awfully small boat, Torry," he complained to his chum.

"There isn't any place for a fellow to get away by himself. There are too many folks here."

He did not take kindly to so much approbation. He felt that Lieutenant Perkins had already said enough.

Although Whistler and his mates had no duties to perform on the S. P.

888, they did not turn in that night at all. To tell the truth the chaser was making an awfully rough pa.s.sage of it, and although they were inured to the discomforts of their beloved _Colodia_ in stormy weather, this was even worse.

They kept out of the way of the watch on duty, but remained for the most part on deck, as they were free to do. The watchlights on the sh.o.r.e, those in the lighthouses and the lamps in certain seaside hamlets, gave them their position from time to time. They were aware long before daylight that they were drawing near to the harbor mouth of the port where the superdreadnaught lay.

It was blowing a whole gale (in nautical language, sixty-five miles or more an hour) and as the submarine chaser was meeting the seas on a slant, it might almost as well have been a hurricane. As Frenchy said:

"The smaller the boat, the bigger the wind seems. And a 'happy thought'

like this chaser will kick up like a frisky colt in a dead calm, I do believe. By St. Patrick's piper that played the last snake out of Ireland! I'll be a week gittin' over this pitchin'. What d'you say, Mister Torrance, acushla?"

"Don't blather me!" growled Torry.

"Hast thou a feeling that all is not well in the daypartment av the intayrior?" teased the Irish lad, who would joke at all times and upon the most serious subjects.

"Torry does look a bit green about the gills," put in Whistler.

"Serves him right for eatin' crab-meat salad there at Yancey's,"

declared Ikey Rosenmeyer. "That's nice chow to go to sea on, yet."

"I don't have to ask you what to eat," said Torry gruffly.

"Oi, oi! That's right," agreed Ikey. "Just the same I could tell you lots better than that."

The boys had sampled the cook's coffee, but not much else, since embarking on the S. P. 888. It was true that the pitching of the chaser was not conducive to a ravenous appet.i.te.

"If Uncle kept all his bluejackets on these submarine chasers," said Whistler, "he'd save money on grub. I wonder these fellows," referring to the crew of the S. P. 888, "manage to keep up with their rations."

The little craft swerved at last and took the waves directly astern as she ran sh.o.r.eward. The mouth of the harbor opened up to her, and in the gray light, as the chaser shot in between the headlands, almost smothered in foam, the men and boys on her deck sighted through the haze the towering hull of the great battles.h.i.+p.

"There she is!" gasped Frenchy. "My! isn't she a monster?"

"She's a regular leviathan," agreed Whistler.