The Cruise of the Dry Dock

When the American pushed outside with his burden, a breeze swept the deck of the _Vulcan_ with an unexpected coolness. The vibrations had almost ceased, but there was a slight h...

Convinced that there was nothing else to be done on the big dock, Madden went to his cabin, threw himself on the bunk, and there tumbled and tossed through the stormy night, sle...

A temporary rudder had been installed on the unwieldy dry dock, and each twenty-four hours Mate Malone detailed seven men to stand watch, which gave the regulation dog watch, al...

By this time the cheers had become general and the conversation broke off. An enormous floating dry dock, towed by an ocean-going tug, slowly drew away from the ship yards on th...

Instantly Leonard understood the temptation into which Caradoc had unwittingly wandered. A strong odor of wine pervaded the cabin, and Smith's knock-out had given his nerves a g...

Fortunately for the British Towing and Shipping Company, the next few days were glassy calm, and as the _Vulcan_ coughed along the South England coast, the crew had fair opportu...

Etched against the horizon lay a stumpy masted vessel that seemed as still and dead as ocean that rotted around it. She had not a sail aloft nor a plume of smoke in her funnel....

Trembling all over, Madden gained the barrel and stepped through a niche in its side. He stared through the brilliant, hot colors, but no rushing horde of monsters met his eyes.

Caradoc lay stretched out in a deck chair, on top of the broad wall of the dock, a cool dawn breeze playing over him. He looked across the motley sea toward an opalescent sky re...

Heat, that grew more terrific as the dock drifted southward; hunger, that gnawed like rats at the empty stomachs of the crew; withering heat, aching hunger, growing despair--tha...

Fifteen minutes later a dozen men were kicking exhaustedly in the water on the port side of the _Vulcan_, shouting in urgent voices for ropes. A few were already clambering up t...

Both heads just managed to squeeze in and the two men stared at Malone as if he were raised from the grave. The mate, however, was not funereal. He seemed in the pink of conditi...

Hogan, who held the volume in the crook of his bandaged arm, licked his thumb and jabbed through the leaves in distracted attention. "There aren't no code letters for submarine!...

Waves from the exhausted swimmers sent bright streaks of watershine wavering up the green hull over Madden's head. Utter silence pervaded the vessel. There was no creaking of sp...

Leonard sat down on the edge of the torpedo case and looked at the long, slender destroyer. He had a watery feeling, as if just arising from a long illness.

Wheezing, coughing, shaking in every plate, vomiting into the sky a trail of smoke that extended clear to the eastern horizon, the _Vulcan_ shouldered her way at top speed acros...

There was something so sinister in this silent closing of all avenue of retreat that for a moment Madden was dismayed, then he struck out toward the schooner with a certain bold...

Madden thrust head and shoulders into his float, a round canvas-covered hoop of cork, and set off at an easy stroke. Now that he was flat on the water, he could no longer see th...

Rushing up the slope of the world in a battle line that covered a wide sector of the southwestern horizon, steamed four German battle cruisers. They were four sea eagles dashing...

When a new crew is shipped on an old vessel, the mate's first duty is to search the sailors' dunnage for whiskey; when an old crew is shipped on a new vessel, that officer would...

Shocked, stunned, half blinded, Madden found himself kicking in the water amidst a wreckage of spars, planks, buoys, with here and there a swimmer struggling to stay on the surf...

A strange sight met their eyes. The spars and sails of the _Minnie B_ stood out against the black heavens in a flickering brilliance that danced up through the rigging, but pres...