CHAPTER XIV

TEAM WORK BETWEEN SKY AND WATER

From mere specks the oncoming objects grew larger and larger, until, to the unaided eye, they stood plainly revealed as hydroairplanes.

They were British, too, and built especially for the purpose of detecting and destroying submarines. Tommy Atkins calls this type of airplane a “blimp.”

From high up in the air observers are able, when the light is right, to see a submarine at a depth of about one hundred feet below the surface. Having detected a submerged enemy craft the hydroairplane flies over it, dropping a bomb.

“That they can see a submersible at such a depth makes me wonder why the hydroairplane doesn’t take the place of the destroyer,” observed Lieutenant Curtin.

“The crew of a hydroairplane can see the submarine at a greater depth under water than can a destroyer,” Dave explained, “but owing to the height at which they are obliged to observe they cannot drop their bombs as accurately.”

“Then the chaps yonder are not likely to be of much service to us to-day.”

Coming still nearer, one of the hydroairplanes made signals which the flagship of the destroyer flotilla answered. Then through the fleet ran the signalled message:

“When possible the hydroairplanes will destroy enemy boats by bombing. A smoke bomb in the air will denote position of submarine at that moment. Destroyer commanders will act accordingly.”

“Then the British flyers yonder will fight on their own account, or scout for us, as seems best,” Dave announced.

One of the great flying craft neared the position into which the “Logan” was steaming. Suddenly she swooped a bit lower and let go an object that dropped fast, going out of sight under the water.

There was a turmoil ahead among the waves. As the destroyer moved forward those on her decks saw oil spreading over the water.

“Signal a hit, then follow the airship,” Dave directed.

Moving, now, no faster than did the destroyer, the hydroairplane scurried about through the air, swooping, banking, diving and rising. At last, apparently she located another submarine. A bomb dropped, but Dave, driving his ship through the water after the explosion, found no tell-tale oil signs.

“Wide of the mark,” signalled the Britisher.

Presently the hydroairplane again caught sight of the prey it was stalking. Another bomb fell, but still no hit.

“We’ll fly just over the enemy,” wirelessed the hydroairplane. “At the instant you’re fairly over we’ll signal you.”

“That’s the right way to hunt,” declared Danny Grin, under his breath.

Acting on the suggestion Darrin steamed in until he was directly under the air craft. The signal came. Dave ordered a bomb dropped, and steamed rapidly away from the place of the coming explosion. Then he swung around, driving back at full speed.

“A hit,” signalled the airship.

“Easy, when you do all the work,” Darrin signalled back. “Be good enough to find us another mouthful.”

By this time the cannonading on all sides had become incessant. Despite the cloudiness of the night, the day had turned out bright, in a season when bright days do not abound in these waters. On such a day, though the periscope metal is dull, the drops of water adhering to the shaft make it a fairly bright mark.

Wherever a periscope showed, the handlers of more than one gun took a chance at it. Several broad patches of oil marked the graves of Hun submersibles and their crews.

The wake made by a conning tower was sure to lead a destroyer away in pursuit of that same tower. The hydroairplanes followed many of these wakes, in nearly every instance locating the sea monsters for the destroyers.

Besides, the torpedo trails in themselves served to lead the destroyers to many an enemy craft.

“This is the right combination,” Dan muttered to Lieutenant Curtin. “Airship and destroyer combined have an advantage that puts the submersible on the run or out of commission altogether. It takes the credit away from the destroyer too.”

“I don’t care where the credit goes, if the pests are sunk,” Curtin answered. “If we had had these airships yesterday we wouldn’t have lost the ‘Castle City.’”

“But the hydroairplanes do not go so far out as we were sailing yesterday,” Dalzell reminded the watch officer.

“I know it, but I believe that a type could be made that would have no difficulty in crossing the ocean from shore to shore.”

Now the “Logan’s” guns were at it again, with a barking din that made conversation difficult.

By this time only one hydroairplane remained with the head of the fleet, which was believed to have passed through the submarine ambush. The others and a decided majority of the destroyers were now maneuvering anywhere from the middle to the rear end of the transports.

Finally the fight centered on the tail end of the transport fleet. Here the submarines were doing their best to “get” a transport.

Another hour, and the fleet believed itself to be clear of that submarine concentration. Not that vigilance was relaxed, however. No troopship had been struck to-day, but the fine work might be easily undone by carelessness on the part of either hydroairplane or destroyer commanders.

Two hours after the attack began Darrin received signalled orders to return to his former position in the escort line.

“Thus endeth the second chapter—apparently,” commented Danny Grin.

During this engagement, as on the day before, the soldiers who crowded the destroyer had been ordered from the decks during the fight. They were now notified that they might come out.

It was one o’clock in the afternoon when the leading hydroairplane signalled a report that the sea ahead was strewn with wreckage. Ship after ship sailed through this mute evidence of the enemy’s presence and detestable work. Spars with clinging cordage floated by. Wooden hatchcovers, overturned boats, oars, chairs, wooden boxes, bales of soaked cotton and what-not were in the litter that strewed the sea over a broad area.

One of the overturned lifeboats was overhauled. The name on her stern showed that she belonged to a nine-thousand-ton freighter, carrying a naval gun crew and fore and after guns.

“The loss of the ship is bad enough,” said Dave, soberly, “but there is nothing to indicate how many lives were lost.”

An hour later, however, three boats, containing some forty men, women and children, were overhauled. The freighter had carried passengers.

When the lifeboats had been overhauled, and the occupants taken off by the destroyer “John Adams,” the shivering wretches had a sad tale to tell. It was at that moment believed, and afterwards confirmed, that some sixty persons had lost their lives.

“Even after we pulled away in the small boats,” sobbed an American woman, “the brutes shelled us.”

“A cook in our boat was hit,” a man took up the narrative. “The shell struck him at the waist, hurling his head and trunk overboard and leaving his legs in the boat. And a child’s head was shot from its shoulders. You noticed the splashes of blood in our boat? I’m fifty-nine years old, but if any recruiting officer in four armies will accept me I’m ready to enlist and fight these beasts—navy or army!”

“And I’m going to enlist!” quivered a young boatswain’s mate. “I can’t get into the trenches soon enough. I won’t take any German prisoners at the front, either,” he added, significantly.

Late in the afternoon, not many miles from the submarine base, French and American destroyers waited to escort the transport fleet the rest of the way to France. At about that same hour the evening papers in Berlin declared that an American transport fleet had been encountered, and that nine of the ships, containing more than twenty thousand American soldiers, had been sent to the bottom. The truth was that one transport had been sunk and eleven Americans killed and wounded!

Many of the destroyers that had brought in the transport fleet to the point where the new escort awaited it, now turned seaward once more. Dave Darrin and the “Logan,” however, were under orders to go to the base port, for the trial of Ober-Lieutenant von Bechtold was close at hand.

When Dave and Dan went ashore they took with them Seaman Jordan under close guard.

After slipping that note to Seaman Reardon and then receiving no further results from it, Jordan had suddenly suspected the ruse that was likely to put his neck in a noose. So now, as he went ashore, that young seaman was gloomy and pallid.

Hardly had Darrin stepped on the wharf when a waiting jackie saluted smartly.

“Why, hullo, Runkle!” cried Dave, halting, for this sailorman had been of great assistance to him in former undertakings.

“I’m glad to see you, sir,” exclaimed Runkle, who bore the device of a boatswain’s mate. “I thought you were in these waters, sir.”

“And I wish I had you on my ship, Runkle,” Dave went on, earnestly.

“Begging your pardon, sir, I see that you have Hartmann a prisoner.”

“Who?”

“Hartmann.”

“Do you mean the sailor under guard?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You call him Hartmann?”

“Yes, sir—Gus Hartmann—old Jake Hartmann’s son. I ought to know him. We hail from the same home town.”

“Speak to him,” murmured Dave, then turned to the prisoner with:

“Jordan, here’s a boatswain’s mate who says your name is Hartmann.”

“It must be so, sir, if he says so,” returned Jordan, sulkily.

“Then you admit your name to be Hartmann?”

“No, sir; but I can see that I am not to get any show whatever, so I may as well give up hope.”

“Runkle,” said Dave, after signalling to the guard to take the prisoner on, “I shall have to arrange for you to be on hand. That young man will undoubtedly be tried for treason. He enlisted under an American name, and your testimony that his real name is Hartmann will be valuable for the prosecution.”

“If young Hartmann is guilty of treason,” Runkle burst out hotly, “I would be glad enough to have the job of drowning him myself.”

“Is Jordan, or Hartmann, a citizen of the United States?”

“He was born in America, I understand, sir, but his father was born in Germany, and, so I was told, never took out naturalization papers.”

When the accused sailor had been locked up, and three secret service men came on board, Dave Darrin aided them in searching for more of the bottles that glowed when dropped in water.

Jordan, or Hartmann, had been employed at times under the ship’s painter. In the paint storeroom the secret service men, after some search, found a board in the floor, back of some boxes, that could be pried up, moving on a hinge. In a hiding place underneath were four bottles identical with the bottle which Darrin had recovered from the water.

Reporting to American Base Headquarters, Dave was much astonished to find orders there relieving him from command of the “Logan.”

“I didn’t know my work had been as bad as that,” Darrin smiled.

“Not bad work at all,” replied the staff officer who had handed him the order. “In the first place, you’ll be here to attend the court-martial of Ober-Lieutenant von Bechtold. Then there’s the case of your own seaman, Jordan, or whatever his name may be. You’ll have to testify at his court-martial, too. After both trials are over you will be ordered to the new duty to be given you.”

“I don’t suppose that I am expected to inquire what that new duty is?”

“As yet I cannot tell you about the new duty.”

“Who will command the ‘Logan,’ if I may ask?”

“Curtin. He has just received his step, and is now a lieutenant-commander.”

“And I have my step, too!” cried Danny Grin, coming up behind his chum and waving an official looking envelope. “I’m a lieutenant-commander. Been detached from service on the ‘Logan’ and must await new orders.”

“That goes for both of you,” said the staff officer smilingly.

“I wish I had a line on the new duty, though,” said Dalzell, as he turned away.

“So do I,” half-sighed Dave. “But wishing doesn’t do much for a chap in the Service.”

Turning, they walked briskly toward the naval club frequented by British and American naval officers. There, by good luck, they found Curtin, who had just come ashore.

“There are orders for you at the admiral’s office,” Dave reported. “I may as well tell you, Curtin, that Dalzell and I are detached for other duties; that you have gotten your step to a lieutenant-commandership and that you are to swing the ‘Logan’ from now on. Congratulations, old man! And I know you’ll make a record at your new post, just as you have made in your lower grades.”

“And remember, my boy,” grinned Dan, “we won’t be a bit jealous, no matter if you succeed in sinking the Kaiser’s entire submarine fleet!”

Curtin’s face showed his joy. He immediately wrote and submitted to the censor a cablegram informing his wife that he had been promoted and given a command. Further information he could not send.

“What are we going to do this evening, Danny-boy?” Dave inquired.

“I don’t know, but I expect my activities will be confined to guessing what my new line of service is to be.”

“If Curtin has attained to independent command, there’s a big chance that you will also,” Dave observed.

“That would separate us,” muttered Dan, looking almost alarmed. “David, little giant, I don’t believe I’ll be able to serve as well if I’m not on the same craft with you.”

“Nonsense!” laughed Darrin.

“Fact!” Dan insisted.

“Then what are you going to do when you become an admiral?”

“I’ll have lots of time to think that over,” retorted Dalzell.

Three days later the von Bechtold trial came off before a court-martial of British naval officers. The German commander was found guilty of having landed in Ireland as a spy, and was condemned to be shot, a sentence soon afterward carried out. He would give no information about the civilian found dead on the submarine, but the stranger was believed to have been a civilian government official from Berlin.

Right after that Hartmann, alias Jordan, was placed on trial before an American court-martial on a charge of treason. His trial was short because the prisoner broke down and confessed his identity as a German spy. He implicated two German spies then in Ireland, both of whom had been masquerading as Swedish ship-brokers. These two latter were captured, tried by the British naval authorities, and sentenced to death. Jordan was ordered shot, and soon afterward paid the penalty of his crime before a firing squad.

Runkle, who had been a witness against Hartmann, alias Jordan, was now detached from the ship on which he had been serving, and was placed on waiting orders.

And then, one morning, Dan broke in on Darrin at the naval club, his eyes gleaming.

“I’ve got my command and my sailing orders!” he shouted, gleefully.

“What ship?” Dave asked, springing up.

“The ‘Prince’!” Dalzell exclaimed, jubilantly.

“Never heard of that craft,” Darrin returned, his eyes opening wide. “She doesn’t sail from this port, does she?”

“No,” and Danny Grin, his mouth wreathed in smiles, named a near-by port.

“When do you take her over?”

“To-morrow.”

“And sail?”

“Same day.”

Darrin gripped his chum’s hand, murmuring:

“I wish you all the success in the world, Danny-boy,” he called, heartily.

“How would you like to go with me?” Dalzell continued, eagerly.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“About taking you as a passenger,” Dan went on. “You’ll go as my guest, if you favor me to that extent. I spoke to the flag lieutenant about it, and he said that your orders would not be ready for two or three weeks yet, and that you will have plenty of time to sail with me if you so desire, and be back in time for your new detail. Do you want to go?”